Frappe Helpdesk

What Frappe Helpdesk does

Frappe Helpdesk is an email ticketing help desk from Frappe Technologies, the company behind ERPNext. Every message to your support address becomes a ticket with an owner and a status. Agents work in a modern Vue interface, and customers get their own portal view where they can raise and follow tickets. According to the README, Frappe built it because the support module in ERPNext, which the company used for its own customers, did not meet its needs.

Tickets can be sorted by team, type and priority, and routed with assignment rules based on priority, issue type or workload, including round robin. SLAs set due times, and the reports show pending and overdue tickets, response times and SLA performance. Saved replies cut down on repeated typing, and a banner tells customers when they write outside working hours.

Knowledge base and integrations

A public knowledge base holds help articles so customers can find answers without writing in. Custom fields, field dependencies and custom actions adapt the ticket form to your process.

Because it is a Frappe app, Helpdesk can be installed on the same site as ERPNext, and customers are synced between the two. Telephony integrations for Twilio and Exotel let agents handle calls, and the Frappe Framework provides a REST API for every record. It can also be installed as a progressive web app, so agents can reply to tickets from a phone.

Self-hosting Frappe Helpdesk

Helpdesk runs on the Frappe Framework, a Python and JavaScript stack with MariaDB, Redis (or Valkey) and Node.js, managed with the bench command-line tool. The documentation offers an easy-install.py script that deploys a production instance with Docker, using the official ghcr.io/frappe/helpdesk image, and says it takes about five minutes. If you already run ERPNext or another Frappe site, you can add Helpdesk with bench get-app helpdesk. The main branch is compatible with Frappe Framework versions 15 and 16.

The license file is the GNU AGPL v3, and the README calls the project fully open source. There is no paid edition of the app.

Hosted version

Frappe Cloud, run by the developers, offers one-click Helpdesk sites with a 14-day free trial. The website says Frappe does not charge per agent: you pay for the hosting plan, and you can move the site to your own server later.

Limitations

Frappe Helpdesk handles email and telephony. The documentation does not describe a live chat widget or social messaging channels. Self-hosting means running the full Frappe and bench stack, which is a commitment if you do not already use it. It is younger than Zammad or osTicket and has less automation and reporting.

Who it suits

Frappe Helpdesk is a natural choice for companies that already run ERPNext or other Frappe apps. It also suits small and mid-sized teams that want a modern, fully open source email help desk, and a hosted option without per-agent pricing.