Zammad — Open-source (AGPLv3) helpdesk and ticketing platform, self-hosted for free or hosted from 9 euros/agent/month.
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Best for: organizations wanting a fully-featured, self-hostable open-source helpdesk, or a GDPR-compliant hosted alternative to Zendesk
Pricing: Free to self-host under AGPLv3; hosted plans from 9 EUR/agent/month billed monthly (7 EUR annually).
- Zammad is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 and free to self-host from its GitHub source.
- Hosted Starter plan costs 9 EUR/agent/month billed monthly (7 EUR annually) for up to 5 agents.
- Hosted Plus plan costs 27 EUR/agent/month billed monthly (25 EUR annually) with unlimited agents and phone support.
- Zammad is used by over 2,000 organizations and 50,000+ users, including Amnesty International and Nextcloud.
- Zammad holds a 4.6/5 rating from 7 reviews on Capterra.
Limitations: AI features on hosted plans are billed separately per interaction.; Phone support requires the top-tier, unlimited-agent Plus plan.; Self-hosting requires managing your own server infrastructure and updates.
Top alternatives: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, osTicket, Chatwoot — full list
What is Zammad?
Zammad is an open-source helpdesk platform, released under the GNU AGPLv3 license, that centralizes customer support tickets from email, web forms, SMS, and (on higher tiers) chat, Telegram, Facebook, and WhatsApp into a single agent interface. The AGPLv3 source is publicly available on GitHub, and organizations can self-host it at no licensing cost, an option larger open-source-minded users like Nextcloud have taken. Zammad also runs a Germany-hosted SaaS offering with GDPR-oriented positioning, priced per agent per month in euros. The Starter tier (9 euros/agent monthly, 7 euros annually) covers up to 5 agents with email, web form, and SMS channels, macros, triggers, and business hours; Professional (18 euros/agent monthly, 16 euros annually) raises the cap to 35 agents and adds chat, Telegram, SLAs, a knowledge base, and optional AI features billed separately at roughly 0.03 euros per AI interaction; and Plus (27 euros/agent monthly, 25 euros annually) removes the agent cap entirely and adds phone support, Facebook and WhatsApp channels, and GitHub/GitLab integration. For teams that self-host but still want vendor support, Zammad sells response-time-based support contracts separately from the software itself — Business, Enterprise, and Corporation tiers at 2,999 to 9,999 euros per year — rather than gating self-hosted features behind a paywall, which keeps the core self-hosted product fully open.
Zammad is an open-source helpdesk and customer-support ticketing system, licensed under the GNU AGPLv3, used by over 2,000 organizations and 50,000+ users including De'Longhi, Amnesty International, and Nextcloud to manage support across email, web forms, chat, and social channels from one shared inbox. Self-hosting the AGPLv3 codebase from GitHub is free; Zammad also sells GDPR-compliant hosted SaaS plans from its Germany-based cloud starting at 9 euros/agent/month billed monthly (7 euros/agent/month billed annually) for up to 5 agents, scaling to a Plus tier at 27 euros/agent/month (25 euros annually) with unlimited agents and phone support. Self-hosted deployments can also buy paid support contracts starting at 2,999 euros/year for email support with a 6-hour response time. Zammad holds a 4.6/5 rating from 7 reviews on Capterra.
Standout feature: The self-hosted AGPLv3 edition is free with no artificial feature gate, and paid tiers exist only for hosted SaaS convenience or optional vendor support contracts, unlike open-core competitors that lock features behind a paid self-hosted tier.
Biggest weakness: AI features on the hosted plans are billed separately at roughly 0.03 euros per interaction on top of the per-agent subscription, and phone support is reserved for the top Plus tier, an unlimited-agent plan priced well above the entry Starter tier.
Pros
- AGPLv3 source is free to self-host with no feature paywall separating community and paid editions.
- GDPR-compliant hosted SaaS option available for teams that don't want to manage their own infrastructure.
- Wide channel coverage on higher tiers: email, web form, SMS, chat, Telegram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
- Used at scale by organizations like Amnesty International and Nextcloud, evidence of production readiness.
Cons
- AI features are billed per interaction (~0.03 EUR each) on top of the per-agent subscription on hosted plans.
- Phone support requires the top Plus tier, an unlimited-agent plan priced above the Starter tier's per-agent cost.
- Self-hosting requires the organization to manage its own server infrastructure and updates.
- Small review base (7 on Capterra) makes broad sentiment harder to judge than for larger helpdesk vendors.
Zammad pricing
Free · verified from the vendor's pricing page
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted (AGPLv3) | Free | Free to self-host from the GitHub source; paid support contracts available separately (2,999-9,999 EUR/year) but not required to use the software. |
| Hosted Starter | Custom | 9 EUR/agent/month billed monthly, 7 EUR/agent/month billed annually; up to 5 agents; email, web form, SMS channels. |
| Hosted Professional | Custom | 18 EUR/agent/month billed monthly, 16 EUR/agent/month billed annually; up to 35 agents; adds chat, Telegram, SLAs, knowledge base, optional AI at ~0.03 EUR/interaction. |
| Hosted Plus | Custom | 27 EUR/agent/month billed monthly, 25 EUR/agent/month billed annually; unlimited agents; adds phone support, Facebook/WhatsApp, GitHub/GitLab integration. |
What reviewers say
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