OTOBO

OTOBO is an open source helpdesk and IT service management platform founded in 2020 by Rother OSS GmbH in Oberursel, Germany. The project was created as a community-driven fork of the popular OTRS ticketing system after OTRS AG shifted its focus exclusively to a proprietary cloud offering, leaving the open source community without continued development. OTOBO picked up where OTRS Community Edition left off, modernizing the codebase and adding features that the community had been requesting for years.

The platform provides a comprehensive ticket management system with ITIL-aligned processes including incident management, problem management, change management, and service level agreement tracking. OTOBO supports multi-channel communication through email, phone, and a customer-facing self-service portal. The built-in knowledge base allows organizations to create and maintain FAQ articles for both agents and customers. Process management capabilities enable businesses to define structured workflows for recurring tasks like employee onboarding, hardware requests, or approval chains. Extensive reporting and dashboard features provide visibility into team performance, ticket volumes, and SLA compliance.

As a fully open source project licensed under GPL-3.0, OTOBO can be self-hosted on any infrastructure, giving organizations complete control over their data. For those who prefer a managed solution, Rother OSS offers professionally hosted OTOBO instances on German data centers with full GDPR compliance. The platform is particularly popular among mid-sized enterprises, government agencies, and IT departments that previously relied on OTRS and need a future-proof, community-supported alternative. OTOBO replaces proprietary helpdesk solutions like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and ServiceNow while offering the transparency and customizability that only open source software can provide.