Ask YC: Good application for support emails and tickets? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Good application for support emails and tickets?

17 pointsmattculbreth35 comments

Hello Friends,

We've gone live with some actual users now and we're starting to get support requests. What are you guys using to handle the tracking of these emails? I'd love to get recommendations for some hosted systems out there. I don't mind paying a bit either, although open source is always cool.

Thanks,

Matt

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RT is very full-featured and customizable, although it has a few rough edges and can take some time to learn. It's open source and is also available in as a hosted service. http://bestpractical.com/services/hosting.html

FogBugz is decent -- not as flexible as RT, but may be a bit easier for non-techies to get started with. It's also available in both hosted and installable versions. http://fogcreek.com/fogbugz/

I second FogBugz. I especially like the one-click time tracking for working on cases, and how it integrates with evidence-based scheduling:

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/LearnMore.html?section=Predi...

I've no experience with RT, but a quick look seems to indicate it's more ticket-based, whereas FogBugz covers more areas (wiki, integration with version control s/w, etc.).

(And no, I don't work for Fog Creek.)

RT is very complicated. I used it at the company I used to work for...lots of complexity and probably more power than you'll need.

I haven't heard anything about FogBugz, but maybe if we buy enough things from Joel Spolsky I won't have to read about him every single day

RT and FogBugz both suck. You have to click 3-5 times to get a request filed. That gets annoying real fast. Check out my comment below about Helpspot (and no I don't work for them either :)

I've been using RT for a while now. If you have to click that much it's because of the way you've set things up. You can even do most all the single-ticket operations (opening, updating, resolving) through email. I know a few admins that regularly manage dozens of tickets at a time without ever using the web interface.

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet. We use HelpSpot by UserScape (www.userscape.com) and it's been really, really great. Almost support ticket 2.0 (don't shoot me!). It costs money but it's pretty affordable -- the founder also frequents news.yc, I think.

Also, you will eventually outgrow using Gmail or Excel/Google Apps -- there's just a ton more features you're going to eventually need. Switch now, or switch later, eventually.

Things that hugely complex systems like RT completely miss: You really, really want to optimize on the bare-minimum path, IE what it takes to respond to a support request. Helpspot does this very well -- you can select pre-made answers that automatically file the request into a category and set any number of flags on the ticket (such as change who it's assigned to, etc) and that is really nice -- 1 click and you've answered a request.

To support Ticket Tracking, I love and use Trac all the time. For Emails, Bugzilla I think has an outward facing submission form/ bug tracking system that users can report through. Trac does not, but is great for developers b/c it's simple although somewhat hard to setup at first.

These services aren't hosted though, fyi.

http://www.bugzilla.org/

http://trac.edgewall.org/

There is also Mantis http://www.mantisbt.org/

Stay away from Trac, it must be confusing or something because there is almost always some problem on trac runs sites, you are better off running wikimedia/bugzilla.

Trac bad example: Yesterday the pkgcore people asked me to file a bug, I went to file but couldn't open a ticket. The dev's were surprised that it hadn't been set up right they thought it was working. I've seen many open source projects that use trac that don't allow me to file bugs, or find what I'm looking for. I usually just leave and ignore the issue. Not exactly appropriate, but how does one file a bug when the bug tracker doesn't work? I know email a dev, mail the list.

Yeah that's really the catch-22 about it. If you don't set it up right initially, then you'll pay later.

http://getsatisfaction.com - support requests + social networking website

beats having to setup and maintain one yourself; or paying for a service...

Matt, are you asking for software to handle actual emails or the issues/tickets mentioned in them?

I don't know of any software to handle emails themselves. We use a shared squirrelmail account for everything (though we should probably switch to gmail). We've just developed a system of putting things into folders, leading items that haven't been dealt with as unread, etc. There has to be a better solution, but I haven't heard about it yet.

Hmm...maybe someone should make it and apply to the winter YC session

If you want something really simple and lightweight: Gmail. Put the ticket number in the subject, and it will automatically be grouped together with the replies.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Jira. It beats the tar out of bugzilla, trac, and mantis. It's not free, but it's by far the best product I've used, with the largest plugin development community, and a great list of sibling applications you may want to try later on. It's not open source, but you do get the source code when you buy an enterprise license.

Jira is also great for managing project work internally.

We use Salesforce.com. http://www.salesforce.com/ The main value is that it integrates support with CRM, so salespeople and account managers can have some visibility into support cases for their customers. It also has a web services API available to get data in and out but you have to pay extra for that.

there's a lot of software out there. it depends on what features you need, what language you want it written in, etc..

here's a partially complete list of open source solutions for you: http://www.opensourcehelpdesklist.com/

Garrett Dimon and the crew is building one at http://nextupdate.com/

Unfortunately, it won't be out until later 2008, but looking to be a great product. Can't wait.

Don't use whatever Xobni just used :) I heard they're switching.

true that. we were using SupportTrio, which sucked beyond belief. We recently switched to Kayako SupportSuite, which is definitely better but not without its own problems.

I think Kayako is winning in my evaluation. Any specific gotchas I should look out for?

I used kayako before, and would definitely recommend it... I do have to add that I did not have nearly as many tickets as the Xobnis probably do

I share out a Google spreadsheet with these columns:

Issue Number Issue Type Version Fixed in Version Issue Description Status Priority Date Recorded Creator

I love the Google Apps and we use them. Just started using the Sites app with our customer.

However, what I'm really looking for is one of those systems where you send an email to support@ and you get back the automated response with a ticket. Then we (the developers) can track and prioritize.

I basically want Remedy but I want it nice and Web 2.0 and hosted.

Bugzilla.

- clean interface

- allows you to customize the look and feel

- super sweet email interface

- documented database structure <http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/tool/cgi/bugzilla-sc...;

- can interface with subversion/cvs

- free (as in speech) software

If you're trying to track feature requests from the users, you can use something like: http://featurelist.org (our site)

We also just launched the ability to have a feedback widget for capturing quick feedback from users and tracking them until you decide to treat them as a feature or ignore them.

http://www.kayako.com

Been using them for years. Excellent solution with several add-ons, customizable (if you pay a little extra you can customize even further. i.e. take their copyright info out of the user interface), and reasonable pricing.

I've heard good things about Cerberus Helpdesk:

http://www.cerberusweb.com/

Very reasonable pricing.

We used RT before and while it met our business need and allowed us to add custom fields etc. the interface was just hideous.

Cheers

I used that for a while at a previous job. It's ok, looks nice... nothing fantastic, but it got the job done.

fwiw, we'd (Xobni) evaluated them, and I wasn't impressed by their source nor database structure.

What do you need to track?

I have seen simple interfaces with basically description field and then a textarea for info, and I have seen ones with 50 different fields so that all kinds of different data can be tracked.

Try KayakoSuite. It's one of the best. Blogger used it when is was from Pyra.

RT doesn't dazzle and amaze me, but it gets the job done quite well.

There is lighthouse..

lighthouseapp.com

It has e-mail support for ticketing

Bugzilla is pretty nice.

Has anybody tried Supportcenter from manageengine. ( http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/support-center ) . From their website, they seem to have a customer support solution with Email to ticket conversation, Account & Contact Management, Service Contracts, SLAs, Business Rules etc. Has anybody evaluated their software ? Any comments ?

Regards,

Daniel Sherman

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