Libredesk

What is Libredesk?

Libredesk is an open source, self-hosted customer support desk that unifies live chat, email, and a help center in one omnichannel inbox. It ships as a single Go binary you run on your own server, positioning it as a self-hosted alternative to Zendesk and Intercom. Every feature is included — there are no paid tiers.

What is Libredesk best for?

Libredesk fits teams that want a full-featured help desk without per-agent SaaS fees or vendor lock-in, and who prefer running support on their own infrastructure for data control. Because it’s a single binary backed by PostgreSQL and Redis, it suits small-to-mid support teams and self-hosters who want one place for chat, email, and knowledge-base tickets.

What can Libredesk do?

• Omnichannel inbox — live chat and email conversations land in one shared workspace.
• Embeddable live chat widget with real-time messaging for your website.
• Help center — a searchable, multi-language knowledge base of collections and articles.
• AI assistant and agent copilot (beta) — auto-answers grounded in your knowledge base, plus reply drafting and conversation summaries, with human handoff.
• Automations that tag, assign, and route conversations by defined conditions.
• SLA tracking, CSAT surveys, and analytics for response and resolution times.
• Role-based access control, custom attributes, macros, snoozing, and custom statuses.
• SSO logins (Google, Microsoft, OIDC) plus HTTP/JSON APIs and webhooks.

Where does Libredesk fall short?

Its AI assistant and agent copilot are still marked beta, so teams leaning heavily on AI deflection should test carefully before relying on it. Channel coverage is narrower than incumbents: it centers on live chat and email, and WhatsApp is listed as “coming soon” rather than shipping, so social and messaging-app support is thinner than Zendesk or Chatwoot. It also requires both PostgreSQL and Redis, a heavier baseline than a single-database help desk like FreeScout.

Is Libredesk free?

Yes — Libredesk is fully free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with every feature included and no paid tiers or open-core gating. Your only costs are the server and services you run it on. Note that AGPL-3.0 requires you to release source for any modified version you offer to users over a network.

What does Libredesk replace?

Libredesk stands in for hosted support suites: Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, and Help Scout. Instead of paying per agent each month, you self-host the desk and keep customer conversation data on your own infrastructure.

FAQ

Is Libredesk open source? Yes. Libredesk is released under the AGPL-3.0 license, with the backend in Go and the frontend in Vue 3. All features are in the open source project — there is no separate paid edition.

Can I self-host Libredesk for free? Yes. It runs as a single binary (or via Docker) on Linux, macOS, Windows, and BSD, and there are no license fees. You only pay for the server plus the PostgreSQL and Redis it needs.

Is Libredesk a good Zendesk alternative? For teams focused on live chat, email, and a help center, yes — it covers the core help-desk workflow (SLAs, automations, CSAT, RBAC) at no per-agent cost. Zendesk still leads on breadth of channels and mature integrations.

What do I need to run Libredesk? A server with the Libredesk binary (or Docker), a PostgreSQL database, and Redis, configured through a TOML file. A one-click Railway deploy is also available.