Built with PHP.
Built for PHP teams.
A professional PHP help desk that runs on your LAMP stack. Not an abandoned open-source project you have to maintain yourself. Supported since 2005.
You need PHP. You also need support.
Open-source PHP help desk tools sound great until they break at 2 AM.
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Abandoned Projects
Last commit: 2 years ago. Community forks with no clear owner.
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Assembly Required
Hours of configuration, plugin hunting, and manual patching before you can open a ticket.
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No Support
When something breaks, you get a forum post from 2019.
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Actively Maintained
Regular releases, security patches, and new features since 2005.
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Productive Day One
Install, connect your mailboxes, and start working. Free onboarding included.
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Real Support
Direct access to the team that built it. 99% customer satisfaction.
Your PHP help desk, running in minutes
Not days. Not weeks. Minutes.
Install
Drop HelpSpot onto your existing LAMP stack. PHP 8.2+, MySQL or SQL Server. Standard server requirements.
Connect
Point HelpSpot at your support mailboxes. Incoming email becomes organized, assigned tickets automatically.
Extend
Write Live Lookup integrations, customize portal templates, connect via the HTTP API, or query the database directly.
Write PHP to connect anything
Live Lookup is what makes HelpSpot more than just PHP help desk software. Write PHP code that pulls data from any source into HelpSpot. When an agent opens a ticket, HelpSpot calls your script and displays the result. Customer details from your CRM, asset info from your CMDB, order history from your database.
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Write PHP to connect any data source
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Active Directory, CRM, ERP, or custom databases
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Data appears inside the ticket in real time
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No synchronization or batch imports needed
Your portal, your PHP
HelpSpot's customer portal is built with standard PHP templates. Edit the HTML, add your CSS, inject dynamic content with PHP. No proprietary template language to learn. If you know PHP, you know how to customize the portal.
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Full HTML and PHP in portal templates
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Match your existing website design
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Custom forms with conditional logic
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Knowledge base with your branding
Your servers. Direct database access.
Run your PHP help desk on your own infrastructure. Connect reporting tools like Tableau or Power BI directly to the database. Build custom dashboards, run SQL queries, and integrate with any system that speaks SQL. No API rate limits, no data export fees.
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Runs on your LAMP or Windows stack
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Direct MySQL or SQL Server access
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Full control behind your firewall
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Same software and price as cloud
HS_Request WHERE
xStatus = 1
Crystal Reports,
or any BI tool
Extend your PHP help desk software
HTTP API
Full CRUD access to tickets, users, categories, and custom fields. Build dashboards, integrations, or entire apps on top of HelpSpot.
Webhooks
Push data to external systems when events happen. Triggered by automation rules with dozens of conditions.
Custom Pages
Build entirely custom portal pages with PHP and HTML. Embed forms, display dynamic content, or create branded experiences.
Zapier
5,000+ app connections with zero code. Connect to Slack, Teams, Salesforce, Jira, and thousands more.
Everything a PHP team needs
See how our PHP based help desk software handles email intake, ticket management, and reporting.
One Owner Per Request
Every email becomes a trackable ticket with exactly one owner—no more "I thought you had it." Connect unlimited mailboxes (Office 365, Gmail, IMAP) and see everything in a unified workspace with full customer history, custom fields, and quick search by ticket ID.
Ready to simplify your support?
Trusted by PHP teams since 2005
From startups to the US Space Force.
"I started my professional career in IT in 1995. Now that we are starting to more fully utilize HelpSpot I must say that it is by far the best help desk tool I have ever evaluated and/or used. We simply could never live without it."
"HelpSpot has been a huge time saver for our IT department. It's the best Helpdesk platform I have ever used in my 15 years in the industry."
"We've integrated HelpSpot with Jira so we can quickly push requests from HelpSpot into Jira for further processing. HelpSpot makes this easy."
"HelpSpot has enabled us to better support our customers. From a small office to a large enterprise, it scales and adapts."
Deploy Your Way
Same price, same features. Choose the deployment that works for you.
Same powerful features and pricing across all hosting options.
US Cloud
CloudUS-East Region
Dedicated AWS infrastructure with 99.9% uptime. Managed updates and automated backups.
EU Cloud
CloudFrankfurt Region
GDPR-compliant hosting. Full data sovereignty with all information isolated within the EU.
Self-Hosted
EnterpriseOn-Premise Infrastructure
Complete control on your own hardware. Ideal for air-gapped networks or strict compliance.
Maximum Control & Data ResidencyBuilt for Scale
HelpSpot has been refined for over 20 years under extreme conditions. Example stats from a longtime customer:
Trusted by the United States Space Force, Northrop Grumman, and the University of Michigan for mission-critical support.
PHP Help Desk FAQs
No. HelpSpot is commercial software with a professional support team. This means you get regular updates, security patches, and direct access to the developers. No abandoned repos, no community forks, no hunting for answers in old forum posts.
HelpSpot requires PHP 8.2 or higher. It runs on any standard LAMP or WAMP stack with MySQL 8.0+ or SQL Server 2019+. Full system requirements are available.
HelpSpot's PHP help desk software uses standard PHP templates for the portal. You can edit HTML, CSS, and PHP directly. Add conditional logic, pull in dynamic data, and match your existing website design. No proprietary template language to learn.
Live Lookup lets you write PHP scripts that pull data from external sources into HelpSpot in real time. When an agent opens a ticket, HelpSpot calls your script with the customer's email and displays the results. Connect to Active Directory, your CRM, ERP, asset management, or any database.
Yes. Self-hosted customers have full SQL access to the HelpSpot database. Connect Tableau, Power BI, Crystal Reports, or any tool that speaks SQL. No API rate limits and no data export fees.
Self-hosted and cloud are the same price. No penalty for wanting to run on your own servers. See our pricing page for current rates.
osTicket is an open-source project with intermittent development and no guaranteed support. HelpSpot is a commercially supported PHP help desk that has been actively developed and maintained since 2005. You get professional support, regular updates, built-in features like automation rules, Live Lookup, SAML SSO, and a knowledge base. No plugins to hunt down and maintain.
Yes. The self-hosted version runs entirely on your infrastructure with no external dependencies. Many government agencies and financial institutions run HelpSpot on air-gapped networks.
The PHP team's choice for over 20 years
Trusted by industry leaders
Your inbox is waiting
to be tamed.
Join the teams who switched from chaos to HelpSpot's essential order. Download on-premise or start in the cloud today.
