I have found a good help desk. It is called PerlDesk. The url is
http://www.perldesk.com I have seen a thread or 2 here about it. I have it installed and really like it. Great features!

I also found an alternative to HC. It is called active stat. The url is [URL]http://www.worldwidecreations.com/activestat.htm[URL] It isn't free but only cost 75 bucks. Seems to be a something with alot of potential. If anyone gives it a test run or knows anything about it let us know.

I have to agree. We recently posted a message for advice on a HelpDesk. We checked out a few commercial versions (hated them) and then tried PerlDesk. IT'S AWESOME!!!!!!!!! I highly recommend them: http://www.perldesk.com

I'm really surprised they don't charge anything for it.

--Tina

I also recommend Perldesk.

It looks great!

Let's see.. here are some humanclick alternatives:


LiveHelper (http://www.livehelper.com)

A program based alternative that seems to have most of the features of humanclick/liveperson. Basic version is only $25/month, the Deluxe is $50/month and the corporate is a whopping $250/month.

ClickSeva (http://www.clickseva.com)

Clickseva is based in India. Don't count that against them, the tech I've spoken to, Amit Tantia, seems quite knowledgable. His email response has been very fast. Clickseva is also web based, part java part PHP. It's hosted on their servers. The software needs some visual polishing, rough on the edges.

The cost is $60 for up to 5 concurrent chats, as many operators as you want.

Cyracle (http://www.cyracle.com)

I like Cyracle because it's web based and comes with a boatload of features such as encryption of the chat, customer interface customization, reporting & metrics, and customer pattern triggers. They also have an interesting knowledgebase engine. I believe it's hosted on their servers.

The cost is $50 per customer service representative.

PHPLive! (http://www.osicodes.com/?phplive)
One of the most interesting HC alternatives is PHP Live. It only costs $40 and comes with the source code. You can make it run as many chats as you want. The best part is you get the source code so you can make the front end look gorgeous and modify it to your hearts content. You can even resell the service to others, become a small humanclick! Perhaps you could include that in your hosting, your customers can give free live customer support!

It only costs $39.95!

Live (http://www.ecommerceautomation.com/products/live/) Even better than PHPLive! is Live, it has more features, works faster, and even has the option to display a webcam image! Perl Based and FLAT FILE (bad bad bad, puts strain on server if you have many concurrent chats, for this specific task it should be ok)

costs $230 for for-profit orgs, free for others

And here are some Help Desk alternatives:

Dapper Desk (http://www.dapperdesk.com/)

Dapperdesk looked good last time I tried a demo. It's PHP MySQL based.
Costs $699!!!! :(

Ticket Track (http://www.irc-html.com/index.php)

Originally a php fork of Melissa Peh's Perl WebSupport ticket system, Ticket Track is now a separate product and has shed it's old name to avoid confusion (a company purchased the perl websupport application). I like this product better than Perl Desk and it's free for most versions (usually the second latest version). It's front end isnt as polished as some fancy help desks, but you can do that yourself, and hey it's free! The new 3.0 version plans to incorporate numerous useful features such as language file support, spell checking, various database wrappers, secure server support, etc... PHP MySQL Based

iHelp (http://ihelp.cwdhost.com/)
Another well rounded support desk. PHPMySQL Based

Costs $99

PHP Support Desk (http://www.phpsupportdesk.com)
Whew getting tired, here is another support desk, pretty good frokm what I can see, no experience with this one...PHP My Based
Costs $250

Request Tracker (http://fsck.com/projects/rt/features.html)

An open source initiative, this help desk is very robust with most any feature the others have. It's open source Perl MySQL based.


I've only scratched the surface, if anyone wants help finding a Help Desk / Realtime chat just drop me an email at eugenie^98@mindspring^.com (remove the carat symbols before emailing)

Glad to be of service,

Nice list Eugene. Thanks for the resource.

But you missed (a free) one. :-)

http://www.mylivesupport.com

We've used it on and off, and it's okay for the price...but we're switching to PHPLive and looking forward to the added functionality. They've been very responsive to pre-sales questions. I like the unlimited server/site license idea.

Cheers

Gary

I've seen MLS before, i believe it needed java and it ran very slowly when i tried to demo that's why i did not want to mention it. To each his own ;)

What's the dark stuff on the globe at aussiehosts?

Regards,

It's New Zealand. It's dark to reflect their mood after coming up against the Wallabies. :-)

Gary

I've got one that I wrote that's VERY basic. I'm working on V2.0 which will have tons more features. It's free for anyone to use.

http://www.mescripts.com

Take a look at help me.

I went to perldesk's site and logged into all three interfaces and didn't see how to modify the knowledge base. How does one add to the knowledge base? Did I miss something?

www.deskpro.com is another support desk.

Hi Mark,

If you log into the staff section of perldesk, you will see three links at the top right - one of which is where you can manage the KB.

John

Originally posted by JBS
Hi Mark,

If you log into the staff section of perldesk, you will see three links at the top right - one of which is where you can manage the KB.

John

Aha. I thought that was just for searching it. I didn't see the "create new article" link. Anyway, wouldn't it make more sense for a "create new kb article" link to be under tickets? So that you could turn a ticket (after modifying it, of course) into a kb article?

Anyway, that's where I was looking for it.

Originally posted by teck
www.deskpro.com is another support desk. deskpro definitely!!!

Originally posted by Eugenie98
PHPLive! (http://www.osicodes.com/?phplive)
One of the most interesting HC alternatives is PHP Live. It only costs $40 and comes with the source code. You can make it run as many chats as you want. The best part is you get the source code so you can make the front end look gorgeous and modify it to your hearts content. You can even resell the service to others, become a small humanclick! Perhaps you could include that in your hosting, your customers can give free live customer support!

It only costs $39.95!
In the demo on the site, I found that if you push a page, that's about the end of the session, you can't communicate with the client, nor they with you. Also, denying the chat request seems to lead to nowhere. The client isn't told they are denied, and would probably just sit there, which I suppose you might not care about if you were denying them, but...

I also seem to remember that when you denied them, the chat status box changed to the admin menu, meaning the chat op basically dropped out of the system and would have to log in again. Anyone else find this or is it just the demo that is buggy?

Deskpro costs a one time fee of $795 !!!!!!!
Perldesk is free.

I too demoed it (PHPLive). It works perefectly for me. Maybe they fixed or did something. Also I tested the push thing. It seems to do it on IE because it is slow in opening up a window then Netscape. If you have lots of windows open, it may say the session has ended, but actually the session is still ok. It only did this to me when I have like 7-10 window open. When I had just a few, it was fine.

That's my 2 cents. (newbie)

BTW, PHPLive is some cheap software for what it does! Thanks for the refer guys! :cool: We were looking for something like that to provide a service to our clients. We're still looking, but it's up there for purchase.

Also, the PerlDesk is just too dang pricey for what it does. Isn't there some free one's out there or something like PHPLive, cheap and powerful? :D

Originally posted by TomGordon

Also, the PerlDesk is just too dang pricey for what it does. Isn't there some free one's out there or something like PHPLive, cheap and powerful? :D

I think you mean, deskpro, because Perldesk is free.