3 Best Shared Inbox Tools (2024)

A shared mailbox is the type of mailbox which multiple users can use to send and read emails from the same email address. It does not require users to set up separate usernames and passwords like regular mailboxes. A shared mailbox can be used by more than one user at the same time. Shared mailboxes have proved time and again to be of utmost value for teams as they act as a useful tool for collaboration between them. Through a shared mailbox, collaboration and interaction between team members becomes easier. Not only a shared mailbox is used for sending and viewing emails but it has much to offer. A shared mailbox also acts as a common calendar and can be used to create tasks, and schedules. It allows team members to access and view the schedules, work shifts and vacations. To use a shared inbox, permission is granted to users that determine if the user can only view emails and calendar items or can also send emails as the owner and edit or delete them.

How is a Shared Inbox Different than a regular one?

A shared mailbox allows multiple users to view and respond to emails without the need of setting up usernames and passwords. While a regular user inbox can only be used by one user and a username and password is required in order to access that inbox. However, multiple users can use the shared inbox with the same email address. For example if the company’s email address is abcd@yourdomain.com, multiple users can access the inbox with the same email without the password.

Benefits of a shared inbox:

1. Effective collaboration between teams
A shared inbox tool provides effective collaboration between teams. Before shared inboxes, team members used to forward emails to each other, but with the help of shared inbox, the interactions and collaboration has become hassle free.

2. Transparency and monitoring
With shared inboxes, emails or conversation can be monitored easily. The conversations are visible to every team members using the shared inbox and can be assigned to the desired team members.

3. Managing the workload
Shared mailboxes make it easier to tend to the large number of emails or queries by customers. Many businesses use it to enhance their customer support. Using shared inboxes, teams can not only collaborate effectively but can also make interactions with customers easier and faster.

There are many shared inbox tools available in the market having different features that one can choose according to their level of need. In this article we will discuss the three best shared mailbox tools of 2024 that can be of great help if you are looking for ways to manage the stream of emails.

1. FreeScout

If you are looking for a light-weight, powerful and reliable shared mailbox tool, then Free Scout is the best option for you. Free Scout is the ultimate clone of Help Scout. With Free Scout, you can enjoy Help Scout and Zendesk for absolutely free and you will not have to compromise on your privacy. It is based on PHP/MySQL and can also be used on a shared hosting.

Free Scout is a free alternative to Help Scout. It is the best shared mailbox for people who do not want to spend money on a shared inbox tool. Free Scout is having all the features that Help Scout and Zendesk offer. Its like using Help Scout for free. It is easier to install and set up and offers many helpful features like, push notifications, auto replies, merging conversations, collision detection, open tracking, phone conversations and much more. You can use Free Scout to send conversations to multiple recipients at once, and easily edit and delete the emails. Free Scout also provides chat widget for websites.  Free Scout is a multi-lingual platform and provide support in various language i.e. English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Russian, Slovak, Croatian, Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Korean, Swedish, Japanese and Persian.
It is help desk type application that is mobile friendly. It provides many useful modules that you can choose to make your experience more effective.

Free Scout is a web-based platform that enables you to manage your shared mailbox. You can create an account and start using the tool right away. It has a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. The dashboard displays all the conversations in the shared mailbox, and you can filter them by status, agent, or conversation type.

2. Helpwise

Helpwise is a useful shared inbox for all of your customer support needs. Whether you’re looking for a simple way to manage customer queries from one central place, or if you need a more sophisticated solution with automated workflows, Helpwise is perfect for you.

Helpwise could be a team inbox for support groups to answer client queries across multiple channels. Helpwise offers team inboxes for email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Live Chat with the exception of shared team inboxes. Helpwise is easy-to-use and have a user-friendly interface. To use a helpdesk, password is not required at all. Multiple users can use Helpwise without the need of a separate password or email address. Helpwise is mainly used for interactions with customers. It has made it very easy to interact with customs and answer their queries and provide them support in many ways. With Helpwise you can assign the conversations to the desired members of team, track the conversations the team members are having and also cave replies to answer queries quickly. Helpwise offers chat widget, email/help desk, forum and knowledge base.

If you are a fast growing business and receive hundreds of mails every day, Helpwise makes it easier to distribute the workload between team members, now you can easily distribute conversations to all your team members and distribute workload effectively. Overall, it is an amazing app to manage all the team mails on various platforms.

3. Missive

Missive is a project management tool that has been designed to help teams communicate more efficiently. The app’s interface is very minimalistic, and it’s been made to be as intuitive as possible. Missive is a blend of a live chat, a shared inbox, and project management software. You can also manage social media messages, though not all of them will be available at once.
Missive has been designed to be used by teams of all sizes, from small groups of two or three people to large companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. Teams can use the app in different ways: they can use it as a live chat tool for general communication; they can use it to share files with each other; they can use it for project management; or they can use it for social media management. The app has been built from the ground up with security in mind. When using Missive, two types of teams can be created:

• Active Members: They receive notifications for new messages and can view conversations in team inbox’s mailbox and team inbox.
• Observers: Overseers do not receive notification of the messages received and they can see the conversations in the team inbox only. This type of team is perfect for the managers so that they can monitor the conversations and will not be flooded with the hundreds of notifications.

This app allows managers to assign conversations to team and also monitor it.

CONCLUSION

We do hope our review will help you to choose between various shared inbox solutions and boost your customer support efficiency.

7 Best Open Source Live Chat Solutions

Sooner or later many of companies and organizations are comping to the point when they need a live chat on the website, as it’s very convenient for customers. And luckily there are quite a lot of professional open source live chats which you can host yourself and have full control over data. It makes open source chats a really nice solution for businesses which do not want to pay to services or don’t need all the extra features coming with commercial chats. To achieve full control over conversation you have to be running your chat solution yourself.

So let’s see what open source live web chats are available today.

1. FreeScout Live Chat

Technology: PHP
Live Demo: https://freescout.net/chat-demo/

In our review this is the only open source live chat which is built with PHP. It means it can be installed on the most of today’s shared hustings. The chat solution is pretty much mature. It is fast and lightweight. The chat can be easily embedded into your website with just few lines of HTML-code. The position of the chat on the page, colors and language – all can be customized. This chat is the part of the free FreeScout helpdesk, so all the messages written by visitors in the chat on the website go to the helpdesk and can be processed by your customer support agents. You can require visitors to fill their email and name before writing to you or just let them message you anonymously.

Inside FreeScout you can connect live chat to each mailbox / department in your company and incoming messages will be directed straight to the corresponding support team. FreeScout Live Chat also allows to set Chat Operating Hours – if a customer opens live chat outside of chat operating hours he/she will see a Contact Form instead of a chat. Both your support team and customers will enjoy using the FreeScout as a live support tool.

2. Rocket.Chat

Technology: JavaScript

Rocket.Chat is built with JavaScript. It has about 34K stars on GitHub. It allows you to build your own private chat server. According to developers Rocket.Chat is the communications platform that puts data protection first. Rocket.Chat apparently was inspired by Slack and Mattermost. It looks and works pretty much like Slack. If you have not used chat software before finding your way around Rocket.Chat may be a little daunting.

It provides Channels, Direct Messages and Private Groups. After installing chat widget on the website you can communicate with your customers in real-time. Incoming chat messages are routed directly into the channel specified for customer support. The backend of the Rocket.Chat can be white labeled in order to look more like your own company’s chat.

3. Chatwoot

Technology: Ruby

Chatwoot is an open-source as well as cloud-based chat tool. It is built with Ruby and a little heavy, so you may need to be a bit familiar with Ruby to install it yourself. Chatwoot was made publicly available as an open source chat on GitHub back in 2019. It allows to manage all of your customer conversation channels from one place. The chat widget supports multiple languages and allows attachments. This tool has most of the basic features you would need in a live chat, however there is no chatbot available at the moment. Generally it is a good chat solution suitable for all types of companies, community websites, gaming websites, and NGO portals.

4. Tinode Web Chat

Technology: Go

Tinode is the free unlimited instant messaging platform and the web chat built in pure Go. Tinode chat helps companies around the world to provide high-quality chat experience to the customers. It uses web socket communication technology. Tinode can’t be installed on a website, it’s designed mostly for person-to-person communication.

5. Live Helper Chat

Technology: PHP + Python
Live Demo: https://livehelperchat.com/demo-12c.html

Live Helper Chat is the simple live chat support tool for your website. It’s chat widget on the website looks a bit primitive and old-fashioned, but it does what it’s supposed to do – allows customers contact your support. Live Helper Chat boasts such features as web and mobile apps, Voice & Video & ScreenShare, Telegram support, Twilio (WhatsApp), Facebook messenger including building a bot. It also has a bunch of integrations with other chats systems and messaging platforms.

6. Papercups

Technology: Elixir
Live Demo: https://app.papercups.io/demo

Papercups provides a customizable chat widget you can embed on your website to talk to your customers. Papercups allows you to streamline communication with your customers. Developers position their web chat as an open-source alternative to Intercom, Drift, and Zendesk. According to the disclaimer on the GitHub this chat solution is currently in a Maintenance Mode, i.e. there won’t be any major new features in the near future, the Team accepts pull requests and conduct major bug fixes.

Some of it’s features: reply from email, reply from SMS (via Twillio), conversation management, markdown and emoji support.

7. Rasa Webchat

Technology: JavaScript

Rasa is the web chat for Rasa and Botfront platformts. It allows to add a virtual assistant on any website. It uses Apache-2.0 license. Some of it’s features: quick replies, carousels, persistent sessions, typing indications, smart delay between messages. It also can be easily imported as a script tag or as a React Component. Rasa chat solution is highly extendable and fully customizable, it also provides a large number of configuration parameters allowing to adjust every single aspect of the chat widget. So it will satisfy most of your needs and requirements. Highly recommended chat tool.

CONCLUSION

The chat on your website tells a lot about your business to the customer, it creates the first impression about you. If your web chat is not effective or clumsy you may loose potential customers. That’s why it’s important to carefully choose the live chat for your company. So we wish you to make the right choice and delight your customers with the top-level customer support!

5 Best Open Source Helpdesk Systems 2023 (FREE)

In the old days customer support was provided mostly by email or by phone. But today customers prefer to contact businesses via convenient for them channels like Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. Luckily there are open source helpdesk solutions allowing to serve in one place all customer’s requests received via different channels.

Most businesses and organizations are usually starting from cloud-based helpdesk solutions as it’s easy to start – all you need to do is to a pay monthly fee. But as your company grows your expenses on the ticketing system are also growing as SaaS support systems are usually charging a per-support-agent or per-ticket basis. And some point many are coming to the point where it becomes obvious that using an open source helpdesk on your own server will be much cheaper and more secure than using online helpdesk software.

So let’s see what are the best open source helpdesks to use in 2023.

1. FreeScout

Technology: PHP
GitHub: https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout

Developers are describing FreeScout as the super lightweight free open source help desk and shared inbox. We’ve installed it and yes – it is really lightweight (it’s distribution kit is just 10 MB), and it can be used even on a shared hosting. All you need to do to start using it is to connect it to your email address and all incoming emails will be turning into support tickets. The interface of the helpdesk is very slick and neat, it’s design and usability is simply the best among all the systems we’ve checked. Helpdesk provides free mobile apps for iOS and Android. It also has an excellent collection of extensions allowing you to turn it into top level support solution and satisfy most of your needs:  WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram integration, LDAP, Knowledge Base, CRM, End-User Portal with the form for submitting tickets, Kanban mode, Live Chat widget for the website, etc. Besides you can also create your own modules – they work just like plugins in WordPress, simple and effective.

This helpdesk tool gave us very good impression. It’s fast and not bloated or overloaded with features which you never use. Support agents enjoyed using it, it’s very easy to switch to it and start processing tickets. Even visually impaired support agents are able to use it! The only thing we were missing is the ability to split one ticket into two as sometimes it’s really needed, but hopefully FreeScout Team with time will add this feature too.

2. OSTicket

Technology: PHP
GitHub: https://github.com/osTicket/osTicket

OSTicket allows to scale and streamline your customer service and as a result improve your customer’s experience. OSTicket is widely-used open source support ticket system. It’s one of the oldest – it’s first release on GitHub was in 2013. The average distribution kit’s size is 50 MB. The helpdesk has a bit old-fashioned interface, but it does what it’s supposed to do – allows to process support requests. Customers are able to create tickets via your website, email or phone. Agents can be assigned to different departments and have different roles. OSTicket provides a standard set of helpdesk features: custom fields, auto-responder, agent collision avoidance, SLA, customer portal and also allows to add tasks to tickets. OSTicket collects inquires via email or web form. It does not provide official mobile apps, only 3rd party apps are available.

Our overall impression of this tool was quite good. If you need an open source helpdesk and you are not focused on a super modern design and UI – OSTicket is your choice.

3. Faveo

Technology: PHP
GitHub: https://github.com/ladybirdweb/faveo-helpdesk

Faveo developers describe it as a customizable, omni-channel open source helpdesk software built on Laravel framework. There are different editions of the helpdesk: Community Edition, Freelancer, Pro Edition and Service Desk. We’ve tried to check online demo but it just showed us an empty page. The open source Community Edition version distribution kit is quite heavy – about 95 MB. Apparently Faveo Team is trying to maintain free and paid versions of the helpdesk, but it looks like the free open source version is not very actively maintained – the last release was in 2021. GitHub repo has about 4,150 open issues which is quite a lot. We also found it a bit difficult to navigate in Faveo’s documentation, but finally we’ve managed to install it on Ubuntu with Nginx.

While checking it there a bit of a feeling of “clumsiness”. The helpdesk has a lot of options, and sometimes it’s not very easy to find what you need. It has approval workflows, priorities & ticket types, daily reports, etc. Free open source version of the helpdesk does not allow to use it in the mobile app. So the free edition of the helpdesk lives it’s own life while the paid version – it’s own.

4. UVdesk

Technology: PHP
GitHub: https://github.com/uvdesk/community-skeleton

UVdesk is the multichannel helpdesk system for ecommerce, marketplace. UVdesk Team believes that in order to deliver the best customer service you don’t need a big or complicated help desk. Some of the features: workflows, saved replies, tags, email integration. Releases appear not very often: 2-3 times a year. In some aspects this open source ticketing system mimics the previous – Faveo helpdesk. UVdesk’s design is not super modern and sometimes looks and feels a bit primitive. The helpdesk probably would have benefitted if some professional designer could do some work on it. Out of the box it does not provide a possibility to separate tickets via departments or mailboxes. We also could not find UVdesk mobile apps.

The positive side of this helpdesk is the ability to connect it to different CMS and eCommerce platforms: Magento, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Odoo CRM, Amazon, Shopify, Joomla, WordPress.

5. Zammad

Technology: Ruby
GitHub: https://github.com/zammad/zammad

Zammad may work as a product / service support system, support for wholesale / retail or as IT service desk. It’s based on many years of experience with ticketing systems – it’s created in 2016 by the developer of the OTRS.

This is the only non-PHP open source helpdesk in our review – it’s using Ruby. Installing it was a bit challenging experience. Some of the features Zammad boasts: autosave for tickets, opening multiple tickets at the same time without having to switch between browser windows, LDAP, ticket templates, etc. It’s interface in many aspects copies Zendesk with all it’s pros and cons. Like for example when you are replying to the ticket you don’t see the customer to whom you are replying which is quite inconvenient. So usability is not the strongest side of Zammad. There are two main ticket types here: phone tickets and email tickets. It may be difficult to use Zammad for multiple businesses as all the tickets are located in one place and there is no way to isolate them from each other. There is an Android app providing basic features, but we could not find an iOS app.

CONCLUSION

That’s it for today. We did not mention it yet but all of the reviewed helpdesks provide a REST API as it’s must have in today’s IT world.

Now you have a good overview of the available free support solutions and can easily choose one for your company as there are many criteria which need to be taken into account. The helpdesk should be convenient and easy to use, flexible and have a good user interface. If your support system is fast and reliable your support agents will be able to provide the best support experience to your customers, and your business will grow and benefit from it.

Best WordPress Helpdesk

WordPress is the most popular PHP website engine in the world and every serious WP project need to prove professional customer support. This is when FreeScout comes!

FreeScout is created on the same principles as a WordPress: simplicity, stability, filters and hooks.

If you are using WooCommerce you can view your customer’s data right in the help desk in teh sidebar.

All you need to do to start providing excellent support is to set up an email address and configure the FreeScout. Also you can embed a neat support for right on your WordPress website in few clicks.

You can install the helpdesk on any shared hosting. It is open source and free, so you will not depend on a third-party service.

Free Self-Hosted Zendesk Alternative

If you have a small business, charity or non-profit organization, your budget may not allow you to pay monthly for Zendesk. Fortunately there is a free self-hosted alternative to Zendesk – FreeScout. It is built with PHP and can be easily installed and configured by a non-programmer.

Same as in Zendesk you will have an email integration, flexible ticket management, auto reply, notes, saved replies, satisfaction ratings, open tracking, LDAP integration and much more. And all this for free.

Unline Zendesk your organization data will be only yours, you don’t have to give your privacy.

FreeScout interface is way more user-friendly than Zendesk, every control element is there where it should be. When replying to the ticket, you always see full information about the customer, ticket status and assignee. Interface is intuitive. Zendesk is just staffed with all kinds of buttons and elements, so you get lost. Just try to open a ticket in Zendesk and return to the ticket list. There is no way you can find a “Back” button.

In Zendesk number of folders in just ridiculous:

While in FreeScout there are just few of them beautifully aligned:

In Zendesk you can not “star” a customer ticket. In our app you can do it using “starred conversations” feature. It is very convenient and powerful feature.

Conversation page is the most importan in whole support system. It has to be neat and clean. But just take a look an Zendesk ticket screen:

It looks like a mess with numerous buttons, tabs and fields. And you don’t know what will happen when you click this or that button. Buttons looks like tabs and tabs look like buttons.

Thus if you need a simle yet powerfull customer support system to replace Zendesk, take a look at FreeScout. It is free and open source, no per user charges, not monthly/annually charges. You can add as many mailboxes and users as you need and event provide support for multiple companies or organizations.

Now you can finally say “Bye-bye to Zendesk”