Skip to main content

Fully Managed osTicket
as a Service

Deploy osTicket as a fully managed service starting at €9/mo. Get automated backups, SSL, updates, support and monitoring included.

osTicket is an open-source help desk and ticketing system — email-to-ticket intake, department routing, SLA timers, and a customer portal — combining the convenience of Zendesk with the privacy and control of self-hosted infrastructure. Released in 2003 by Peter Rotich and maintained today by Enhancesoft, LLC, it runs at thousands of MSPs, universities, and municipal IT departments.

Free 7-day trial  99.9% Uptime SLA  No credit card  Cancel anytime

Free 7-day trial  99.9% Uptime SLA
No credit card  Cancel anytime

osTicket

osTicket

STARTING AT

€9/month
Automated Backups
Monitoring
Automated Updates
Auto SSL

USAGE

Unlimited
Human Support
Custom Domains
Terminal Access
File Manager Access
Deploy in your region 21 locations worldwide
GermanyFinlandNetherlandsUKSwedenUnited StatesCanadaSingaporeJapanAustraliaBrazilSouth Africa+9 more →
osTicket Preview Image

ABOUT THE SOFTWARE

What is osTicket

osTicket is an open-source help desk system that turns inbound email and web-form submissions into trackable tickets. Agents work them through SLA timers and department queues; customers see status in a portal. Built in PHP and MariaDB, GPL-2.0 licensed, in continuous development since 2003.

The project is maintained by Enhancesoft, LLC out of Alexandria, Louisiana, with Peter Rotich as founder and lead maintainer. It runs on PHP against MySQL or MariaDB. A typical install fits comfortably in 2 vCPU and 2–4 GB RAM for teams up to around 25 agents. The database stays small when attachments offload to S3-compatible storage.

osTicket has been in production since 2003 at thousands of organisations spanning MSPs, universities, U.S. municipal IT departments, and small-business support teams. Dartmouth Engineering runs it for Formula Hybrid + Electric Competition operations. Public "powered by" walls are rare because most installs are internal IT systems behind the firewall — but G2 and TrustRadius reviewer roles consistently skew toward education, public sector, and managed-service providers.

FEATURES

What osTicket does

osTicket converts email and web-form intake into routable tickets, runs them through department queues with SLA timers, and gives agents a unified workspace. Customers track status through a self-service portal. Plugins extend authentication, storage, and integration paths. This section describes what osTicket itself does; the platform guarantees above are what we add.

Email-to-ticket intake

POP3, IMAP, and OAuth2 mailbox fetching turns every inbound email into a tracked ticket. Attachments and threading preserved. Multiple service mailboxes per install.

SLA management

Per-ticket SLA timers with priority levels, business-hours support, escalation rules, and breach alerts. Different SLAs per department or per contract.

Knowledge base

Internal and public knowledge-base articles, categorised and searchable. Insert canned responses inline when replying to a ticket.

Agent roles and permissions

Granular role definitions for team leads, agents, and supervisors. Department-scoped access. Logged history of who touched what and when.

Department routing

Auto-route tickets by recipient address, sender domain, help topic, or keyword filter. Each department gets its own assignment rules, signature, and agent roster.

Customer portal

Self-service web portal where end users open tickets, check status, and reply without an account or via SSO. Branded to your domain.

Custom forms and fields

Build intake forms per help topic. Required fields, dropdowns, dates, file uploads. Forms attach to the ticket as structured data agents can filter on.

API and plugins

REST API for ticket creation and lookup. Plugin system covers LDAP/AD auth, OAuth2 mailbox auth, and community extensions.

WHAT'S ALWAYS INCLUDED

Every app. Fully managed.
Nothing extra to pay for.

Every app you deploy includes the full managed service — security, backups, updates, and support from day one.

Automatic updates and patches

Apps run the latest stable version. Security patches applied silently, with rollback if needed.

Daily off-site backups

Multiple daily backups in redundant off-site locations. One-click restore if anything goes wrong.

24/7 uptime monitoring

Continuous monitoring with instant alerting. We respond before you notice.

SSL, firewall, DDoS protection

Auto-renewing SSL, hardened firewall rules, DDoS mitigation on every deployment.

Performance and scaling

We monitor resource usage continuously. When your app needs more headroom, we flag it and upgrade with your explicit approval.

Dedicated engineering support

Real engineers on chat. DNS, SMTP & migration help. All included in €9.

WHY MANAGED

Why teams pick managed osTicket

Zendesk's July 2023 pricing update raised list prices an average of 16% and reset Suite Team to $55 per agent per month on annual billing. A 10-agent shop now writes a $6,600 annual check before any add-on. osTicket is the open-source path off that bill — but the path is only viable when someone else handles the operations.

Running osTicket yourself is a real job. The email-fetcher cron has to fire every minute via system crontab — not osTicket's auto-cron setting, which only runs when an agent is browsing the back office. PHP 8.2 needs patching against monthly CVEs. The database needs innodb_buffer_pool_size tuned for ticket volume. Attachments need to offload to object storage or the database swells. SSL certificates need renewing every 90 days. And every time Microsoft deprecates an Outlook endpoint, the OAuth2 plugin breaks and emails stop arriving.

That last one is the silent killer. Through 2025 a recurring error string — "The API version V2 has been depreciated" — broke email ingestion on osTicket installs all over the official forum. Tickets stopped getting created from inbound mail. No alert, no bounce, just silence. The fix is straightforward (update the OAuth2 plugin, re-save the mailbox credentials), but you have to know to look. We watch the last_fetch timestamp on each mailbox and alert if it stalls for more than five minutes.

REVIEWS

Hear from customers ​like you​​​​​​​

Successful businesses and professionals around the world rely on DANIAN every day

USE CASES

Three teams who run osTicket on DANIAN

These are representative team types we set up most often. Each starts with the same flat €9 plan.

12-AGENT REGIONAL MSP

Consolidating per-client mailboxes after a Zendesk Growth quote crossed €10K

A managed-service provider supporting around 120 SMB clients across DACH consolidates ticket intake after the Zendesk Suite Growth annual quote landed over €10,000 for 12 seats. They run osTicket on DANIAN in Germany, point helpdesk.msp.example at the instance, enable the LDAP plugin for staff sign-in against their on-prem AD, and configure per-client departments that auto-route by sender domain.

25-AGENT MUNICIPAL IT DEPARTMENT

Moving off a shared Outlook mailbox after the old ticket tool was sunsetted

A mid-sized U.S. city's IT shop, serving around 3,500 employees, replaces a vendor-sunsetted ticket tool with osTicket on DANIAN in a US. region. They configure 7-year ticket retention to match the city's records policy, SAML SSO against Microsoft Entra ID, and a public-facing portal at help.cityname.gov for resident IT requests.

18-AGENT UNIVERSITY HELPDESK

Replacing per-seat SaaS after the renewal crossed the departmental budget

A mid-sized university's central IT supports around 14,000 students with 18 agents. They run osTicket on DANIAN in Netherlands, integrate with the institution's Shibboleth IdP so students sign in with their student-ID account, and split tickets across Networking, AV, Accounts, and Learning-Platform departments. An Office 365 service mailbox fetches via OAuth2 every minute.

COMPARISON

Four ways to run osTicket

You can pay per agent per month to Zendesk. You can spin up a VPS and learn PHP-FPM tuning. You can buy a tower server and run it from the back office. Or you can pay €9 a month and stop thinking about the operations. The math at 1, 5, and 10 agents, below.

 PATH1 AGENT5 AGENTS 10 AGENTSYOUR OPS TIME
Zendesk Suite Team
$55/agent/mo, annual billing
$55/mo
$660/yr
$275/mo
$3,300/yr
$550/mo
$6,600/yr
0 hr/mo
vendor-managed

Self-host on a VPS
$24/mo production-class VPS
$44/mo + ops
5–10 hr initial setup
$44/mo + ops
€60–240/mo time
$44/mo + ops
tune DB at 25+ agents
1–2 hr/mo
patching, on-call
Home server
Synology DS923+ or HP ProLiant ML30 Gen10
€210–667/mo
all-in
€210–667/mo
same hardware
€210–667/mo
may need upgrade
2–4 hr/mo
+ business uplink
DANIAN Managed osTicket
€9/mo
€108/yr
€9/mo
€108/yr
€9/mo
€108/yr
0 hr/mo
we handle it

Zendesk monthly billing adds roughly 20%; Suite Growth runs $89 and Suite Professional $115 per agent per month on annual. VPS path assumes $24/month for the box, $5 for object-storage backups, and $15 for monitoring, plus €60–120/hour of operator time — the time line is what usually decides it. Home-server math amortises hardware over 36 months and adds business-grade internet, off-site backup, and operator time. DANIAN's row holds at €9 because the platform absorbs the operations cost across the customer base.

BY INDUSTRY

osTicket for specific industries

osTicket is most credible in three sectors with a shared operational shape: high-volume internal IT support, multi-tenant client routing, and long retention requirements. The three blocks below are what we run by default, per industry, with the configuration choices we make at provisioning.

MSPs typically operate under client-contract SLAs and ITIL-aligned incident workflows — first-response timers per priority level, escalation paths, and per-client log retention.

For osTicket on DANIAN, that translates into per-client department isolation with dedicated Help Topics and assignment rules, ticket and reply logs retained for 13 months minimum, and the LDAP plugin bound to the MSP's directory for staff sign-in.

A typical workflow: client email arrives, gets auto-routed by sender domain into the matching client department, triages into a Tier-1 queue with SLA timer attached, escalates to Tier-2 at 80% of SLA, and closes with a knowledge-base suggestion plus a CSAT survey.

A 12-agent MSP usually handles 2,000–5,000 tickets per month against a 1-business-hour first-response SLA for priority-1 incidents.
School and university help desks run under FERPA in the US — student-record confidentiality with specific consent requirements before disclosure to anyone other than the student — and parallel student-records laws in other jurisdictions.

For osTicket on DANIAN, that means region pinning to the institution's country (Germany or Netherlands for institutions in those regions; US for US institutions), SAML SSO via Shibboleth or Microsoft Entra ID so students sign in with their existing student-ID account rather than creating new credentials, and help-topic separation between Student, Staff, and Faculty queues so confidential student requests never land in a shared mailbox.

Typical workflow: student logs in to the portal via SSO, submits a ticket categorised by Account, Network, or LMS, gets routed to the correct sub-team, resolved or escalated to a specialist, then closed with a knowledge-base link inserted by canned response.

A central university helpdesk with 18 agents typically handles 4,000–8,000 tickets per month, with peaks at the start of each term and a 4-business-hour first-response target.
Public-sector IT runs under state public-records and FOIA-equivalent retention statutes — commonly 3 to 7 years for operational IT records, with longer windows for anything touching investigations or litigation holds.

For osTicket on DANIAN, the configuration locks region to the citizen-data jurisdiction, sets ticket-and-attachment retention to the longer of records-law minimum or 7 years, integrates SAML SSO against the agency's Entra ID or Okta tenant, and exposes a public-facing portal on the agency's gov-domain subdomain for resident-facing requests.

Workflow: an internal employee or resident submits via portal or email, the ticket gets auto-categorised by Help Topic and routed to Networking, Desktop, Phones, or Apps, then assigned per business hours and on-call rota, resolved within SLA, and archived to meet the statutory retention window.

Municipal service desks serving around 3,500 employees plus a resident portal typically handle 600–1,500 tickets per month and resolve roughly 74–80% at first level without escalation, per HDI benchmarking.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Everything teams ask before signing up — answered straight, without sales speak.

Three groups: technical setup, migration, and how DANIAN works as a service.

01

Technical and configuration

osTicket ships an OAuth2 plugin you install in Admin Panel → Manage → Plugins. For Microsoft 365 you register an app in Entra ID, paste the tenant ID and client credentials, then reauthorise the mailbox. For Gmail it's the parallel dance in Google Cloud Console. We pre-install the plugin on DANIAN instances and walk you through the credential paste at setup.
Microsoft has been progressively deprecating Outlook endpoints used in earlier OAuth2 flows. When a deprecation lands, the token refresh fails and email ingestion stops silently. Fix is to update the OAuth2 plugin to the current release and re-save the mailbox credentials.
osTicket's auto-cron setting only runs when an agent is browsing the back office — and only at most once every three minutes per logged-in staff. For reliable ingestion you need a system crontab entry running php /var/www/osticket/api/cron.php every minute via CLI. CLI execution bypasses osTicket's API-key check for HTTP cron calls. We configure this by default and watch the exit code.
Install the auth-ldap plugin from osTicket's plugin repository, point it at your LDAP server with bind credentials, then set each staff member's Authentication Backend to "Active Directory or LDAP" in their staff record. Anonymous bind, simple bind, and StartTLS are all supported. Group-based access mapping is doable through filter strings.
osTicket doesn't ship native SAML in core. Two routes work: a community SAML plugin (several maintained forks exist on GitHub), or fronting osTicket with an auth proxy like Keycloak or oauth2-proxy that handles SAML federation and passes user identity through remote-user headers. We can implement either pattern as part of onboarding.
Don't rely on PHP's mail() function — outbound deliverability is poor. Configure an SMTP relay (any transactional mail provider works) with DKIM signing for your sending domain, add an SPF record that includes the relay, and publish a DMARC record at quarantine. We configure the SMTP relay and assist with the DNS records at setup. You verify them in your own DNS panel.

02

Migration and onboarding

We can activate your app on your own custom domain/subdomain. Examples: mydomain.com, anyword.mydomain.com.
Or, on our randomized free subdomain. Example: 963.apps.danian.cloud
If you wish to use a custom domain/subdomain, select that option when ordering your app (or notify us later). We will send you the required DNS records and if needed, our tech team will modify them for you.
21 datacenter locations across six continents. You choose the region at provisioning. Application data sits in the region you choose; pick whichever is closest to your users or matches your data-residency preference.
Yes. Request a region migration from the dashboard and we run the move in the background. The system emails you when the migration completes; total transfer time depends on data volume but typical instances finish in a few hours. There is no extra charge for a region change.
Yes. Full data export is available at any time, in a portable format you can bring to any infrastructure.
Yes — via either CSV export with the osTicket import tools, or a third-party migration service like Help Desk Migration that handles the mapping. Custom fields and SLA history typically need some manual reconciliation.
Same pattern as Zendesk — third-party migration tools cover both. Tickets, attachments, contacts, and historical replies typically come across cleanly. Knowledge-base articles migrate separately. Plan a maintenance window because cutover requires repointing your support mailbox MX or forwarding rules.

03

Billing, support, and platform

€9 covers everything we do for that app: hardware in the region you choose, daily off-site backups with one-click restore, automatic security patches and version upgrades, 24/7 monitoring, SSL and firewall, and engineering support on Email/LiveChat. There are no setup fees or hidden line items. For more info see our Pricing page.
If you decide to continue, we charge €9/app/month from day 8. If you don't, the trial ends and you can export your data. No card is required for the trial, and we never auto-charge you without explicit consent.
No. The €9/month is flat regardless of how many users log into your app. Add 5 users or 50; the price doesn't change.
24/7 Live chat and email support, both staffed by engineers who run the systems. We handle DNS configuration, SMTP setup, app integrations, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and migration help. Response time is typically under an hour. There is no tier system — every customer gets the same support.
Yes. Cancel from the dashboard. We don't charge a cancellation fee, we don't lock data, and we will export your data to you on request before deletion. data to you on request before deletion.
Every customer instance is backed up daily to a separate region from the primary. We test restores. You can request a restore at any backup point within the retention window — usually 7 days for daily backups.
Your application data sits in the region you choose at provisioning — 21 datacenter locations across six continents. Account-level data (billing, account email, support ticket history) is processed centrally. Application data region is picked by you, per app.
99.9% uptime SLA on every app, every tenant. Service credits are documented at danian.co/service-level-agreement. The status page is located at status.danian.co.
When your tenant approaches the resource ceiling — the base tier holds 1 vCPU/RAM, 30 GB storage — we notify you. Resource upgrades happen with your explicit consent; we will not upgrade your tenant or charge you without it.
We wait. We don't suspend the app or delete your data on the first failed charge. We email you, you fix the card on file, and we continue.
Invoices can be downloaded from the billing dashboard in PDF the day each charge succeeds. EU VAT is added where applicable and the VAT-reverse-charge regime applies for VAT-registered businesses with a valid number.
150+ open-source apps across automation, team chat, file sync, analytics, AI, password management, email marketing, dev tools, project management, smart home, CMS, and federated social. See the full catalog →
Yes. Every instance comes with a web-based terminal and a file manager in your DANIAN management dashboard. Useful for managing your data and customizations.
Resources scale with your usage. If your app needs more vCPU, RAM, or storage, we add it — and we ask first before any change to your plan. €9 is the floor; resource-heavy workloads may price higher, but you'll always know in advance.
Yes. We have both a Partner program and an Affiliate program available. Anybody can sign up.
No contract. No minimum commitment. Cancel anytime from the dashboard with one click. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card. After the trial converts to paid, you can still cancel at any month without notice or penalty.

DEPLOY IN YOUR REGION

21 datacenter locations on six continents

Pick the region closest to your users.

United States, Germany, Finland, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Malaysia, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Chile, South Africa and more coming soon

Global Reach Map

Try managed osTicket for 7 days

No card. Cancel from the dashboard.