An open-source support inbox, ticketing and lightweight CRM you install from npm. It runs in your Next.js app, on your Postgres, behind your login.
helpdesk schema in yoursWidget, email and CRM, inside the app your team already signs in to.
Kofi Mensah · Rechnung als PDF auf Deutsch?
Every conversation in one queue, with a reference like ACME-1042, a priority and a reminder email before anyone waits too long. Try j and k.
Recreated from <HelpdeskAdmin /> with its real labels and demo data, themed through --helpdesk-* custom properties.
One route handler, one React component, one widget. Your session decides who is a customer and who is on the team.
// app/layout.tsx
import { HelpdeskWidget } from 'better-helpdesk/widget';
export default function Layout({ children }) {
return <>{children}<HelpdeskWidget inbox="support" /></>;
}One web component, themed with your CSS variables. The customer sees the page, browser and last error it attaches, and can untick any of it.
We read every message and usually reply within two working days.
Sized for any team answering customers. Every colleague can be an agent at no extra cost.
Support and sales side by side, priorities, tags, canned replies, snooze, keyboard navigation and a reminder email before anyone waits too long.
Reminder sent to Jonas · ACME-1036 has waited 26 hours
Out through your sender. In by webhook from any relay, verified against DKIM and threaded by reference.
Your model, through one adapter, suggests type, priority and a reply. A person reads it and sends it.
Contacts and companies from your app's own users, lead and deal stages you define, custom fields.
Leave one out and that feature stays off.
Visitors, your team, your mail relay and your scheduler each get one route group under your basePath.
widget/*The widget, as a React component or widget.js on any site you own.
agent/*Open only when your identify says isAgent.
inboundPosts each raw email with a bearer secret.
jobsReminders, retention and queued work, in process or over HTTP.
Stores no passwords and no sessions. Mutations are refused from any origin you haven't allowed. Inbound mail is checked against DKIM and marked verified or not. Identity tokens are signed and expire. Four runtime dependencies: drizzle-orm, zod, mailparser, mailauth.
The engineer who reads one thread a week and the founder who checks in on Mondays are agents too.
List prices per agent per month on monthly billing, not annual, as published by each vendor in October 2026. Excludes add-ons, usage-based AI fees and discounts. Better Helpdesk costs nothing to license; you pay for hosting you already run and the engineering time to integrate and maintain it.
Hosted helpdesks keep your data and charge per seat. Self-hosted ones are a second app to run. This one is neither.
| Aspect | Better Helpdesk | Intercom, Zendesk | Chatwoot, Libredesk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs | inside your Next.js app | on the vendor's servers | as a separate app you operate |
| Customer data | your Postgres | the vendor's database | its own database |
| Sign-in | your existing session | separate agent accounts | separate agent accounts |
| Look and feel | your CSS custom properties | vendor theming | vendor theming |
| Cost | MIT, free | per seat, per month | free, plus the hosting |
v0.3.0, first published on 28 September 2026. Nothing merges until it passes every check below, and the design partners about to run it in production decide what ships next.
tsc --noEmitReleases publish to npm with provenance.
Read the changelogBetter Helpdesk is MIT and has no paid features. Sponsorship pays for the hours that go into fixes, tests and documentation.
This form runs on Better Helpdesk: your story goes straight into our inbox. How we handle it.
We're quietly exploring a managed standby that keeps your widget and inbox reachable while your app is down, then hands everything back to your Postgres. Join the private list to hear about it first and help decide what it becomes.
Not built yet. The open-source package will never depend on it. No newsletter, only news about this. Privacy.
It's MIT and lives in your repository and your Postgres, so your helpdesk keeps running and you can fork it. The schema is plain SQL in migrations/, and nothing calls home.
There is no importer yet. Today it fits teams starting fresh or willing to open a new inbox.
The handler is a plain function from Request to Response, so any server with that shape can mount it. Next.js is the one the examples and CI cover.
No. Here an agent is a person on your support team. AI only suggests a triage or drafts a reply, and a person decides what is sent.
MIT. Use it commercially, change it, ship it inside your product. There are no paid features in the package.
Yes. The launcher in the corner and the supporter form both write into this site's own helpdesk schema, and we answer from <HelpdeskAdmin />.