Znuny

What Znuny does

Znuny continues the ((OTRS)) Community Edition. OTRS declared that edition end of life at the end of December 2020, and Znuny picked it up from version 6.0.30 with two aims: to keep a stable, maintained version of the ticket system and to add new features. For former OTRS users it is the direct upgrade path.

It is a classic queue-based ticket system that also serves as an IT service desk. Tickets arrive by email, through phone calls logged with CTI and customer search, from a customer self-service portal, or through REST and SOAP web services and monitoring tools. They are organized by queue, type, state and priority, with an owner and a responsible agent. A service catalog with SLAs sets targets for first response, update and solution time, and escalations trigger notifications against working-time calendars and time zones.

Processes and automation

Znuny is built for structured work. Process management lets you model your own multi-step workflows as process tickets, and web services can be called from within a process. Email filters sort incoming mail, event-based notifications inform the right people, and templates and automatic responses speed up replies. Dynamic fields add your own data to tickets, customers and companies. The statistics module produces dashboards and scheduled reports with export to Excel, PDF, CSV and images.

Security features include PGP and S/MIME encryption and signing, two-factor authentication, LDAP integration and, since version 7.3, built-in SAML 2.0 login for agents and customers. Znuny-LLM, a free open source add-on announced in June 2026 for version 7.3 and later, adds ticket classification, summaries and FAQ suggestions using Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so a self-hosted model can be used.

Self-hosting Znuny

Znuny is written in Perl and runs on Linux, with Debian or Red Hat-based systems preferred. It needs Perl 5.16 or later, Apache with mod_perl (recommended), and MySQL 8, MariaDB 10.3, PostgreSQL 12 or Oracle 19c or later. RPM packages are available for RHEL-based systems, and other distributions install from the source tarball plus Perl modules from the distribution or CPAN. Znuny’s cron jobs and background daemon must run. Neither the README nor the install guide documents an official container image.

Two release lines are maintained: an LTS line (6.5) that receives bug and security fixes, and a feature line (7.x). The FAQ knowledge base comes as a separate free package. The code is under GPL-3.0, and most of the work is funded by Znuny GmbH in Berlin.

Hosted version

Znuny GmbH sells managed hosting on dedicated systems, with a test system and a support subscription included and no per-user pricing. No free plan or trial is listed. The company also offers support, consulting, training and custom development.

Limitations

Installation is manual and involves a Perl stack with many modules. There is no website live chat or social messaging in the core, and messenger or SMS channels need add-ons. Some Znuny GmbH add-ons are only available with a paid support contract. The interface and configuration show their OTRS heritage and take time to learn.

Who it suits

Znuny suits organizations that ran OTRS Community Edition, and teams that need detailed SLAs, processes and permissions for customer support or IT service management. It fits best where someone is comfortable running a Perl application on Linux, or where managed hosting from the maintainers is an option.