I'm evaluating customer-facing helpdesk software for a small B2B SaaS company. Since we are hosting the code on Gitlab and it's included, I gave Gitlab Service Desk a try. It works well but there's some friction when creating a ticket, e.g. it's not possible to integrate it programmatically into a web app ("Submit issue" form). Also I would prefer to have support separated from the development aspects.
So far I've tried Freshdesk, but was immediately turned off by the massively bloated user interface and gazillions of settings.
Front looks polished from gazing at the landing page (haven't tried it yet), but seems to focus more on B2C with an emphasis on omni-channel messaging. Also the smallest plan is 2 seats at 19 USD/mo. which is a bit much for our current usage.
Zendesk feels bloated.
Freescout is OSS and allows self-hosting, but the UI feels dated. Preferably I would like to not self-host it, but if there's a really good option out there... maybe.
What other options would you recommend having a look at?
Free for 10 users, cheap for anyone above that.
Has a real nice integration with git forges, custom fields and workflows up the wazoo.
The UI is very dated, but we're working on a rewrite with modern UI.
https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker
We hooked it into help@company.com emails and also made a web page that allowed customers to ask for support when they were logged in. The web page would add customer details when signed in so the CS staff didn't have to look as much stuff up to answer the question.
They have cloud-hosted plans though I have no experience with that.
It works great for email support, haven't tried their chat features, but is the sweet-spot for us in terms of features and complexity.
They have an API if you want to integrate, though for a web form just feeding it through email works.