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Znuny

Sustainable, community‑driven ticketing system for modern support teams

Customer Support & Helpdesk

Znuny continues the OTRS Community Edition, delivering a maintained, stable, and highly tailorable web‑based ticketing platform for customer service, help desk, and IT service management.

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Overview

Overview

Znuny is a continuation of the OTRS Community Edition (v6.0.30) that provides a reliable, self‑hosted ticketing system. It targets customer service, help‑desk, and IT service management teams that need a highly customizable solution while retaining long‑term sustainability through active community stewardship.

Capabilities & Deployment

The platform runs on Linux (Debian or Red Hat) with Perl 5.16+, Apache 2 + mod_perl2 (or CGI) and supports MySQL 8+, MariaDB 10.3+, PostgreSQL 12+, and Oracle 19c+. Its GPL‑3 license ensures transparency and freedom to modify. Documentation, community forums, Discord, and commercial services are available for onboarding and ongoing support. Znuny’s modular architecture lets organizations tailor workflows, fields, and notifications to match specific processes, making it suitable for a wide range of support environments.

Audience

Ideal for organizations with in‑house technical expertise that prefer a self‑managed, extensible ticketing solution over SaaS alternatives, while still benefiting from an active development community.

Highlights

Maintained continuation of OTRS Community Edition
Highly tailorable workflow and ticket fields
Supports MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Oracle back‑ends
GPL‑3 license ensures full source transparency

Pros

  • Active maintenance and stable releases
  • Flexible customization for diverse support processes
  • Broad database compatibility
  • Strong community and commercial support options

Considerations

  • Perl‑based stack may limit developer pool
  • Requires Linux/Apache environment with mod_perl
  • User interface is functional but not as modern as SaaS rivals
  • Self‑hosting adds operational overhead

Managed products teams compare with

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Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.

Fit guide

Great for

  • Organizations needing deep ticketing customization
  • Teams with existing Perl/Linux expertise
  • Companies preferring self‑hosted, open‑source solutions
  • Non‑profits or NGOs with limited budgets seeking sustainability

Not ideal when

  • Businesses looking for a turnkey cloud SaaS ticketing service
  • Teams that require a cutting‑edge, out‑of‑the‑box UI
  • Environments without Linux or Apache expertise
  • Small operations preferring minimal maintenance overhead

How teams use it

Customer Support Portal

Provides a centralized system for handling external customer inquiries, SLA tracking, and multi‑channel communication.

IT Service Desk

Enables internal IT teams to manage incidents, change requests, and asset tracking with customizable workflows.

Internal Help Desk

Facilitates employee request handling, knowledge‑base integration, and reporting for HR or facilities departments.

Compliance‑Driven Ticket Tracking

Offers audit‑ready logs and configurable retention policies to meet regulatory requirements.

Tech snapshot

Perl96%
JavaScript3%
CSS1%
PLSQL1%
HTML1%
Shell1%

Tags

itsmticketingcustomer-supportperlotrsznunysupportcustomer-careticketing-systemjavascriptservice-managementhelpdesk

Frequently asked questions

What programming language is Znuny built with?

Znuny is primarily written in Perl.

Which database systems are supported?

MySQL 8+, MariaDB 10.3+, PostgreSQL 12+, and Oracle 19c+ are officially supported.

Can I install Znuny on a Windows server?

The recommended platforms are Linux distributions such as Debian or Red Hat; Windows is not officially supported.

Is commercial support available?

Yes, Znuny GmbH offers professional support and consulting services.

Under what license is Znuny released?

Znuny is released under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL‑3).

Project at a glance

Active
Visit siteView repo
Stars
535
Watchers
535
Forks
112
LicenseGPL-3.0
Repo age5 years old
Last commitlast month
Primary languagePerl

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