The 24 Best Help Desk Ticketing Software and Tools for IT Professionals

Learn More About HubSpot's Help Desk Ticketing Software
Marcus Andrews
Marcus Andrews

Updated:

Published:

As your organization grows, IT support has to be more organized and efficient. Without a clear overview of what the problem is, who's reporting it, and what its priority level is, it takes more time to resolve IT issues — as a result, operations will be bottlenecked within the company.

IT team member viewing help desk ticketing software & tools for IT professionals

If your IT team is feeling these constraints, it may be time to implement an IT ticketing system. As a central point of contact, an IT ticketing system saves time by routing all service requests into a single help desk and implements workflows that prioritize and resolve issues. Departments across the organization can easily ask and get the help they need, enabling employees to focus on getting their work done.

Get Started with HubSpot's Support Ticket System for Free

In this post, we'll highlight the must-have features to keep in mind when choosing your next IT ticketing system. Then, we'll go over the best IT ticketing software options we've handpicked based on those standards. And, finally, we'll provide a list of some other popular tools IT professionals use to improve their workflow.

But, first, here's a table of contents to help you find exactly what you're looking for.

Table of Contents

Helpdesk ticketing systems formalized your internal support process. It makes it easier to keep track of open cases which reduces the time that your employees have to wait to get their issues resolved.

And, with a ticketing system, IT employees are automatically notified whenever a case is created. Your employees don't have to physically make their way to the IT department whenever something breaks.

They can simply file a new ticket and receive a response from an internal employee almost immediately. This reduces any friction that can occur when employees are stacked against deadlines and need to work with your IT team to find a speedy resolution.

Additionally, another important benefit that a ticketing system provides is organization. Since you'll have a digital record of every inquiry filed with your team, it makes it nearly impossible to lose or forget an open case.

And, some ticketing systems even have automated notifications that alert your team whenever a conversation on an open ticket goes silent. With safeguards like these, IT teams can work confidently knowing that they're on top of their support inbox.

Now that we've looked at an overview of help desk ticketing systems, let's review some of their benefits in the section below.

IT Ticketing System Features

An IT ticketing system helps your support team document technical problems using tickets. Designed to meet ITIL standards, the main goal of an IT ticketing system is to restore service operations back to normal as quickly as possible and prevent significant disruption to business operations.

Tickets contain details of service requests, their priority, status, and other relevant information. Rather than manually sifting through hundreds of messages, your team can organize and triage cases to resolve them quickly.

There are plenty of IT ticketing systems that may fit your needs, but there are some essential features you should look for during your selection.

1. Omni-Channel Support

Creating and submitting a service request should be easy. Users should be able to report issues through multiple points of contact and receive support via the channel they prefer most. These channels include email, social media, live chat, phone, walk-ups, and/or the help desk itself, depending on what works best for your users.

Omni-channel support ultimately enhances the support experience while keeping your IT team organized. Users don't have to navigate away from their work, and incoming requests are handled within a central location.

2. Ticket Assignments

To successfully manage your ticket inflow, your team must know where and how to distribute tickets to the right people. Your ticketing system should have features that let you categorize, prioritize, and assign tickets to other employees.

For example, tickets can be categorized based on issue type, priority, and department.

Ticket assignments automate your team's case distribution and assign service requests to reps who have more knowledge about a particular issue. This improves case resolution rates because your users will be connected with the employee who is best equipped to handle their problem.

3. Workflow Automation

Workflows are predefined processes that automatically complete common tasks and boost team productivity. They can be made up of macros, SLAs, automation rules, bots, and third-party integrations that handle menial actions so your team can focus on bigger, more complex issues.

For example, you can set an automation rule to tag issues containing specific keywords or notify an agent when an issue is assigned to them.

And, if your organization uses third-party apps for sales, finance, or human resources, integrating these tools can reduce the time spent searching for information about each issue.

4. Reporting and Analysis

Identifying the root cause of common issues allows you to solve crucial problems that affect daily business operations.

You can generate reports to analyze ticket progress and review team performance. This will help you better understand what IT spends most of its time on, what types of issues are reported, and how to improve the systems in place so that operations continue to run smoothly.

5. Personalized Customer Pages

Instead of starting from scratch when a customer submits a new ticket, having a dedicated page with that customer’s ticket history could save you time resolving their issue.

Viewing their ticket history will allow you to see what issues they’ve had previously, who else on your team assisted them, and may even help you solve their current issue. This will also save you time since there’s less time spent asking customers questions they’ve already answered in a previous ticket. Customer experience will improve overall since they’ll be assisted by someone already familiar with their needs.

6. Knowledge Base

Customers love self-service, especially since 40% prefer using self-service options over direct support. This is because self-service empowers them to resolve issues they have with the product or service on their own. While that may sound counter-intuitive, oftentimes this process is much faster for the user than it is to work with your IT team.

Knowing how busy your employees probably are, an internal knowledge base can give users the opportunity to find the answers and instructions they need on their own. Not all IT ticketing systems come built with this option, but it's certainly a feature to consider as your organization continues to grow in size.

Now that you know what to look for in an IT ticketing system, let's take a look at our picks for the best options available this year.

1. HubSpot Help Desk and Ticketing Software

HubSpot's Help Desk and Ticketing Automation Software

Start Using HubSpot's Help Desk Ticketing Software for Free

Best For:> Small business new to ticketing software and enterprises looking to streamline help desk operations.

What We Like: It’s user-friendly, efficient and built on HubSpot’s CRM platform — providing a central place to store all customer information.

Price: Free, $45/mo (Starter), $360/mo (Professional), $1200/mo (Enterprise)

HubSpot's Service Hub is a service management software that enables you to conduct seamless onboarding, power flexible customer support, and expand customer relationships. It delivers efficient and end-to-end service that delights customers at scale. Service Hub includes HubSpot's Help Desk and Ticketing Automation Software.

Set up a company email alias for IT support, or a knowledge base for internal documentation. This ensures that service information is readily available for every member of your IT team.

By using HubSpot’s Service Hub, you'll also have access to customer feedback tools to survey and proactively measure customer sentiment. Additionally, all incoming requests convert to tickets and are managed in a drag-and-drop pipeline.

Automation, bots, and integrations improve the tool's flexibility and ability to meet your customers' needs. And since it's built on HubSpot's all-in-one CRM platform, you'll have more context for every customer conversation and all customer data will be up to date and centrally located.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot's Help Desk and Ticket Automation Software to track all customer requests and keep your team organized so reps can prioritize work and provide quality customer support faster.

2. Intercom

intercom help desk ticketing software and tools for IT professionals

Best For: Companies looking to implement a chat feature into their customer support options.

What We Like: This messaging system is flexible, and works online, in app and on mobile so customers can access personalized support on the go.

Price: $59/mo (Start), $119/mo (Grow)

Intercom is a conversational relationship platform — it offers a conversational support tool to help you improve customer satisfaction with the tool's Business Messenger as well as its rep, self-serve, and proactive support features.

The Business Messenger allows you to provide personalized and efficient service without the need for phone or email. The Intercom Inbox is where you can manage and reply to conversations where they're happening — whether on your website, social media, email, etc. — so you never have to leave the tool.

Lastly, you can automate the routing and prioritization of conversations that need the most attention by using Intercom's assignment rules, ticketing workflows, and more.

3. Solarwinds

Solarwinds Help desk and ticketing software

Best For: Large enterprises and companies looking to make the leap from IT software to a full service desk management system.

What We Like: Solarwinds isn’t limited to just IT help desk functions. It can be used to organize tasks across other departments within your organization.

Price: $19/mo (Team), $29/mo (Business), $69/mo (Professional), $89/mo (Enterprise)

Solarwinds is an ITSM (IT Service Management) platform that empowers support teams to collect, address, and deliver services consistently within your organization.

Employees can quickly submit requests and report incidents through a customizable service portal. You can also set automation rules for ticket routing or service approvals, and establish processes for problem management, asset management, change management, and more.

Solarwinds lets you document and publish common processes and best practices in a knowledge base. Users can then reference these articles to solve problems on their own, and agents can insert them into their responses for faster resolution.

4. HappyFox

HappyFox help desk and ticketing software

Best For: Small to medium-sized business looking for a simple, all-in-one customer support solution.

What We Like: The color-coded interface makes it easy for first time ticket management users to navigate through assigned tasks. It also integrates with a multitude of apps like Shopify, Slack and WhatsApp.

Price: Request pricing

HappyFox lets agents receive and create tickets via email or through a customizable support center, so you can manage issues regardless of where they were reported.

Tickets are displayed on the "Ticket List" page, with layout options like "Card View" or "Kanban View" so your agents have a better understanding of the current workload.

If you adopt the premium plan, HappyFox lets you create and manage assets within your organization, while linking them to tickets when relevant.

5. ProProfs Help Desk

proprofs help desk and ticketing software

Best For: Small to medium sized businesses wanting a shared space for all customer support inboxes and those new to tracking customer service metrics.

What We Like: Enables easy collaboration with features like “child tickets” that allow more than one customer service agent to assist with a ticket if further assistance is needed.

Price: Free, $10/mo (Essentials), $15/mo (Premium)

ProProfs Help Desk offers a Round-Robin ticket assignment feature that ensures that support tickets are evenly distributed among agents and departments. With shared inboxes, all your customer-facing email accounts (e.g. sales@, support@, help@, billing@, etc.) can be clubbed together, allowing agents to work in sync.

With a simple user interface, agents can attach files to support tickets, leave internal notes, and resolve complex tickets using parent-child ticketing. Internal integrations, such as ProProfs Live Chat, Knowledge Base, and Survey Maker can help you offer a 360-degree support experience and gauge customer delight using CSAT and NPS surveys.

Moreover, with this tool, you can closely monitor individual as well as team productivity, measure performance against SLAs, track ticket response, ratings, and handling time.

6. Jira Service Desk

Jira Service Desk and help desk software

Best For: Large enterprises that receive a high volume of customer requests daily and engineering departments needing to streamline internal processes.

What We Like: It’s great for tracking customer requests, but also makes an invaluable internal ticketing system for employees. It seamlessly links support and development teams to solve issues more efficiently.

Price: Free, $20/mo (Standard), $40/mo (Premium), request a quote (Enterprise)

Jira Service Desk enables your support team to create multiple projects for organizing and processing requests. If you find yourself providing support for several products, areas, or departments, you can create service desk projects for each topic, and have your users submit requests using their respective email addresses.

Jira works hand-in-hand with Confluence so you can build a knowledge base to house your internal documentation. Users can then self-serve and solve simple issues, allowing your agents to focus on solving more complex or urgent requests.

7. Mojo IT Helpdesk

Mojo Help Desk and it ticketing software

Best For: Small to medium sized businesses that want a cost-effective ticketing system and don’t require sophisticated reporting metrics.

What We Like: Mojo integrates with G suite apps which makes it easy to link your Google domain with helpdesk instances.

Price: $29/mo (Professional), 149/mo (Enterprise), $300 (Enterprise GIGA)

Mojo IT Helpdesk integrates seamlessly with G Suite so you can build your IT help desk right on top of your Google domain. Once your help desk is up, users can submit service requests via their preferred channels, all of which are converted into tickets and managed in one central location.

8. Freshservice

Fresh Service help Desk and ticketing software

Best For: Large enterprises that need internal customer support with advanced features.

What We Like: Freshservice has a gamification angle for resolving tickets, rewarding agents with points for task completion.

Price: $19/mo (Starter), $49/mo (Growth), $89/mo (Pro), $109/mo (Enterprise)

Freshservice by Freshworks is an ITSM service desk built to help support teams provide timely IT services. This includes incident management, SLA management, asset management, and self-service options.

The Freshservice dashboard displays a comprehensive view of team performance and helps you pinpoint opportunities to improve your service.

9. Zendesk

Zendesk Help Desk and ticketing software

Best For: Large enterprises looking for a more customizable IT ticketing solution.

What We Like: Zendesk offers incredible language support. You can communicate in your customer’s language of choice without having to do the translations on your own.

Price: $49/mo (Suite Team), $79/mo (Suite Growth), $99/mo (Suite Professional)

Zendesk can easily be set up as an IT service desk that reports incidents, events, problems, and service requests from multiple support channels.

You can even expand Zendesk's functionality by integrating your IT help desk with apps and tools your team already uses. Your team can also track key metrics so you can make informed decisions about how to address common problems that impact service operations.

10. Vision Helpdesk

Vision Helpdesk and it ticketing software

Best For: Small businesses and ecommerce companies looking to support customers across multiple channels including live chat, phone, and email support.

What We Like: Although vision comes with robust options and customizable features, it still maintains its user-friendliness.Vision Helpdesk can be configured with modules specifically for incident management, problem management, CMDB (configuration management database), and other services your IT support team provides.

Price: $12/mo (Starter Help Desk), $20/mo (Pro Help Desk), $24/mo (Satellite Help Desk), $32/mo (Pro Service Desk), $48/mo (Ent Service Desk)

To boost team performance, Vision Helpdesk lets agents collaborate within the help desk, gamify daily tasks, and implement task management to complete projects on time.

11. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk IT ticketing software

Best For: Startups and companies looking to scale in a cost-efficient way.

What We Like: Zoho has a pretty robust free tier — offering predefined SLAs, mobile apps, and customer management in addition to a basic ticketing system and private knowledge base.

Price: Free, $14/mo (Standard), $23/mo (Professional), $40/ mo (Enterprise)

Zoho Desk equips your IT team with the tools they need to resolve tickets efficiently. If you're currently using Zoho CRM for organizing user data, you can sync your database to Zoho Desk and have access to your users' existing ticket history, activity, and happiness rating.

12. ServiceDesk Plus

ServiceDesk Plus IT ticketing software

Best For: Large enterprises that need helpdesk software with ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) processes built in.

What We Like: ServiceDesks automatic ticket dispatch feature distributes new tickets to service representatives based on their existing ticket load. It’s a nice touch to manage workloads for the whole team.

Price: Request a quote

ServiceDesk Plus is an advanced IT ticketing system that includes options to use a cloud version or install it on-premises. ServiceDesk Plus offers large IT teams the flexibility to purchase add-ons for live chat, incident management, change management, asset management, and project management.

And, Service Desk Plus's premium plans let agents provide customers with real-time solutions via remote access to the client's desktop.

13. Jitbit

JitBit Help Desk and ticketing software

Best For: Companies of all sizes from freelancers to large enterprises.

What We Like: Jitbit manages to maintain a simple UI while offering hundreds of integrations, allowing it to work seamlessly with your company’s existing software. Best of all they don’t price per agent, which makes it an affordable option for businesses that have a tight budget.

Price: $29/mo (Freelancer), $69/mo (Startup), $129/mo (Company), $249/mo (Enterprise)

It takes seconds to set up an IT service desk with Jitbit. Whether you choose the hosted or on-premise version, Jitbit lets your team manage requests in real-time.

Ticket activity, messages, and attachments are accessible in a single view so you don't have to constantly ping your teammates for more information. iOS and Android apps are also available so you can access the help desk and respond to tickets wherever you are.

14. Hiver

hiver landing page

Best For: Companies using Google Workspace

What We Like: Hiver brings the entire functionalities of modern-day helpdesk features into Gmail and Google tools

Price: $15/mo/user (Lite), $39/mo/user (Pro), $59/mo/user (Elite)

Hiver is the world’s first helpdesk built specifically for Google Workspace. With Hiver, your support teams can organize, track and collaborate on customer queries right from Gmail. The customer service solution helps managers and supervisors easily assign queries to frontline agents, and enables agents to have quick internal discussions on these queries.  

For teams dealing with a large volume of support tickets, Hiver offers automation that let you route specific queries to specific team members, without any manual intervention. This ensures that your support team can focus more on things that actually matter - such as ensuring customers get a timely response. 

15. Support Genix

SupportGenix_banner

Best For: Companies looking for a support ticket system to integrate into WordPress website in order to manage customer service effectively.

What We Like: This powerful WordPress ticket plugin offers a well-rounded system for monitoring and managing customer support requests, so that you can stay on top of high-demand levels with ease. 

Price: $59/year, $99/lifetime

Support Genix is a comprehensive WordPress support ticket plugin that enables businesses to take control of their customer service experience. It offers a powerful system for managing and monitoring ticket requests, providing unlimited tickets, agents, and users from one centralized platform.

Support Genix helps you delegate tasks or collaborate between departments with ease. This makes it simple and straightforward to stay on top of all your customer needs. With features like email piping, WooCommerce integration, email notification, incoming Webhook, agent control and ticket transfer Support Genix can be an invaluable tool for businesses in an ever-evolving world.

Whether you're looking for an on-premises solution or a cloud-based service desk, you're bound to find the right IT ticketing system software that fits your business's needs.

Now, let's look at a few more tools that IT professionals use every day.

IT Support Software

1. CCleanerIT Software CCleaner

Best For: Any business looking to put IT system maintenance on autopilot.

What We Like: CCleaner’s scheduling feature means that teams can set up cleaning at times that are convenient and don’t interfere with business.

Price: Free download

CCleaner is like the maintenance person for your IT system. It clears out old files that your software doesn't use and frees up space on your hard drive so your other apps can operate faster. With its routine maintenance checks and repairs, CCleaner constantly ensures your team isn't hindered by slow operating speeds, especially as your customer base continues to grow.

2. Foxit PDF Reader

 IT Software Foxit PDF reader

Best For: Those looking for a user-friendly way to create PDFs and convert common file types to PDFs.

What We Like: Foxit’s security feature provides a layer of protection, especially when downloading files from unknown sources.

Price: Request a quote

Foxit's free PDF reader helps you read, annotate, and fill out PDF documents, regardless of their size or PDF type. This tool can save your team time if you have customers or employees submitting support tickets on paper or in person.

Rather than processing these requests by hand, simply upload the documents into Foxit and transfer your notes directly into your IT help desk.

3. RecuvaRecuva Software for IT professionals

Best For: Anyone looking for a safe and reliable way to recover files.

What We Like: The Wizard interface is easy to use, allowing users to quickly select the type of files you’re trying to recover and from where, which cuts down the time it takes to scan.

Price: Free download, $19.95/year (professional)

We all have had that moment when we've accidentally clicked "delete," and thought we lost a file forever. Fortunately, Recuva can recover any files that you inadvertently delete so you won't have to re-upload, or worse, recreate them. Recuva also has an advanced scanning tool so you can find files that were lost a long time ago, or after a computer crash.

4. LastPass Password Manager

lastpass software for it professionals

Best For: Small and large companies that need password management assistance.

What We Like: LastPass supports a variety of browsers and has 2-factor authentication for added security.

Price: Free, $3/mo (Premium), $4/mo (Families)

LastPass is like a universal remote for your apps and software. Rather than having to remember a password for each tool that your team uses, LastPass stores and fills in password credentials automatically. While your software is still secured by unique codes and encryptions, LastPass simply reduces the time your employees spend logging in and out of apps.

5. DropboxDropbox Software for IT professionals

Best For: Large teams looking to consolidate files securely without hindering collaboration.

What We Like: The pro version helps businesses work even more efficiently by incorporating features like digital signatures (HelloSign) and document watermarking.

Price: $12.50/mo (Standard), $16.58 (Professional), $20/mo (Advanced), request a quote (Enterprise)

Dropbox is a popular tool that businesses use to share information internally. It creates a communal space where employees can upload and view documents created by their team or upper management. As more documentation is uploaded, Dropbox acts as an internal knowledge base, providing employees with informative resources and data about your business.

6. Microsoft Attack Surface Analyzer

Microsoft Attack Surface Analyzer IT software

 

Best For: IT teams and developers that use Microsoft Windows that are looking for an added layer of security.

What We Like: This tool can be helpful for teams testing new apps by identifying bugs or issues that could potentially cause damage.

Price: Free download

If your IT team is running on Windows, you'll want to add Microsoft's Attack Surface Analyzer as you continue to install more apps and software. This tool monitors changes made to your operating system after a new installation is completed to ensure the new program or app is safe. That way, if you accidentally upload malware, the Surface Analyzer will spot the threat before it endangers your data or infrastructure.

7. Zapier

Zapier IT software

Best For: Mid-sized companies and large enterprises that need to automate workflows to boost productivity.

What We Like: Although Zapier has lots of features, it’s beginner-friendly and doesn’t require any coding knowledge.

Price: Free, $19.99/mo (Starter), $49/mo (Professional), $299/mo (Team), $599/mo (Company)

It's always great to provide your IT team with new apps and software. But, what's even better is when you can sync these programs together to create a unified workflow.

Zapier does just that by linking your software together with "zaps," allowing you to transfer data automatically between applications instead of having to manually upload it.

9. Atom

Atom IT software tools

Best For: Developers who want an easier way to collaborate on code.

What We Like: Atom works across multiple operating systems including Linux, Windows and OS X.

Price: Free download

Sometimes it's easier to create a new solution rather than buying an existing one. For these cases, Atom provides a text editor that reduces the time it takes to write basic code.

It comes with an autocomplete feature that anticipates the code you're going to write and allows for live collaboration, so multiple team members can code on the same project at the same time. This is great for busy IT teams that may only devote a portion of their day to developing app-based solutions.

10. Icecream Screen Recorder

Icecream Screen Recorder IT software

Best For: IT teams needing an easy way to troubleshoot and explain issues via video.

What We Like: Icecream isn’t limited to just screen recording. It can be used to capture just audio and has a game capture feature too.

Price: Free download, $29.95 one-time fee (Professional)

Software can be tricky to troubleshoot if both people aren't working in the same room. The IT team can't see what the customer or employee is doing, so it's hard to verify if they're following instructions exactly how they're described.

With a screen recorder, you can reduce that margin of error by recording every step you take on your computer and sharing it via video with the customer or employee. That way, customers can see exactly what you're doing on your interface before trying it on their own.

Ticketing System Benefits

Using an IT ticketing system will simplify and streamline your day-to-day tasks, freeing up time for you to work on more important tasks. Benefits of switching include:

  • Tracks everything in one place: Using a ticketing system consolidates all your support needs in one place. No more chasing down emails and messages, you’ll already have a record of your customer interactions stored in the system.
  • Automates task management: Automating certain tasks will save so much time and prove invaluable when dealing with a high number of inquiries. Set up automatic responses, ticket assignments and triage in just a few clicks. Automation will also help you to prioritize the tickets and tasks that need your attention most.
  • Reporting tools built in: Improving your customer service experience is difficult when you don’t have a way to measure it. The reporting tools that come with IT ticketing systems can ensure you’re upholding customer expectations and standards.Track your response times, how many tickets are resolved within a set time frame, identify pain points, and more.
  • Enables team collaboration: A ticketing system can also increase collaboration between customer service agents and other stakeholders. Easily and quickly assign someone on your team a ticket, get help resolving an issue, and make changes in real time.

Improve Customer Support With Help Desk Software

Help desk software and IT tools have the ability to make your customer service and support teams more efficient and effective when it comes to resolving customer challenges, collaborating with each other, and providing a delightful experience.

As a result of your remarkable customer service and support, your customers will be more likely to become loyal promoters of your brand.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Free Resource: How to Reach & Engage Your Audience on Facebook

 

Related Articles

Get started with HubSpot's free Help Desk & Ticketing software.

GET FREE HELP DESK SOFTWARE

Service Hub provides everything you need to delight and retain customers while supporting the success of your whole front office

START FREE OR GET A DEMO