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A lightweight Help Scout-style shared inbox written in PHP on Laravel: mailboxes fetched over IMAP, conversations, assignments, internal notes, collision detection and mobile apps, with unlimited agents and mailboxes. The core is AGPL-3.0; tags, saved replies, workflows, a knowledge base, live chat, WhatsApp and SSO are paid modules (also AGPL-3.0, with lifetime per-instance licences).
Pick FreeScout when support is a few shared mailboxes and you want the Help Scout way of working on a small server: an AGPL-3.0 PHP (Laravel) app on MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, with IMAP and POP3 fetching, OAuth for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, unlimited agents and mailboxes, collision detection, internal notes and official Android and iOS apps. Upstream lists no minimum CPU or RAM and says it runs on shared hosting; our 1 GB floor is an estimate for PHP-FPM, Nginx and MariaDB on one box. Tags, saved replies, workflows, a knowledge base, live chat, 2FA, SSO and the messaging integrations are paid modules. If you need a full helpdesk with SLAs and time accounting for free, Zammad is the catalog's alternative; for chat-first support, Chatwoot.
What you need
Any VPS with at least 1024 MB of RAM
A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
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Install
Run these commands on your server:
# FreeScout — upstream's interactive installer for Ubuntu/Debian (wiki: Installation-Guide): installs Nginx, MariaDB/MySQL, PHP, FreeScout, optional Let's Encrypt and the cron job# point a domain at the server first; the script asks for it and for the install directorysudo apt install wgetwget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/dist/tools/install.shchmod u+x install.shsudo ./install.sh# it installs the latest release from the dist branch; finish in the browser at https://YOUR_DOMAIN/install with the database password it prints
FreeScout's installation guide and module store spell out what the free core leaves to you:
non-negotiableMuch of what a helpdesk usually includes is sold as official modules with lifetime licences for a single instance: tags, saved replies, workflows, satisfaction ratings, time tracking, reports, teams, custom fields, a knowledge base, an end-user portal, live chat, two-factor authentication, LDAP, SAML SSO and the WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook integrations. The modules are AGPL-3.0 too; budget for the ones you need before comparing costs.
non-negotiableBackground work depends on a cron entry that runs artisan schedule:run every minute as the web-server user; upstream warns not to add --no-interaction, or the queue worker never starts, and running it as another user causes permission errors. The interactive installer sets this cron job up for you.
non-negotiableAvoid PHP 8.1: the installation guide says it has critical bugs in XML/HTML parsing. The console PHP's memory_limit caps the size of attachments FreeScout can fetch from incoming email.
non-negotiableThe installer puts the latest release from the dist branch on a traditional Nginx, MariaDB and PHP server that you patch yourself. Updates run through the web updater or tools/update.sh, and upstream documents an optional cron job for automatic updates. The Docker image the README links to is maintained outside the FreeScout project.
