Email ticketing system

According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, business leaders expect ticket volumes to increase by 75 percent over the next year. As communication methods evolve and expand, it’s important to have tools to track, manage, and organize customer inquiries seamlessly across channels.

With various communication options available at their fingertips, customers still rely on email to connect with businesses for support. Email ticketing systems can turn emails into tickets and route them to the right place for a fast, convenient customer experience.

Our guide covers everything you need to know about email ticketing systems, including summaries and comparisons of the top solutions. We’ll help you fill in any blanks, so you can pick the right tool for your business.

• What is an email ticketing system?

• A comparison chart of the best email support ticket systems

• The 13 best email ticket systems

• Key features of email ticketing software

• Benefits of an email support system

• How to choose the right email ticket system

• Email ticketing system best practices

• Frequently asked questions

• Try our email ticketing system free

An email ticketing system is a tool that converts customers’ emailed queries into tickets using predefined criteria to sort and distribute the tickets.

When a customer emails an inquiry or request, an email ticketing system takes key information from it and populates the fields of a predefined support ticket. The system then routes that ticket to the best available agent to handle the question or request, based on the rules set by the business.

This kind of ticketing system makes it easy for agents to organize, manage, track, collaborate, and respond to messages in a centralized agent workspace. Support and service teams use email ticketing systems, allowing them to handle a large volume of customer inquiries.

The best email ticketing systems have the capabilities to help your team address customer inquiries. Our chart compares the best email support software so you can pick the right fit for your business.

Take a deep dive into the top email ticketing systems for 2023. Below we provide an overview of each platform, its key features, and pricing tiers.

1. Zendesk

Built specifically for customer experience, Zendesk provides tools that make it easy to deliver excellent customer service.

When a customer sends an email, you can configure Zendesk to reply with an automated email notification, letting the customer know their request was received. Built-in AI-powered routing sends the ticket to the right agent based on criteria like priority, expertise, capacity, or availability.

Zendesk has an agent workspace that centralizes all tickets into a single view, enabling agents to work seamlessly from one interface. The platform highlights conversations that require attention—like high-value customers, escalations, or older tickets—and consolidates the most relevant customer information and surfaces it automatically.

Our intelligent triage feature uses AI to predict customer language, sentiment, and intent when creating a new ticket. This context is included with the ticket and displayed in the context panel in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, so the agent can understand how to approach the interaction. The context panel also surfaces help center articles relevant to the ticket, suggested macros, and email templates that help agents streamline their workflows.

On top of that, advanced reporting and analytics tools help customer service managers keep teams on track. Zendesk features native out-of-the-box reports or customizable drag-and-drop dashboards for a tailored experience.

Zendesk is easy to implement and learn, so support teams can start using it on day one. Plus, you don’t need to set up a mail server, meaning you get immediate access to unlimited email addresses.

Features:

• Email templates

• Email tracking

• Macros for tickets

• Email triggers

• Unified agent workspace for omnichannel support

• Ticket routing, categorization, and tagging for all channels

• Intelligence in the context panel

• Application programming interface (API) and integrations

• Email with unlimited addresses

• Knowledge base management

Pricing:

• Support Team: $19 per agent/month

• Support Professional: $55 per agent/month

• Support Enterprise: $115 per agent/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Start a free trial

View pricing

Request a demo

Take a product tour

Explore all features

Evaluate the ROI of Zendesk

Free trial:

14 days

2. Front

Front is a customer service platform that combines email with help desk functionality. With a shared inbox, your team can manage email, messaging apps, SMS, live chat, and other channels in a single view.

This email ticketing system routes conversations effectively, automatically assigning and tagging reps to handle the issue. Agents can collaborate on tickets and escalate issues, ensuring high-priority tickets get addressed. Front integrates with 50 apps, so you can add to your platform as needed.

Features:

• Shared inbox

• 50+ integrations

• Multichannel support

• Email ticket routing

• Tagging and escalations

• Service level agreements (SLAs)

• Shared drafts

Pricing:

• Starter: $19 per seat/month

• Growth: $59 per seat/month

• Scale: $99 per seat/month

• Premier: $229 per seat/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

7 days

3. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk’s email ticketing system lets users connect to support teams via email and manage tickets in a shared inbox. It allows teams to prioritize and act on customer inquiries, measure progress, and facilitate conversations across service channels. Zoho Desk features tools like workflow builders, task automation, and custom automatic ticket views.

Zoho Desk tends to be a good fit for small but growing customer service teams, but it can also help larger businesses stay organized. Zoho Desk offers a free plan with limited features and capabilities, best suited for businesses with minimal support needs.

Features:

• Mobile apps (iOS and Android)

• Predefined SLAs

• Ticket sorting

• Customer management

• Macro-based workflows

• Help center

• Templates and keyboard shortcuts

Pricing:

• Standard: $14 per user/month

• Professional: $23 per user/month

• Enterprise: $40 per user/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

15 days

Learn more about Zoho CRM for Zendesk.

4. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot’s ticketing system connects to the company’s CRM through its Service Hub plan. Service Hub helps teams track customer service requests in a shared inbox and includes basic features like ticket collaboration tools, prioritization rules, and ticket tagging. You can get advanced tools like customer service analytics that help monitor agent performance and view metrics like contact volume and response times.

Automated ticket routing and task automation are other options to help your team manage repetitive actions. You can try HubSpot’s free plan, but it does have limited features. It includes shared inboxes, email ticketing, and some basic reporting.

Features:

• Shared inbox

• Multiple ticket pipelines

• Live chat

• Reporting dashboard

• Email reply tracking

• Conversation routing

• Simple ticket automation

Pricing:

• Free: $0/month (limited features)

• Starter: $45/month

• Professional: $450/month

• Enterprise: $1,200/month

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about HubSpot for Zendesk.

5. HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch aims to help support, sales, and marketing teams use email ticketing to engage their customers. Within its sales and marketing tools suite, HelpCrunch provides email ticketing software through its help desk. In addition to shared inboxes, multichannel support, and ticket management, HelpCrunch includes features like detailed customer profiles and team productivity analytics.

HelpCrunch’s sales and marketing tools include email marketing campaign builders, lead generation solutions, and live chat.

Features:

• Basic automation and full customization

• Live chat customer support

• Reporting and analytics

• Multichannel support

• Knowledge base management

• Customer profiles

• Ticket management

Pricing:

• Basic: $12 per member/month

• Pro: $20 per member/month

• Unlimited: $495 per month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

6. TeamSupport

TeamSupport offers email-based ticket management software that converts support emails into tickets. Agents can view and manage customer conversations using a web-based help desk interface. TeamSupport has plenty of customization options for configuring ticketing rules for routing, escalation, and resolution.

TeamSupport allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks and set up rules that alert agents to follow up on tickets. Additional features include root cause analytics, external and internal knowledge base publishing, and community forum builders.

Features:

• Ticket automation and workflows

• Advanced ticket routing

• Web, mobile, and social messaging

• Shared inbox

• Basic reporting

• SLA management

• Ticket collaboration features

Pricing:

• Essential Support: $49 per agent/month

• Enterprise Support: $69 per agent/month

• Complete Customer Support Suite: $119 per agent/month

Free trial:

21 days

7. Jitbit Helpdesk

Jitbit is an online SaaS (software as a service) help desk that features an email ticketing system. Its platform supports IMAP, POP3, and SMTP—email protocols that enable emails to be sent and received between your inbox and server. In addition to email-based capabilities, the software supports live chat, knowledge bases, chatbots, and integrations.

Jitbit Helpdesk’s interface is built around a shared inbox and features advanced reporting tools, ticket organization capabilities, and ticket filters. It helps teams categorize, tag, and assign tickets to agents, track time spent on tickets, and prevent agent collisions.

Features:

• SLAs

• Predefined responses

• Collision detections

• Reporting and analytics

• Built-in mailboxes

• Knowledge base article suggestions

• Integrations

Pricing:

• Freelancer: $24.92 per month (1 agent)

• Startup: $58.25 per month (4 agents)

• Company: $108.25 per month (7 agents)

• Enterprise: $208.25 per month (9 agents)

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

21 days

8. Hiver

Hiver’s customer service email ticketing system lets you support multiple communication channels from your Gmail inbox. It allows you to assign customer queries to agents, delegate emails, tag tickets, automate email workflows, and view live status updates in a 360-degree view. Hiver also lets you automate routine tasks based on manual configurations.

Hiver features reporting and analytics software that helps you track customer service metrics. It has built-in reports with customization options that allow you to tailor reports to your business needs. Hiver also has collision alerts to prevent agents from working on the same ticket simultaneously.

Features:

• SLAs

• 24/7 chat and email support

• Shared inboxes

• Unlimited email templates

• Shared drafts

• Email notes

Pricing:

• Lite: $15 per user/month

• Pro: $39 per user/month

• Elite: $59 per user/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

7 days

9. HappyFox Help Desk

HappyFox offers cloud-based customer service software with an email ticketing system. The platform provides omnichannel support, allowing agents to handle requests from channels like phone, SMS, live chat, and email. It uses custom queues, tags, and fields to route requests where they need to go.

Collaboration tools from HappyFox help agents share information about tickets to reach solutions faster. The Private Notes feature lets you communicate with internal teams on customer tickets, and the message is invisible to the customer. In addition to its email management system, HappyFox plans include help desk features like SLA management, self-service tools, embeddable widgets, and a help desk mobile app.

Features:

• Agent collision detection

• SLA management

• Custom ticket tags and fields

• Omnichannel support

• Integrated applications

• Automation tools

• Basic reporting

Pricing:

• Mighty: $29 per agent/month

• Fantastic: $49 per agent/month

• Enterprise: $69 per agent/month

• Enterprise Plus: $89 per agent/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about HappyFox Workflows for Zendesk.

10. FreshDesk

Freshworks provides an email-based ticketing software called FreshDesk that converts customer queries into tickets that agents can track, prioritize, reply to, and collaborate on. FreshDesk has knowledge base publishing, team collaboration tools, email and social ticketing, and rule-based ticket routing.

If you choose to add to FreshDesk’s Support Desk, you can also access omnichannel functionality such as chatbot builders, social media messaging, advanced analytics, and SLA rules. FreshDesk also offers a free plan for up to 10 agents, but it lacks several features, including automation, collision detection, SLA management, and more.

Features:

• Automations

• Proactive collision avoidance

• Customizable fields

• Help desk performance analytics

• Email-based ticket routing

• Multiple shared inboxes

• Custom email server

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per agent/month (up to 10 agents)

• Growth: $15 per agent/month

• Pro: $49 per agent/month

• Enterprise: $79 per agent/month

  *Plans are billed annually

Free trial:

21 days

11. Help Scout

Help Scout is an email ticketing solution embedded in an enterprise-ready help desk tool. Your team can organize tickets, automate workflows, and collaborate through its shared email inbox. Help Scout claims that its shared inbox is like using regular email but with added functionality like automation and collaboration tools.

The Help Scout IT ticketing system can also help small teams with limited technical resources implement a simple email ticketing workflow. The platform includes features like knowledge management, reporting and analytics, and a sidebar that provides data, activity, and other info.

Features:

• Shared inboxes

• Knowledge base

• Ticket routing and prioritization

• API and 50+ integrations

• Custom reports

• Live chat

• Rule-based automation

Pricing:

• Standard: $20 per user/month

• Plus: $40 per user/month

• Pro: $65 per user/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

15 days

12. Intercom

Intercom began as a messaging app designed to help solve simple and quick customer issues, primarily for e-commerce, healthcare, financial services, and education companies. Intercom has since added ticketing capabilities to its platform.

With Intercom, businesses can collect, track, and route customer inquiries; analyze service performance; and deploy ticketing workflows. While Intercom’s messenger is core to its platform, you can also use Intercom to enable customers to submit tickets via email

Features:

• Help articles

• Team inboxes

• Ticketing workflows

• SLA rules

• Targeted messaging

• Support bots

• Reporting

Pricing:

• Starter: $74 per month (includes 2 seats)

• Pro: Contact Intercom

• Premium: Contact Intercom

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about Intercom for Zendesk.

13. ProProfs Help Desk

ProProfs Help Desk features an email-based ticketing system that automatically turns customer emails into support tickets. The email help desk keeps teams organized and allows agents to track tickets in real time. Tickets can be tagged and prioritized to ensure they’re handled quickly and by the right agent.

ProProfs features shared inboxes for team collaboration and live chat capabilities for customer communication. Automated workflows and knowledge base tools help keep ticket volume manageable. The software also has automatic survey capabilities to collect product and service feedback.

Features:

• Proactive alerts

• Correlational tickets

• Self-service knowledge base with FAQs

• Duplicate reply prevention

• Multichannel support

• Ticket tracking and prioritization

• Agent training modules

Pricing:

• ProProfs Help Desk: $20 per user/month

  *Plan is billed annually.

Free trial:

15 days

Learn more about ProProfs for Zendesk.

The best email ticketing software offers features you need to provide high-quality customer support. Here are a few key features to look for.

Ticket routing and email triggers

Skills-based routing matches ticket needs with an agent’s assigned attributes and sends the ticket to their queue. Administrators usually assign these attributes, which can include language, expertise, and experience. Effective ticket routing boosts agent productivity, makes workflows more efficient, and can increase profits.

Email triggers are defined rules and conditions that run immediately and perform an action after a ticket is created or updated. A common email trigger is a confirmation email. Say a customer places an order. Once the customer completes the order, an email is automatically sent to the customer, informing them that the business received their order request. It also provides a confirmation number.

Omnichannel support

To provide true omnichannel customer service, email conversations should be managed in the same space as your other channels. First, it keeps the agent from toggling between an email box and their workspace. Having the entire conversation—including emails—in one location makes it more convenient to find information, boosting efficiency and productivity.

Second, it provides customer context so agents can personalize conversations. Having conversation history from all channels gives you rich details—like interaction history, personal data, behaviors, or preferences—to tailor the conversation to the customer. Even better, the customer won’t have to repeat themselves because you have all the information in one spot.

Reporting and analytics

Between the conversations your customers have with your agents and the conversations agents have with one another, email ticketing software generates valuable information. Cross-channel reporting enables you to harness that information and use it to inform analyses of the service department and other teams, such as sales and marketing.

Email analytics shows you how customers react and respond to your messaging, giving you insight into what’s working and what’s not. It’s important to know how customers engage with your emails so you know what elements to tweak, add, or remove—enabling you to improve your messaging.

Email tracking

Email tracking helps you monitor sent emails to ensure a message doesn’t slip through the cracks. It helps your team stay organized and efficient so you can prevent issues from occurring. Email tracking tools give agents customer context—like if the customer opened your email, how many times they opened it, the date and time they opened it, what links they clicked, and more.

If the customer didn’t open the original email, you could tailor your second email with elements that may get them to read it. Additionally, if you’ve sent a couple of follow-up emails and the customer isn’t opening or reading them, it might be a waste of time to send another follow-up.

Email templates and macros

A macro is a prepared response for common questions or actions that can help optimize workflows. You can configure macros for quick responses and limit them to personal use or give everyone access. For example, you can configure a macro to send a predefined response to the customer and mark a ticket closed each time you select it.

Email templates are slightly different. With email templates, you can populate a prewritten email with customizable fields. You can fill in the blanks with the relevant information, saving you the time and effort to type the same information across multiple emails.

Email ticketing systems offer a wealth of benefits to your business, agents, and customers. Here are a few of the most common benefits.

• Improves agent efficiency and productivity

  Without email-based ticketing software, agents must rely on basic email functionality to organize, prioritize, respond to, and track customer issues. But as you scale, that becomes nearly impossible to do—you need a ticketing system to keep track of all incoming emails and see which tickets you resolved, which are in process, and which you haven't addressed.

  Collaboration tools—like leaving internal notes on tickets and tagging in other departments—will help move the ticket toward resolution more efficiently.

• Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty

  Customers want fast, effective customer service. Email ticketing software improves response times, increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. Intelligent routing immediately gets tickets where they need to be for quick support, and email triggers and automated replies can instantly provide customers with the information they’re looking for. Notifications and alerts nudge agents to address new tickets or follow up on an older ticket so the customer is always in the loop.

• Enables you to scale customer support operations

  There’s a reason why every help desk solution you find has some version of an email ticketing system. Email-based ticketing software creates a solid foundation you can build upon with more service options, such as AI chatbot capabilities, knowledge bases, and new service channels like messaging and voice.

  With the right email ticketing system at the core of your operations, you can easily and steadily scale your business into a brand known for customer service excellence.

• Deflects email tickets with self-service

  When executed well, self-service is a true win-win for service teams and their customers. But this hinges on your email ticketing system’s compatibility with self-service software. You should be able to automatically deflect tickets to AI chatbots, help centers, and knowledge base content through your ticketing software.

  You’ll also want intuitive tools within your ticketing system to create and configure chatbots, help centers, and knowledge bases. There are many solutions you could integrate with your ticketing system to facilitate self-service. If you decide to use a separate self-service tool, ensure you have the resources to integrate it with your ticketing system.

• Improves customer retention with personalized and proactive support

  Proactive and personalized customer service goes a long way in keeping a loyal customer base. Using customer context and data allows you to develop better customer relationships. The more you know and understand about your customers, the easier it is to have rich conversations that boost the customer experience.

  Communicating information proactively lets customers know they can rely on you to deliver what they need. This could mean an email providing a tracking number for their order so they don’t have to reach out to get it. It could also mean proactive communication about a shipping delay, so customers can reset their expectations.

Picking the right email ticketing system can do wonders for your business. Here are a few common questions to ask yourself to help you decide.

Does it meet security and compliance requirements?

Protecting personal data should be a top priority for your email ticketing platform. Because information travels digitally via email, encryption features are crucial. Ensure the software provides multiple user authentication options, like two-factor authentication and single sign-on, so only verified agents have access.

IP restrictions can limit access to authorized users within a specific range of IP addresses. Additionally, ensuring the vendor is up to date on security certifications and compliance can build trust.

What is the total cost of ownership?

The best email ticketing systems are intuitive and set up quickly. When your teams can use the software on day one, this results in a low total cost of ownership. Implementing software that’s tough to set up, takes a long time to roll out, and requires a lot of training can add many unforeseen costs.

Does it offer onboarding and adoption guidance?

A software vendor with an account and customer success team can make for a seamless implementation process, increasing your time to value. A proper onboarding and adoption process helps customers learn how to use your product or service effectively. Customers shouldn’t be left hanging with unanswered questions or ambiguity about your product.

The Zendesk Professional Services team, for example, can help you with your goals, no matter where you are in your journey. Whether you’re implementing Zendesk for the first time or transitioning over to a different Zendesk product, we can guide you along the way.

How easy is implementation?

Your email ticketing software should be easy to use. For instance, Zendesk takes minutes—not months—to set up, so you can use it immediately. The seamless implementation process and reduced agent training help your team deliver a great customer experience right out of the gate.

Can it scale and change your business?

In business, it’s easy to prioritize the short term at the expense of the long term. But with email ticketing systems, there’s no need to. If you’re mindful of how a given ticketing system meets your current and potential needs, you’ll be able to find a system that suits both.

Of course, you can’t predict all your future needs. You might introduce new products and services or change your business strategy. That’s why, in addition to looking for native compatibility, you should consider the extensibility and customization of a ticketing system.

Here are a few ticketing system tips and best practices to help you with your email ticket system.

Define your service level agreements (SLAs)

Your service level agreement (SLA) documents the details of the service you will provide to your customer. SLAs can be legally binding or an informal promise. They can also apply differently to various individuals or groups of customers.

Typically, SLAs detail things like maximum first-response time, agent availability, business hours, exceptions, length of service, and more.

Whether your SLA is formal or informal, defining one is important because it sets customer expectations and clarifies priorities for your agents.

Take advantage of AI and automation capabilities

AI technology can be an advantageous asset for many types of technology, including email. Bots work over email, with the most basic bot function being an automated email response with relevant help center article content.

With Zendesk Advanced AI, you can create advanced email auto-responses that get triggered based on intent, language, and sentiment predictions. Advanced email bots come pre-trained to understand customer service intents, allowing for better and more personalized responses. Plus, our intelligence in the context panel feature can guide agents and suggest the next best action, which includes automated responses.

Tag tickets for better conversations

Enhance your conversations by tagging tickets, so you can quickly find the ones relevant to your current issue. You can also use tags to add context to tickets or topics. From there, you can create custom views and reports based on a tag to glean more insights. You can even run reports to analyze tag usage to identify support request trends.

Invest in team training to maximize the capabilities of the email system

An effective way to get the most out of your software is to train team members to fully understand its capabilities. When agents know your email system inside and out, they know which automations and macros can save the most time, which reporting tools and metrics provide the most insights, and which integrations can boost the customer and employee experience.

For example, if you only know how to make phone calls with a smartphone, you aren’t using it to its full potential. Being trained on how to sync your email, browse the internet, download apps, and send text messages makes having a smartphone more beneficial and effective.

Send surveys once tickets are resolved

Gathering customer feedback is a great way to understand where you can improve and where you’re crushing it. A great time to send a customer satisfaction (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score® (NPS) survey is at the end of an interaction or when a ticket gets closed. Quick surveys like these are more likely to get a response, and emailing it when the interaction is fresh in the customer’s mind can garner more accurate results.

Here are a few common email ticketing questions and some answers.