Top 5 Hosted Help Desk apps

Why hosted?

Finding the right help desk software can be a challenge. A good helpdesk app will increase the productivity and effectiveness even of a small support team.

Typically "help desk" is a web-application that runs on a company server, but the "hosted" help desks work on the vendor's server or in the cloud, accessible via the Web and ensuring maximum security and availability for your customers and clients. This way it requires no installation or configuration, you just simply sign up and start using it online.

Zendesk

Zendesk. The most widely used ticket tracking system in the niche, the company spends a fortune on advertising and claims their software is being used in more than 28000 organizations.

It has a nice uncluttered UI (with a bit outdated design though) that can filter and sort tickets in many ways. Includes a powerful customizable Knowledge-base, a user forum, Twitter integration, email integration and an automation engine. Zendesk comes with mobile apps for iPhone and Android and integrates with many external apps, like JIRA, Basecamp and others.

Jitbit Helpdesk

Jitbit Hosted Help Desk is also a hosted ticket tracking software that runs in the cloud and requires no installation. It offers best user-interface among the others, easily integrates with Email, MS Exchange, Active Directory and comes with a free iPhone & Android apps. Jitbit is a very moderately priced Help Desk app compared to the others in the list, probably the cheapest one.

Just like the other systems in the list, it offers ticket categorization, prioritization, tagging, built-in search-engine, Knowledge-base, file-attachments, integrations with JIRA/Zapier/etc, automation triggers and rules, and many other useful features, like time-tracking, reporting... Even Google-Drive integration, a feature we found only in Jitbit.

This is the only system that is also available as an "on-premise" solution, optionally, with the source codes.

Mojo Helpdesk

Mojo Helpdesk is a hosted ticket tracking / on demand help desk service that allows organizations to centralize, assign and track user requests, whatever they might be - just like the others.

Mojo Helpdesk's dashboard is pretty "Gmail-like" which is good - after all, any help desk application is basically just a fancy email client, and Gmail is not a bad role model. Mojo has a free plan, though the plan lacks email integration, you cannot connect your support mailbox to it. The app also offers user ratings (users can rate agent answers), and some basic time-tracking features.

Unfortunately, there's no knowledge base inside Mojo Helpdesk and it lacks Zendesk's "widgets"". While the UI is great, it's definitely not as polished as the alternatives and may turn off an organization's users.

Kayako

Kayako is one of the oldest players on the helpdesk software market. They offer a hosted version of their well-known PHP & MySQL based helpdesk software. A widely used helpdesk application, installed in more than 30000 organizations including the biggies like "EA Online" etc.

They also offer a Knowledge-base, file-attachments, tagging, email-integration, ticket-categorization, prioritization and all the "must have" helpdesk features. Nothing to add.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a new kid on the block. It was founded by former Zendesk employees that basically copied Zendesk (there was even a scandal surrounding this). One of the greatest things about Freshdesk is that they have a free plan limited to one agent.

The application's key feature is "being social". It tracks Twitter mentions, direct messages Facebook messages and wall posts, positioning themselves as a "social helpdesk".

Freshdesk also offers a powerful knowledge base system and nice, customer-oriented forums. Forums are used to manage customer ideas, feedback and comments. With topics statuses like "Planned" and the ability to "like" other customers' ideas, Freshdesk offers a way to empower community engagement.