LibreDesk

What is LibreDesk?

LibreDesk is an open-source, self-hosted customer support platform that ships as a single Go binary with a Vue.js front end. It provides an omnichannel inbox that consolidates email and live-chat conversations in one place, alongside a published help center for self-service knowledge base articles.

Key features

LibreDesk includes a real-time live chat widget that can be embedded on any website, an AI assistant grounded in the help center that can answer chats automatically before handing off to a human, and an agent copilot that drafts replies and summarizes long threads. Conversations can be tagged, assigned, snoozed, routed by automation rules, and tracked against configurable SLAs. Admins get granular role-based access control, custom conversation and contact attributes, macros, CSAT surveys, and analytics for response times and agent activity.

Self-hosting

LibreDesk is designed to be self-hosted: a single binary plus Postgres and Redis runs behind your reverse proxy. A docker-compose file is provided in the repository, and a 1-click Railway template provisions the app and its data stores in one step. Because it ships as a single Go binary, deployment is straightforward: configure a config.toml, run ./libredesk --install, and start the service. SSO via Google, Microsoft, and any OIDC provider is supported out of the box, and HTTP/JSON APIs plus webhooks are available for custom integrations.

How it compares to Intercom and Zendesk

LibreDesk is positioned as a lightweight alternative to Intercom and Zendesk: it covers the same core workflow — omnichannel inbox, ticketing, help center, automation, SLAs, and analytics — without the per-seat pricing of commercial SaaS. The trade-off is that you operate the infrastructure yourself, but in return you get full data ownership, an AGPL-3.0 license, and no per-agent costs as your team grows.