The 13 best email ticketing systems for 2024

Even though customers have an ever-increasing number of communication options available at their fingertips, many still rely on email to connect with businesses for customer support. An email ticketing system helps customer service teams provide fast and personalized support experiences at scale.

Unlike a shared inbox, an email ticketing system enables support teams to track, manage, and organize customer inquiries seamlessly. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about email ticketing systems and compare the top solutions so you can make an informed decision for your business.

More in this guide:

• What is an email ticketing system?
• What types of teams use email ticketing systems?
• Benefits of an email ticketing system
• The 13 best email ticketing systems
• Key features of email ticketing software
• Email ticketing system best practices
• How to choose the right email ticketing system
• Frequently asked questions
• Try the Zendesk email ticketing system for free

An email ticketing system is a tool for customer service teams to track, prioritize, and respond to a high volume of email inquiries. It’s crucial for managing customer service in an efficient manner. When enhanced with AI, these systems streamline workflows, automate support functions, and assist agents in managing their tasks more effectively.

Managing a shared inbox can become cumbersome and disorganized as your business grows. Ticketing systems centralize all customer communications in one place, simplifying email management and improving overall efficiency.

Any team that wants to improve ticket management and help resolve issues faster can benefit from an email ticketing system. Here are just a few examples of how different teams use email ticketing software:

• IT teams troubleshoot issues and provide technical assistance.
• HR teams track internal updates, requests, and complaints.
• Customer service teams manage inquiries, complaints, and feedback.
• Help desks give fast support to both customers and employees.
• Sales teams track leads and follow-ups.

Any team that needs to track, manage, and prioritize requests, internally or with customers, can and should use an email ticketing system. It helps create a better customer experience (CX) and increases customer satisfaction thanks to fast, efficient support.

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

Improves agent productivity

An email inbox can sharply curb productivity and efficiency with limited options for tagging and categorizing emails. Agents must also rely on basic email functionality to organize, prioritize, respond to, and track customer issues. As you scale, that becomes nearly impossible to do.

An email ticketing system is a full-fledged email classification and management tool that empowers agents to track all incoming emails and see which tickets are resolved, which are in process, and which haven’t been addressed. Collaboration tools with features like internal notes on tickets and the ability to tag in other departments will further streamline ticket resolution. A complete CX solution like Zendesk adds omnichannel support, AI tools, and more to enhance capabilities beyond just email ticketing.

Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty

Consumers want fast, effective, and personalized customer service. The companies with the best support teams excel at personalizing customer service, making each customer feel unique and valued.

AI helps support teams deliver personalized experiences by providing tailored answers and recommendations based on customer history and sentiment, helping build strong customer relationships. AI-powered email ticketing software also improves response times, increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. Intelligent routing immediately sends tickets to the right place for fast resolutions, while email triggers and automated replies quickly give customers the information they need.

Scales customer support operations

There’s a reason every help desk solution has some version of an email ticketing system. Email-based ticketing software creates a solid foundation where you can build more service capabilities—including self-service ones driven by artificial intelligence (AI) like AI agents and knowledge bases—and incorporate other 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 and establish a reputation for customer service excellence.

Gives visibility into performance metrics

If your suite of business tools doesn’t give you uninhibited access to performance metrics, it’s letting you down. The best email ticketing systems peel back the curtain to reveal granular details on employee performance, interaction quality, customer sentiment, and more.

By viewing your performance metrics, you can do two things: reward positive performance and address areas needing improvement. Managing employee performance includes recognition and learning opportunities—with visibility into your most important KPIs, you can proactively manage your team.

Take a deep dive into these email ticketing systems with an overview of each.

• Zendesk: Best for AI-powered CX
• Front: Best for combining a help desk with an inbox
• Zoho Desk: Best for building different help desk layouts
• HubSpot Service Hub: Best for cross-functional collaboration
• HelpCrunch: Best for combining email and chat support
• TeamSupport: Best for team communication and reporting
• Jitbit Helpdesk: Best for self-hosting requirements
• Hiver: Best for tracking customer requests
• HappyFox Help Desk: Best for simplistic ticket management
• Freshdesk: Best for omnichannel customer service
• Help Scout: Best for managing inboxes for multiple teams
• Intercom: Best for integrating customer communication across channels
• ProProfs Help Desk: Best for managing inboxes in one place

1. Zendesk

Best for: AI-powered CX

Zendesk provides a scalable, AI-powered email ticketing system that is user-friendly and quick to set up. It's also omnichannel, allowing agents to manage customer email requests from the same workspace as all your other support channels. This increases agent efficiency because they don't have to toggle between different tools.

AI is built into the Agent Workspace to help them offer faster and more personalized support. For example, intelligent routing funnels tickets to the most suitable agent based on customer intent, sentiment, and language. Meanwhile, the Zendesk agent copilot equips support reps with proactive suggestions for how to resolve issues based on each customer’s unique needs.

Zendesk also provides AI-driven quality assurance (QA) and workforce management tools to optimize team productivity and elevate your service: AI can monitor 100 percent of customer interactions to flag subpar conversations and alert managers for coaching opportunities. From schedule adherence to resolution time, Zendesk sends you actionable insights that show exactly how your team performs over email (and all your support channels). And, with over 1,600 plug-and-play apps and integrations in the Zendesk Marketplace, you can connect all your data across systems for a 360-degree customer view, all the while keeping your business safe with advanced privacy and security controls.

Features:

• AI-powered QA
• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• 1,600+ apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading:

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Front

Best for: Combining a help desk with an inbox

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, automatically assigning and tagging reps to handle the issue. Agents can collaborate on tickets and escalate issues, ensuring high-priority tickets get addressed. Front also integrates with nearly 100 apps for as-needed platform additions.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• Nearly 100 integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per seat/month, billed annually. A seven-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zendesk vs. Front compare.

3. Zoho Desk

Best for: Building different help desk layouts

Zoho Desk’s email ticketing system lets support teams connect with customers 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.

The email ticketing system features tools like workflow builders, task automation, and intuitive ticket views. There’s also a ticket sorting feature that routes requests to the appropriate agent based on the contents of the customer inquiry.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security

Pricing: Paid plans start at $7 per user/month, billed annually. A 15-day free trial and free plan are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zoho integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Zoho compare.

4. HubSpot Service Hub

Best for: Cross-functional collaboration

HubSpot’s ticketing system connects to its CRM through the Service Hub plan. Service Hub filters customer service requests within a shared inbox, offering basic features such as ticket collaboration tools, prioritization rules, and ticket tagging. Users can opt to pay for advanced tools like customer service analytics, enabling you to monitor agent performance and view metrics like contact volume and response times.

Automated ticket routing and task automation help teams manage repetitive actions. HubSpot also has a free plan with inboxes, email ticketing, and some basic reporting.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security

Pricing: Paid plans start at $15 per seat/month, billed annually. A free plan with limited features is also available.

Recommended reading: Learn how HubSpot integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. HubSpot compare.

5. HelpCrunch

Best for: Combining email and chat support

HelpCrunch provides multichannel email ticketing through its customer support software. In addition to shared inboxes, omnichannel support, and ticket management, HelpCrunch offers features like detailed customer profiles and team productivity analytics.

The customer support software also has a central dashboard where agents can view real-time and historical reports on email ticketing analytics. From there, agents can gain insights into past interactions and see the context for customer queries and complaints.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• Apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $12 per team member/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

6. TeamSupport

Best for: Team communication and reporting

TeamSupport offers email-based ticket management software that allows agents to view and manage customer conversations in a web-based help desk interface. TeamSupport provides customization options for routing, escalation, and resolution ticketing rules.

The software enables businesses to automate repetitive tasks and set up rules that prompt agents to follow up on tickets, too. Higher-tier plans also include pre-built analytics dashboards, knowledge bases, and customer self-service portals.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security

Pricing: Plans start at $29 per agent/month.

7. Jitbit Helpdesk

Best for: Self-hosting requirements

Jitbit is an online SaaS (software as a service) help desk with 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. The software also 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 categorizes, tags, and assigns tickets to agents, tracks time spent on tickets, and prevents agent collisions.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• Apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $24.92 per month for one agent, billed annually. A 21-day free trial is available.

8. Hiver

Best for: Best for tracking customer requests

Hiver’s customer service email ticketing system can support multiple communication channels from a Gmail inbox. Users can assign customer queries to specific agents, delegate emails, tag tickets, automate email workflows, and view live status updates to see who’s working on what. Hiver lets you automate routine tasks based on manual configurations, too.

The ticketing system offers reporting and analytics software that helps you track customer service metrics. It has built-in reports with customization options. Hiver also includes collision alerts to prevent agents from working on the same ticket.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• Apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per user/month, billed annually. A seven-day free trial is available.

9. HappyFox Help Desk

Best for: Simplistic ticket management

HappyFox offers cloud-based customer service software with an email ticketing system. The platform provides omnichannel support, allowing agents to handle requests across various 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 enable agents to share information about tickets. The Private Notes feature lets you communicate with internal teams on customer tickets while hiding the message from 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 mobile app.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security

Pricing: Plans start at $9 per agent/month, billed annually.

Recommended reading: Learn how HappyFox integrates with Zendesk.

10. Freshdesk

Best for: Omnichannel customer service

Freshworks offers an email-based ticketing software called Freshdesk, which converts customer queries into tickets that agents can track, prioritize, reply to, and collaborate on. Freshdesk includes features like knowledge base publishing, email and social ticketing, and rule-based ticket routing.

Users can access more features—including chatbot builders, social media messaging, advanced analytics, and SLA rules—but they must pay extra. As a result, businesses may spend more money in the long run, reducing their overall return on investment.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• 1,000+ apps and integrations

Pricing: Paid plans start at $15 per agent/month, billed annually. A free plan and a 14-day free trial are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zendesk vs. Freshdesk compare.

11. Help Scout

Best for: Managing inboxes for multiple teams

Help Scout is an email ticketing solution embedded in a help desk tool. Users can organize tickets, automate workflows, and collaborate through its shared email inbox. Help Scout claims its shared inbox is like regular email but with added functionality, such as automation and collaboration tools.

The Help Scout ticketing system also supports simple email ticketing workflows. The platform includes knowledge management, reporting and analytics, and a conversation sidebar in the agent workspace that displays customer data, activity, and other relevant information.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• 100+ apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $22 per user/month, billed annually. A 15-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zendesk vs. Help Scout compare.

12. Intercom

Best for: Integrating customer communication across channels

Intercom began as a messaging app designed to help teams solve simple customer issues, primarily for e-commerce, healthcare, financial services, and educational companies. It now offers email ticketing features with automations and omnichannel support.

The tool allows businesses to collect, track, and route customer inquiries, analyze service performance, and deploy ticketing workflows. Users can also access a library of apps and integrations for additional use cases.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security
• 450+ apps and integrations

Pricing: Plans start at $29 per seat/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Intercom integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Intercom compare.

13. ProProfs Help Desk

Best for: Managing inboxes in one place

ProProfs Help Desk is a customer support tool with an email ticketing system. It automatically converts emails to tickets, tracks them in real time, and prioritizes urgent issues. With a central dashboard, agents can efficiently manage support email accounts and collaborate using internal notes.

ProProfs offers automatic ticket routing to assign requests to the appropriate agents. Users can also leverage the software to build chatbots for 24/7 support and collect customer feedback. Additionally, the platform includes a built-in knowledge base.

Features:

• AI assistance for agents
• Workflow automation
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Omnichannel support
• Enterprise-class security

Pricing: Paid plans start at $19.99 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how ProProfs integrates with 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.

• AI assistance for agents: AI can assist agents with instant ticket support to unlock faster and more accurate customer resolutions. It surfaces relevant knowledge base articles to help agents reply to tickets faster. It can also automate mundane tasks like greetings or follow-up emails and analyze customer sentiment to guide human agents toward the most appropriate resolution or generate suggested replies that agents can use or edit.
• Workflow automation: Ticketing software automates repetitive tasks, such as routing tickets based on language, sentiment, intent, agent skill, status, or capacity. It also assigns conversation priority based on those factors and sends agent response reminders, ensuring tickets are sent to the most qualified agent for faster response times.
• Real-time reporting and analytics: Cross-channel reporting via a ticketing system lets you integrate and compare information from email conversations with other support or ticketing channels. Email analytics provide insights into how well your team is meeting service level agreements (SLAs), and real-time reporting also allows you to identify and address complaints early, reducing the risk of customer churn.
• Omnichannel support: Manage inquiries from all your customer support channels in one location with omnichannel customer service. This approach provides a unified view of customer interactions and allows agents to switch between channels seamlessly without losing context, speeding up time to resolution and reducing the need for back-and-forth communication.
• Enterprise-class security: Customers expect Fort Knox levels of data security, and CX leaders know this. In the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, 83 percent of CX leaders noted data protection and cybersecurity as top customer service priorities when strategizing business goals. The best ticketing systems offer encryption for emails and customer data, access controls to restrict user permissions, and audit logging to track all system activity.

The more your email ticketing system can do, the more well-equipped your team will be to deliver top-tier customer service.

Here are a few ticketing system tips and best practices for implementation.

• Take advantage of AI and automation capabilities: AI agents or bots can communicate with customers via email to deliver faster and more personalized support—the most basic function is an automated response with relevant help center article content. For example, the Zendesk agent copilot can suggest replies to agents based on each customer's unique needs. AI can also handle email requests autonomously, freeing your support team up for more engaging tasks.
• Define your SLAs: Your SLA documents the details of the service you will provide to your customer. SLAs can be legally binding or an informal promise—for both, defining an SLA is important because it sets customer expectations and clarifies priorities for your agents. Typically, SLAs detail things like maximum first-response time, agent availability, business hours, exceptions, length of service, and more.
• Measure the quality of interactions: Measuring conversation quality helps you identify potential areas for training and development. It also makes it easier to recognize top performers to encourage continued excellence. QA software gives a granular view of agent performance through data-driven insights so you can identify conversations at risk of churn based on customer satisfaction levels, and agents can resolve them promptly.
• Invest in team training and development: Enhance your email ticketing performance metrics with customer service workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions such as workforce management (WFM) and QA tools. These tools help highlight training opportunities to develop your agents’ skills, which increases productivity and agent satisfaction.
• Collect customer feedback: Without customer feedback, you can’t be certain that your CX is improving. Customers can provide insights into the support experience, highlighting areas for improvement you might have otherwise missed. You can ask targeted customer satisfaction questions to assess sentiment about their interaction with your team. Meanwhile, your email ticketing tool can surface data like the most popular customer requests so you can share that information with relevant stakeholders.

Following these best practices will help you improve your CX continually and actualize higher customer satisfaction levels.

The right ticketing system for your business will support your growth and act as a natural extension of your support teams.

• Make sure it meets security and compliance requirements: Not every ticketing system will have a full suite of security features, but the best ones—like Zendesk—use advanced data privacy and protection with encryption to guard your valuable data and meet compliance requirements. Zendesk allows you to effortlessly manage and organize the data you need and wipe the data you don’t. That way, prying eyes stay away from private information, and you stay compliant with the law.
• Consider time to value and total cost of ownership: A ticketing system with a short time to value (TTV) enables you to unlock its full potential more quickly. This includes reducing agent work overload and increasing ticket resolution speed—which means better CX from day one. Zendesk is flexible, so you can tailor it to your needs without incurring additional costs for extra features. Plus, you won’t need to hire a developer to set up and maintain the software, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership.
• Ensure it provides onboarding and adoption guidance: When there’s friction while adopting a new tool, there might be less excitement about it—and if agents aren’t happy with the tools they’re using, that could spell trouble for customer success. Zendesk simplifies onboarding and adoption thanks to a team with the customer support and service experience you need to position your CX strategy for success.
• Look for a tool that’s easy to use: In the Zendesk Employee Experience Trends Report 2024, 80 percent of respondents noted that employee experiences were a critical business priority and a key competitive differentiator. This means your email ticketing tool needs to work for your support team—not the other way around—if you want to retain top talent. Choose software with an intuitive design that your agents can use comfortably—like Zendesk, which is ready out-of-the-box with advanced AI tools to increase agent efficiency.
• Get software that can scale with your business: As your customer base increases, so will the number of inquiries you receive. You need a ticketing system that won’t bog down agents with a backlog of requests. For example, Zendesk is designed to seamlessly accommodate new teams, divisions, and global bases without hassle and offers an extensive marketplace of apps and integrations for optimal flexibility.

The right email ticketing system isn’t elusive—it’s Zendesk, and it has CX at its core to ensure your customers’ needs are always top priority.