We were sick of paying for ticketing software. So we built our own.

Fettledesk brings tickets, a help centre, service levels, approvals, boards and sprints, and asset management into one fast app for IT teams and small software teams. One Docker command installs it; your data never leaves your network. And best of all, it's free. No hidden costs, subscriptions, or setup fees.

Free under the GNU AGPL v3.0. A pre-release: read what's still to come before relying on it.

A project summary in Fettledesk: open, unassigned and overdue counts, a status overview, open work by priority and type, and recent activity, beside a sidebar of queues.

IT teams in schools and small organisations

Tickets from email and a help centre, SLAs, approvals, and the devices behind them.

Small software teams

Workflows, boards, a backlog, sprints and charts, without a per-seat bill.

People who keep their own data

Runs on your hardware or cloud, works offline, and sends nothing to anyone.

See it in action

A ticket, start to finish.

Log a fault, assign it, link the device it's about, reply to the person who reported it, and see it move on the board.

Service desk

Requests in, answers out, nothing lost in between.

People ask for help from a help centre or by email. Your team works from queues with live counts, and every ticket shows its deadline.

Queues that keep up

Unassigned, mine, waiting on someone: each queue counts itself in the sidebar and updates as people work.

  • Request types with their own forms for the help centre
  • Email in from Microsoft 365, Google or any IMAP mailbox
  • Service levels with business hours and warnings before a breach
  • Bulk changes, saved replies, merge and split
The queue of everyone's tickets, with status, priority, SLA countdowns and assignees.

A help centre people actually use

The people you support raise requests from a short, plain form and follow them to the end, without learning your tools.

  • Sign-up limited to your email domains, or by invitation
  • Approvals for purchases and changes, with a change calendar
  • A rating when the work is done
The help centre a customer sees, listing request types such as reporting a broken device.

Planning

From backlog to done, in the same place as support.

Workflows with rules, boards you can drive from the keyboard, sprints, and charts built from what actually happened.

Boards and sprints

Move cards by mouse, touch or keyboard. Plan a sprint from a ranked backlog, and see burndown, burnup and velocity as it runs.

  • Workflows per work type, with transitions and rules
  • Swimlanes, quick filters and column limits
  • A query language with autocomplete and saved filters
  • Linked work, sub-tasks, time logging and votes
A board with columns for each status and cards showing type, priority and assignee.
The backlog in the dark theme, with a running sprint above the ranked backlog.
The backlog with a running sprint, in the dark theme.
Sprint reports showing a burndown chart for the current sprint.
Sprint reports: burndown, burnup and velocity.

Asset management

Know what you own, who has it, and what depends on it.

Laptops, servers, licences and subscriptions, each with the fields you choose, linked to the tickets about them.

A register that keeps itself current

Choose the columns, save views for the team, change many assets at once, and let inventory tools keep the details up to date.

  • Asset types with their own attributes
  • Check-out and check-in, with due dates and overdue alerts
  • CSV import with a preview of every change before it's saved
  • Updates from PowerShell, Intune, Ansible or osquery with an integration token
  • Warranty and licence expiry alerts
The asset table with chosen columns: type, status, assignee, hostname, memory and warranty end.

Relationships and labels

Record what runs on, depends on or belongs to what, and see it as a map, so you know what a fault will touch. Print QR labels that open the asset on any phone.

A virtual machine's related assets: it runs on a file server and a printer depends on it, shown as a list and as a map.
A sheet of printable QR labels, each with an asset tag and name.

Screenshots

More of the app.

Light and dark themes follow your system, or each person's choice.

Under the hood

Built to be run by one person, and trusted by everyone else.

Install
One Docker Compose file: the app and PostgreSQL. Upgrades migrate your data on start.
Footprint
About 280 MB of memory for app and database together.
Privacy
No telemetry and no calls home. It works on networks with no internet access.
Sign-in
Passwords hashed with Argon2id, server-side sessions, and sign-in throttling.
Accessibility
Keyboard shortcuts for common work, and automated WCAG 2.1 AA checks on every screen tested.
API
Everything the app does goes through a documented REST API.
Tested
Hundreds of unit, integration and browser tests run on every change.
Licence
GNU AGPL v3.0: free to use, study, change and share.

Install

Running in a few minutes.

  1. Install Docker with Compose v2: Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS, or Docker Engine on Linux.
  2. Get Fettledesk and start it.
  3. Open it in a browser and follow the setup steps. Sample work items and people are added unless you untick Add sample work items and people.

For a production server, with HTTPS, email and backups, follow the install guide.

macOS and Linux

# Get Fettledesk
git clone https://github.com/stormhawkjordan/fettledesk.git
cd fettledesk

# Start it, using the published image
FETTLEDESK_IMAGE=ghcr.io/stormhawkjordan/fettledesk:0.5.2 \
  docker compose up -d

# Then open http://localhost:8080

Windows (Command Prompt or PowerShell)

# Get Fettledesk
git clone https://github.com/stormhawkjordan/fettledesk.git
cd fettledesk

# Start it. The first start builds Fettledesk, which takes a few minutes.
docker compose up -d

# Then open http://localhost:8080

Questions

The ones people ask first.

Is Fettledesk really free?

Yes. There's no paid tier today and no limit on people or tickets, and everything Fettledesk does now will always stay free. You pay only for the server you run it on.

Can I use it at work?

Yes, including for commercial work. The licence only asks something of you if you change Fettledesk and offer the changed version to others.

Where is my data?

On your server, and nowhere else. Fettledesk has no telemetry and never calls home. See the privacy policy.

What do I need to run it?

Any machine that runs Docker. Fettledesk and its database use about 280 MB of memory together, so a small server is plenty.

Status and roadmap

A pre-release, and honest about it.

Fettledesk is ready to evaluate and fine for small teams. These are the gaps you should know about today.

Coming in 1.0

  • Single sign-on with OpenID Connect (Entra ID, Google Workspace, Okta) and SAML
  • Two-factor sign-in with authenticator apps and recovery codes
  • Jira import for projects, issues, comments and people
  • A security hardening pass and a published security policy

Until then

  • Keep Fettledesk on an internal network, or behind a reverse proxy with its own sign-in
  • Back up with the documented commands; built-in backups come later
  • Expect data formats may change before 1.0; upgrades carry your data forward
  • English only for now
Milestones
0.1 to 0.3 Foundation, then the service desk: help centre, request types, SLAs, approvals, email Done
0.4 Team planning: workflows, boards, backlog, sprints, query language, charts Done
0.5 Asset management: types, loans, relationships, CSV, QR labels, ingestion, alerts Done
1.0 Jira import, single sign-on, two-factor sign-in, hardening In progress
1.2 Knowledge base, automation rules, webhooks Later