Zammad
94 · HealthyTicketing and helpdesk system with email, chat, phone and social channels in one view.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat
Open source Helpdesk & live chat
Chatwoot
89 · HealthyOmnichannel customer support inbox covering website chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels.
FreeScout
76 · StableShared-inbox helpdesk in PHP, close in spirit to Help Scout, extended through modules.
osTicket
54 · CautionVeteran PHP support-ticket system that routes inquiries from email, web forms and phone.
Papercups
15 · At riskLive chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat / Papercups
Papercups
Live chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.
Will it still be around?
Health 15/100 · At risk
Activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness. Breakdown
Alternative to
Savings proposal
A 25-seat team on Intercom Essential pays about $725 a month. Self-hosting Papercups costs about $132 a month to run plus $480 to set up, so it pays for itself in month 1 and saves about $20,868 over three years.
List price: Intercom Essential, billed annually. Advanced is $85 and Expert $132 per seat. Fin AI Agent is billed on top at $0.99 per outcome. Source, checked 2026-10-07.
Saved over 3 years
$20,868
Pays for itself
Month 1
Saved in year one
$6,636
Each month
$725 → $132
Show as a table
| Month | Intercom | Self-hosted | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $0 | $480 | −$480 |
| Month 3 | $2,175 | $876 | $1,299 |
| Month 6 | $4,350 | $1,272 | $3,078 |
| Month 9 | $6,525 | $1,668 | $4,857 |
| Month 12 | $8,700 | $2,064 | $6,636 |
| Month 18 | $13,050 | $2,856 | $10,194 |
| Month 24 | $17,400 | $3,648 | $13,752 |
| Month 30 | $21,750 | $4,440 | $17,310 |
| Month 36 | $26,100 | $5,232 | $20,868 |
Assumptions you can change
Self-hosting Papercups usually means one small container and a database. Hours are for one engineer; the server cost is a typical cloud VPS with backups and grows with the number of people using it.
Not included: paid editions or features of Papercups (see What's free?), large data migrations, and compliance work. All amounts in US dollars at list price; your negotiated price may differ.
Health score: 15/100
Activity45% weight
0/100
- Last commit 1611 days ago (0/100).
- 0 commits in the past 12 months (0/100).
- 0 releases in the past 12 months (0/100).
Bus factor30% weight
0/100
- No human commits in the past 12 months.
Responsiveness25% weight
58/100
- 65% of all issues are closed (160 open, 296 closed) (58/100).
- Too few recent issues to measure reply rate.
Score v2. How the health score works.
License
MIT License · Open source (permissive)
OSI-approved license with few conditions beyond keeping the copyright notice.
Detected by GitHub as MIT.
What's free?
Enterprise features many open-core projects keep for paid plans.
| Feature | Self-hosted, free? |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | Unknown |
| SSO (OIDC) | Unknown |
| SCIM provisioning | Unknown |
| Audit logs | Unknown |
| Role-based access control | Unknown |
| Multi-tenancy | Unknown |
We haven't verified which of these features are free for this project yet.
GitHub metrics
| Stars | 6.1k | Forks | 581 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last commit | 4.4 years ago | Commits, 12 months | 0 |
| Releases, 12 months | 0 | Last release | 6.2 years ago |
| Contributors | 49 | Active authors | 0 in last 0 commits |
| Open issues | 160 | Closed issues | 296 |
Snapshot from 2026-10-08.