Support requests arrive on phone calls, WhatsApp and random emails - and half of them get lost. Faveo Helpdesk turns every request into a numbered ticket that can be assigned, tracked and closed. The Community Edition is free and open source, and this guide sets it up the right way.
Most small offices run support from memory. A user calls, someone says ho jayega, and two days later nobody remembers the request. A ticket system fixes exactly this: every problem gets a number, an owner and a status. Faveo Helpdesk is one of the very few proper ticket systems that is free and open source - you download it, install it on your own server, and run your support desk on it. Below is the complete setup in the order that actually works.
Faveo Helpdesk is an open source ticketing system built on the Laravel framework, made by Ladybird Web Solution, a software company based in Bengaluru, India. It was designed keeping startups and small and medium businesses in mind - simple to use, but a real helpdesk, not a toy.
Users can raise a ticket three ways: by sending an email to your support address, through a web form or customer portal, or an agent can create it for them. Each ticket lands in a department, gets a priority, can carry an SLA (service level agreement) timer, and stays in one thread until it is closed. There is also a knowledge base side to Faveo, so common answers can be published once instead of typed fifty times.
The editions are simple to understand: the Community Edition is free and open source and you host it yourself. The Pro edition is a paid downloadable version you install on your own server or hosting, and there is a Cloud edition where the company runs it for you. This guide is about the free Community Edition - the ticketing core is fully there.
Faveo is a PHP web application, so the shopping list is the classic web stack:
Keep the database name, username and password written down before you start. Ninety percent of failed installs are just a wrong database detail or a missing PHP extension.
Download the Community Edition from the official Faveo website and upload the files to your server. Point the domain at the application folder, open the address in a browser and the web installer starts. It first checks that your server meets the requirements - PHP version, extensions, writable folders. If a check fails, fix that item on the server and refresh; do not try to jump past a failed check.
Next the installer asks for the database details and creates the tables, then you create the administrator account. Log in with it and change two things immediately: set the correct timezone and company name, because ticket times and SLA clocks all follow these settings. Finally, make sure the scheduled task on the server is running - Faveo fetches email and checks SLA timers on a schedule, and without that background job the system looks installed but quietly does nothing. The install case blog in this series covers the whole server process in detail.
Now build the structure, in this order - departments first, people second, email third:
This order matters. If email is connected before departments exist, the first real tickets arrive with nowhere sensible to go.
Do not announce the helpdesk to the office yet. First prove the full circle yourself:
When this circle works, the system is real. Now announce one simple rule to the office: support problems go to the support email, and you will get a ticket number. That one habit is worth more than any feature list.
The video shows the complete Faveo Helpdesk download, installation and setup on screen - watch it before you install, and keep it open while you work.
Watch Full VideoThe Community Edition is free and open source - you download it from the official Faveo website and host it on your own server. Faveo also sells Pro (self-hosted) and Cloud editions with premium support and extra features, but the core ticket system in the Community Edition is not a trial and does not expire.
Yes. Email integration is a core part of Faveo. You connect a support mailbox, the system fetches new mail on a schedule and converts it into tickets, and agent replies go back out as email. Users never have to learn a portal if they do not want to - though the portal and web form are there too.
No. For a small office team, a small Linux VPS or even a spare office PC with a PHP and MySQL stack is enough to start. What matters more than size is that the server stays on, the scheduled task runs, and you take regular backups of the database and uploaded files.