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Even customer support teams need some support sometimes. Implementing an internal ticketing system ensures that employees from all departments can submit requests to a single help desk and receive the IT support they need. An internal help desk should use workflows to prioritize issues, provide self-service options, and enable departments to efficiently obtain the IT support they need.
If the IT team is feeling the squeeze as a company grows, it’s probably time to implement an internal ticketing system. This post breaks down the must-have features to keep in mind when choosing an internal help desk, plus the best internal ticketing systems that check all those boxes.
What is an internal ticketing system?
An internal ticketing system is software that manages IT support requests from employees within a company. Instead of relying on ad hoc IT support, when employees run into problems with their tools, they submit a ticket, which creates a digital record and alerts IT for assistance. Internal ticketing systems formalize an organization’s internal support process, making it easier to track open cases and reducing the time employees wait for their issues to be resolved.
An internal ticketing system such as HubSpot’s ticketing system can route new tickets and notify the IT team via automation, so requests don’t get lost. Employees can also submit IT support requests from their computers, saving them the need to physically walk over to IT every time their inbox acts up.
Another significant benefit of an internal ticketing system is organization. Ticketing systems include digital records of every inquiry filed, so losing or forgetting an open case is nearly impossible.
Some ticketing systems even have automated notifications that alert the team whenever a conversation on an open ticket goes silent. With safeguards like these, IT teams can work confidently, knowing they’re on top of their support inbox.
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Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!
Internal IT Ticketing System Features
In my experience, an internal IT ticketing system helps support teams document technical problems using tickets. Designed to meet Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards, an internal IT ticketing system’s main goal is to restore service operations 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. Teams no longer need to comb through hundreds of messages. Instead, cases can be organized and triaged to speed up resolution.
Plenty of IT ticketing systems may fit your needs, but there are some essential features I suggest you look for when selecting one.
1. Omni-Channel Support
Creating and submitting a service request should be easy. Users should be able to report issues through multiple contact points and receive support via the channel they prefer most. These channels include email, social media, live chat, phone, walk-ups, or the help desk itself, depending on what works best for users.
Omni-channel support ultimately enhances the support experience while keeping the IT team organized. Users don’t have to leave their work, and the IT team can handle all requests from a centralized location.
2. Ticket Assignments
To manage the ticket inflow successfully, teams must know where and how to distribute tickets to the right people. The ticketing system should include features that let IT and support managers categorize, prioritize, and assign tickets to other employees. For example, tickets can be categorized by issue type, priority, and department.
Ticket assignments automate the team’s case distribution and route service requests to reps with more expertise on a particular issue. Connecting users with the right employee to solve their problems will increase case resolution rates and satisfaction of both the IT team and the rest of your employees.
Pro tip: HubSpot’s automated ticket routing streamlines support by sending each ticket to the right agent or team based on rules you set, such as channel, team, or agent skills.
3. Workflow Automation
Workflows are predefined processes that automatically complete everyday tasks and boost team productivity. For example, HubSpot’s workflows can automate ticket prioritization and follow-up, and work alongside routing rules to assign tickets. Workflows can also trigger on SLA status, connect with bots, and integrate with third-party tools that handle menial tasks, so your team can focus on more complex, higher-priority issues.
So an IT manager could set an automation rule to tag issues containing specific keywords or notify an agent when an issue is assigned to them.
If an organization uses additional apps for sales, finance, or human resources, it can integrate these tools into a service team’s workflows to update records elsewhere or trigger updates within the system.
4. Reporting and Analysis
By pinpointing the source of common issues, IT managers and service leads can address major challenges that impact daily operations.
When I worked in support, we used reports and dashboards to track rep performance and understand the issues customers encountered most frequently. The internal help desk operates the same way conceptually, except that the customers are your company’s employees.
Understanding analytics and trends will inform leaders how to allocate time and resources, make staffing decisions, and more. Any internal help desk worth its salt should have robust reporting features.
5. Personalized Customer Pages
A chronological record of each customer’s help desk interactions is an invaluable time-saving feature. Instead of starting from scratch on each ticket, the internal service desk should maintain a timeline and record of past cases, notes, and resolutions to provide context for the case at hand.
When I worked as a support rep, I referred to the customer timeline daily. It was beneficial to see which of my colleagues a customer previously worked with. That way, I could reference past cases, saving the customer the need to reiterate details of past support interactions. In addition, I knew which of my teammates to reach out to for additional context or assistance on a tough case.
6. Knowledge Base
Customers love self-service, with 78% of CRM leaders saying they prefer to resolve issues independently through self-service options over direct support. Self-service empowers customers to resolve issues independently, typically saving time compared to directly working with your IT team.
As a support representative, I often referred customers to knowledge base articles to help solve their issues. For the most part, customers appreciated having the resources to help themselves in the future. This saved everyone time and made customers feel empowered and fulfilled using our product.
An internal knowledge base can allow users to find the answers and instructions they need independently. Not all IT ticketing systems come with this option, but it’s certainly a feature to consider as an organization grows.
7. AI and Automation
Modern ticketing software uses AI for triage, routing, suggested responses, and deflection.
AI and automation reduce manual labor and shorten the time it takes to resolve an internal ticket. According to HubSpot’s research, 75% of CRM leaders say that AI has helped reduce their customer service response times. Automation means AI can handle repetitive tasks such as password resets and software access requests, saving IT and HR staff hours.
Best Internal Help Desk Ticketing Software at a Glance
Best Internal Help Desk Ticketing Software
1. HubSpot Help Desk and Ticketing Software
Service Hub includes ticketing system software and help desk capabilities. The ticketing system allows support tickets to be created, assigned, and tracked in one place. The help desk helps service and IT teams manage all incoming support requests efficiently and quickly. Further, SLA management capabilities mean that service and IT managers can set and enforce response and resolution time targets so teams meet internal service commitments at scale
Using Service Hub, IT managers can set up a company email alias for IT support or a knowledge base for internal documentation, ensuring that service information is readily available to every IT team member. HubSpot knowledge base supports self-service and ticket deflection, too, leading to faster resolution times because internal teams can resolve basic queries themselves.
Customer support leaders, IT managers, and service operations teams can also access 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 so support teams can drive higher close rates.
Automation, bots, and integrations improve the tool‘s flexibility and ability to meet employees’ needs. Since it’s built on HubSpot’s all-on-one CRM platform, HubSpot’s ticketing system connects support tickets to CRM customer data. That means service operations teams will have more context for every employee conversation, and all customer data will be up to date and centrally located.
HubSpot reporting tracks ticket volume, resolution trends, and service performance. So customer support leaders and IT managers can generate out-of-the-box reports that measure rep performance, including response time and support volume.
As a former HubSpot support rep and current user, I have to admit that I’m a little biased. However, I think it’s undeniable that the platform is feature-rich and easy to use. My favorite thing about HubSpot is that you can use it to run your entire business, from internal ticketing and CRM to email, website management, invoicing, and more.
Best for: Small businesses new to ticketing software and enterprises looking to streamline help desk operations.
What I like: It’s user-friendly, efficient, and built on HubSpot’s CRM platform, which provides a central place to store all customer information.
Pricing
- Free plan available
- Starter: $7/user/month
- Professional: $90/user/month
- Enterprise: $150/user/month
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.
Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!
2. SysAid
SysAid is an Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) and help desk platform that empowers IT technicians to help users and users to help themselves. SysAid’s platform features knowledge base capabilities so employees can help themselves, and an AI assistant dubbed “Co-pilot” can reference your knowledge base and company assets to deliver accurate information instantly.
SysAid also offers multi-channel service requests, so all support tickets are routed into a single queue, and custom workflows so teams can build out what serves them best. There are also standard workflows included, like approvals, confirmations, and status updates.
Best for: Taking advantage of generative AI to save time in IT support.
What I like: I tried SysAid for a free trial and was impressed with its comprehensive support inbox and self-service portals. SysAid has a whole host of self-service features to empower end users to solve issues independently.
Pricing
- Free trial available
- Paid plans start at $89/agent/month
3. Solarwinds
SolarWinds is an ITSM platform that helps support teams capture requests, resolve issues, and deliver services reliably across the organization. A flexible service portal lets employees file requests and report issues quickly. IT managers can also configure automation for routing and approvals and set up workflows for problem, asset, and change management.
SolarWinds lets companies document and publish standard processes and best practices in a knowledge base. Users can then reference these articles to solve problems independently, and agents can include them in their responses to achieve faster resolution.
Best for: Large enterprises and companies looking to transition from IT software to a full-service desk management system.
What I like: I demoed SolarWinds and was particularly impressed by the AI assistant feature. This feature automatically generates recommended next steps for reps based on the initial request and information within the ticket. Reps should always review each ticket themselves, but the AI assistant feature can help teams quickly identify common requests, saving time.
Pricing
- Free trial available.
- Monitoring & Observability: Starts at $8/node/month
- Database: Starts at $142/database/month
- IT Service Management: Starts at $39/user/month
- Incident Response: Starts at $15/user/month
4. HappyFox
HappyFox lets agents receive and create tickets via email or through a customizable support center, so teams can manage issues regardless of where they were reported. Tickets are displayed on the “Ticket List” page, with layout options such as “Card View” and “Kanban View,” so agents can better understand the current workload.
If a company adopts the premium plan, HappyFox lets teams create and manage assets within the organization and link them to tickets when relevant.
The ticketing software’s AI capabilities mean that teams can configure ticket workflows, set smart rules, and set up round-robin routing to match exact internal processes without needing a developer.
During my HappyFox demo, I was impressed by its ability to automatically categorize and assign employee-generated tickets based on predefined rules. For example, reps can tell HappyFox to automatically assign issues involving employee laptops to a particular technician. Meanwhile, keycards and building access issues can be automatically assigned to a separate tech specializing in that area.
Best for: Small- to medium-sized businesses looking for a simple IT help desk solution that can also serve as an external support tool.
What I like: The color-coded interface makes it easy for first-time ticket management users to navigate through assigned tasks. It also integrates with numerous apps, such as Shopify, Slack, and WhatsApp.
Pricing
- Free trial available.
- HelpDesk pricing starts at $24/user/month
5. ProProfs Help Desk
ProProfs Help Desk is an internal ticketing system that helps teams manage incoming internal support requests from a shared inbox. ProProfs includes many helpful features, such as:
- Intelligent AI ticket assignment.
- Internal knowledge base.
- Live chat.
- Reporting and analytics.
ProProfs is an excellent combination of simplicity and functionality at a great price. IT managers and support leaders seeking a highly customizable solution for an enterprise with complex needs may want to look elsewhere. However, I think the majority of small- to medium-sized businesses would be well-served by the ProProfs Help Desk.
Best for: Small-to-medium-sized businesses wanting a cost-effective internal help desk solution with intuitive and effective features.
What I like: ProProfs stands out for its simplicity and ease of use. I like that ProProfs offers a free plan for startups and micro-businesses, and I found that platform intuitive, especially for first-time help desk users.
Pricing
- Free plan available
- Paid plans start at $19.99/user/month
6. Jira Service Desk
Jira works hand in hand with Confluence, allowing support and IT teams to build a knowledge base for internal documentation. Users can then self-serve to resolve simple issues, allowing IT techs to focus on more complex or urgent requests.
The paid plans come with AI capabilities like Rovo Agents, search, and chat to accelerate operations workflows and employee support. Meanwhile, teams can benefit from customizable workflows even from the free plan. Workflows can be configured using a drag-and-drop editor.
Jira may be overpowered for your needs if you run a small business or one with simple IT support needs. However, large enterprises can feel secure going with an industry stalwart like Atlassian’s Jira.
Jira was our internal help desk of choice when I was a support representative at HubSpot right out of college. Specifically, the support team used Jira to file internal tickets to alert the development team of software bugs we discovered when working with customers. As an end user (not an IT technician), I found Jira intuitive and made filing internal tickets easy. I don’t think HubSpot would have selected Jira if it wasn’t one of the best options.
Best for: Large enterprises that receive a high volume of internal requests daily and engineering departments needing to streamline internal processes.
What I like: Jira seamlessly links support and development teams to solve issues quickly and inform future software fixes.
Pricing
- Free plan available
- Standard: $26.90/user/month
- Premium: $61.60/user/month
- Enterprise: pricing upon request
The price per user/month decreases as the team size increases. The prices above are for teams up to 15 agents.
7. Mojo IT Helpdesk
Mojo IT Helpdesk provides companies with all the tools needed to deliver IT support to employees at a reasonable cost. Mojo includes many top features IT managers and support leaders expect to see in an internal help desk solution, such as:
- Internal knowledge base.
- Automation of repetitive tasks.
- Asset management (for company laptops and other items).
I explored Mojo IT Helpdesk during a demo and enjoyed the shared inbox UI. I also found the Google integration to be simple and effective. After using the product, I saw how Mojo IT Helpdesk would be an excellent solution for a small company transitioning to an internal IT helpdesk.
Best for: Small- to medium-sized businesses that want a cost-effective ticketing system and don’t require sophisticated reporting metrics.
What I like: Mojo integrates with G Suite apps, making linking your Google domain with your help desk easy.
Pricing
- Team: $14/user/month
- Business: $24/user/month
- Enterprise: $34/user/month
8. Freshservice
Freshservice by Freshworks is a cloud-based ITSM service desk built to help support teams provide timely IT services. Freshservice includes incident management, SLA management, asset management, and self-service options.
The Freshservice dashboard provides a comprehensive view of team performance and helps IT managers and service leaders pinpoint opportunities to improve overall service.
Like most competitors, Freshservice is using AI technology to supercharge its internal service desk offering. The company has built-in AI (named Freddy) throughout the product to help automate routine queries and enable self-service.
Freshservice is known for its easy-to-use, intuitive interface, which I can vouch for after my brief product demo.
Best for: Large enterprises that need internal support with advanced features.
What I like: Freshservice has a gamification angle for resolving tickets, rewarding agents with points for task completion. I didn’t experience any direct gamification of tickets when I was a support rep, but if this feature existed during my time, I think it would have given the team and me even more motivation to resolve tickets.
Pricing
- Starter: $19/user/month
- Growth: $49/user/month
- Pro: $99/user/month
- Enterprise: Available on request
9. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk is a free internal ticketing system that maintains and organizes a centralized portal for all employee-submitted IT tickets. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk also features automatic ticket routing and assignment, a knowledge base, a mobile app, and advanced reporting features.
IT managers and customer support leaders might wonder how Spiceworks can offer all these features for free, especially given that other companies charge a pretty penny for similar products. I wondered the same thing until I poked around the product during my demo.
Spiceworks’ interface is decidedly sparse and lacks the sleek design and pretty colors of more expensive alternatives. There are also noticeable banner ads in the product’s header and sidebar.
While it might not be the easiest to look at, I’d say that’s a reasonable price to pay for no price at all — and that’s not to say that Spiceworks can’t hang with the rest of them from a features perspective because you absolutely can run an effective internal IT help desk with Spiceworks.
For example, even on the free plan, technicians can get:
- Ticketing
- Incident Tracking
- Alerts
- Reporting
- Unlimited End Users
- End User Portal
- Create and Sort by Custom Attributes
- Multi Factor Authentication
Best for: Small businesses looking for a free (yet capable) internal help desk solution.
What I like: The price! It doesn’t get much better than free.
Pricing
- Core Plan: Free
- Premium Plan: $6
Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!
10. Vision Helpdesk
Vision Helpdesk enables agents to collaborate directly on the platform, gamify daily tasks, and manage projects effectively with task-management tools, helping teams stay on schedule and improve performance.
IT asset management features enable support teams to manage and track the lifecycle of IT assets like laptops, monitors, and other hardware, while knowledge base management features allow companies to build a multi-level, categorized self-service portal so employees can save time (and IT) by addressing common inquiries and issues.
Best for: Businesses of all sizes looking for a flexible and scalable internal ticketing system solution.
What I like: Vision can handle complex support environments involving multiple departments and brands within a single installation. SLA support ensures that tickets are resolved in a timely fashion. Vision’s reporting features are also top-class.
Pricing
- Starter Help Desk: $12/user/month
- Pro Help Desk: $20/user/month
- Satellite Help Desk: $24/user/month
- Pro Service Desk: $32/user/month
- Enterprise Service Desk: $48/user/month
11. Giva
Giva provides a functional internal IT help desk solution with competitive AI-powered features and advanced reporting and analytics capabilities. It prioritizes data security through HIPAA, HITECH, and GDPR compliance, making it a popular choice for healthcare, legal, finance, and other security-minded organizations.
I was impressed by Giva’s homepage, which lets you customize a dashboard with the most relevant charts and metrics for your organization.
Best for: Healthcare organizations that require HIPAA compliance with exceptional security.
What I like: Giva’s homepage dashboard is very customizable. It features drag-and-drop resizable modules with a clean, minimalist look.
Pricing
- Professional: $76/user/license/month
- Enterprise: $98/user/license/month
12. ServiceDesk Plus
ServiceDesk Plus is an advanced IT ticketing system that can be used in the cloud or installed on-premises. It also offers large IT teams the flexibility to purchase add-ons for live chat, incident management, change management, asset management, and project management.
Support teams can also automate workflows for things such as change management. Setting up the workflow allows IT managers to streamline planning, approval, and implementation. ServiceDesk Plus also offers other AI capabilities, with the following AI-driven features being available on all plans:
- Predictive intelligence
- Auto-approvals
- Virtual support agent
- GenAI
- Reply assist
ServiceDesk Plus‘s premium plans let agents provide customers with real-time solutions via remote access to the client’s desktop. In my experience, this is a valuable feature for tricky problems when email or phone support doesn’t provide enough clarity.
Best for: Large enterprises that need helpdesk software with ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) processes built in.
What I like: ServiceDesk’s automatic ticket dispatch feature distributes new tickets to service representatives based on their existing ticket load. As a former support rep, I think this feature is valuable for managing workload and gives support management one less thing to worry about.
Pricing: Available upon request.
13. TOPdesk
TOPdesk is a cloud-based IT service management solution that offers incident management features for tracking support requests, an easy-to-use self-service portal, knowledge base, and IT asset management.
TOPdesk’s AI capabilities increase with each plan. On Essential, for example, there is a basic knowledge base, whereas teams with Engaged can get AI incident categorization, knowledge item generation, and AI search.
I tried TOPdesk and found it competitive with other options in terms of available features. However, I thought the UI was a bit dull compared to other options on this list.
Best for: Small- to medium-sized companies seeking an easy-to-use internal help desk that can be deployed quickly.
What I like: TOPdesk’s self-service portal provides users with a one-stop shop for submitting and tracking IT support requests.
Pricing
- Essential: $71/agent/month
- Engaged: $101/agent/month
- Excellent: $144/agent/month
The price per user/month decreases as the team size increases. The prices above are for 15 agents.
14. Atera
Atera is an all-in-one solution for IT departments that offers help desk capabilities, remote monitoring and management of IT assets, and robust reporting capabilities.
Atera is expensive, but I think the saying “you get what you pay for” applies here. Many internal ticketing systems offer AI-powered features, but Atera’s are exceptionally robust.
Best for: Medium to large organizations seeking an all-encompassing IT ticketing system and management solution.
What I like: I demoed Atera and was impressed by the AI-powered assistant feature, which could auto-solve tickets, auto-generate responses, gauge user sentiment, and translate plain-language descriptions into terminal command prompts.
Pricing
- Professional: $149/user/month
- Expert: $189/user/month
- Master: $219/user/month
- Enterprise: pricing available upon request
15. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is an enterprise-level ITSM tool with robust features. It is a scalable solution known for its AI-driven insights and easily configurable automated workflows. The platform also offers employees 24/7 omnichannel self-service, and proactive automation to prevent tickets before they occur.
In my demo, I found the AI-powered virtual agent chatbot to be particularly powerful yet simple to configure, with a drag-and-drop interface for if/then-style workflows.
Best for: Large enterprises seeking a robust IT services management platform with AI and automation features.
What I like: ServiceNow’s AI-powered virtual agent chatbot can significantly reduce IT agent workloads by automatically solving simple requests and intelligently escalating others.
Pricing: Available upon request.
Internal Ticketing System Benefits
Using an internal IT ticketing system simplifies and streamlines your day-to-day tasks, freeing up time to focus on more critical work. Benefits of switching include the following.
- Tracks everything in one place: Using an internal ticketing system consolidates all IT support assets in one place. No more chasing down emails in one place and messages in another. The team has a record of all IT support interactions stored in the same system.
- Automates task management: Automating specific tasks will save service time and prove invaluable when dealing with many inquiries. IT managers and service leads can set up automatic responses, ticket assignments, and triage with just a few clicks. Automation will also help teams prioritize the trouble tickets and tasks that need their attention most.
- Reporting tools built in: Improving the internal IT service experience is difficult without a way to measure it. The reporting tools that come with IT ticketing systems can ensure you’re upholding SLA expectations and standards. Teams can also track their response times, how many tickets are resolved within a set time frame, identify pain points, and more to keep a pulse on agent performance.
- Enables team collaboration: An internal ticketing system can also increase collaboration between IT support agents and other stakeholders. Easily and quickly assign someone on the team a ticket, get help resolving an issue, and make real-time changes.
- User Satisfaction: An internal help desk will improve employee satisfaction and morale, as users can get the IT support they need more quickly and efficiently.
- Faster triage: Ticketing system software centralizes support requests from multiple channels. Having requests from email, chat, and portals within a single stream prevents messages from getting lost. An internal ticketing system also dispatches tickets straight to the correct team or specialist, without manual review or handoff delays.
- Better prioritization: A ticket moves through creation, categorization, assignment, resolution, and closure within a single software platform. During this process, customer support leaders and IT managers can benefit from dynamic prioritization. This means the ticketing system evaluates urgency and business impact automatically to ensure critical problems jump to the front of the queue.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ticketing System Software
Improve support with internal help desk software.
Choosing the right internal ticketing system software can save customer support leaders, IT managers, and service operations teams time and create faster resolution times, without increasing headcount. All of which can improve employee satisfaction throughout an organization.
Software like HubSpot’s ticketing system lets internal teams create, assign, and track support tickets in one place, ensuring every employee issue has clear ownership and status. As a result, internal service and support teams are more efficient and effective in resolving challenges, collaborating, and providing a delightful experience.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!