Crisp
France
EU
Crisp is a customer messaging platform designed to help businesses communicate with their customers in real-time. It offers a suite of tools for live chat, email, and social media integration, making it...
European Alternatives to Zendesk
GLPI
France
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable
GLPI is an open source IT asset management, helpdesk and service desk system. It is written in PHP and licensed under the GPL v3. The project started in 2003 under the association...
LiveAgent
Slovak Republic
EU
LiveAgent is a help desk and live chat software from Quality Unit, s.r.o., a company based in Bratislava, Slovakia. Quality Unit was founded in 2004 by the brothers Viktor and Andrej Zeman,...
OTOBO
Germany
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable
OTOBO is an open source service management platform from Rother OSS GmbH, based in Leiblfing, Germany. It started in 2020 as a fork of the OTRS Community Edition after OTRS AG announced...
TOPdesk
Netherlands
EU
TOPdesk is a Dutch service management software company from Delft. Frank Droogsma and Wolter Smit started developing it in 1993 in an attic in Delft while working at an IT services firm,...
Trengo
Netherlands
EU
Trengo is a customer engagement platform from Utrecht in the Netherlands, founded in 2017. According to its About page it has more than 1,500 customers and over 100 employees, and it raised...
Zammad
Germany
EU
Open Source
Self-Hostable
Zammad is an open source helpdesk and ticketing system developed by Zammad GmbH in Berlin. The company was founded in 2014 by Martin Edenhofer, who had previously worked on the OTRS ticket...
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Submit SuggestionEuropean alternatives to Zendesk include Zammad and OTOBO from Germany, LiveAgent from Slovakia, Trengo from the Netherlands, Crisp from France and, for IT service management, GLPI and TOPdesk. Zendesk was founded in 2007 in Copenhagen by Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl and Alexander Aghassipour. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, and since 2022 it has been privately held after a take-private by Hellman & Friedman and Permira for about 10.2 billion US dollars. Its products include Support, Sell and the Suite.
Why teams look for a Zendesk alternative
Zendesk is a US-headquartered commercial platform, and its owners are private equity funds. Teams that need an open source ticket system, hosting on their own server or a vendor in Europe have a number of options here. The tools differ in size, so the choice depends on whether the main need is customer support over chat and email or internal IT requests.
The European options compared
| Tool | Country | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Zammad | Germany | Open source ticket system with email, chat, phone and social channels |
| OTOBO | Germany | Open source service management, fork of OTRS |
| LiveAgent | Slovakia | Help desk with live chat and knowledge base |
| Trengo | Netherlands | Shared inbox with WhatsApp, email and AI agents |
| Crisp | France | Messaging platform with shared inbox and knowledge base |
| GLPI | France | Open source IT helpdesk and asset management |
| TOPdesk | Netherlands | IT and enterprise service management |
Where the gaps are
No European product matches the size of Zendesk's app marketplace, and Zendesk's all-in-one suite with sales tools has no direct counterpart in this list. Zammad is the closest in function for ticket-based support, and Crisp and Trengo come closest for chat-led teams. Users of the chat platform Intercom can read the page on European alternatives to Intercom as well.
Switching checklist
- Export tickets, customers and help center articles.
- Rebuild triggers, automations and macros as rules in the new tool.
- Check hosting location, the data processing agreement and which channels are supported.