Zammad

German and EU buyers who cannot put support conversations on American infrastructure have a short list, and Zammad is usually on it. Every hosted plan runs in one country, and the alternative is running the same software yourself.

Hosted plans cost €9, €18 and €27 per agent per month, or €7, €16 and €25 billed annually. Zammad publishes both columns, so you can watch the annual saving fall from 22.2 percent to 11.1 to 7.4 as you climb. Seats have ceilings rather than floors: 5 agents on Starter, 35 on Professional, unlimited on Plus. AI is metered at €0.03 per AI call, which the vendor defines as an interaction with a feature such as generating a ticket summary. The AGPL-3.0 self-hosted build costs nothing and carries the same feature set, AI included, against your own LLM.

Every hosted gate is a hosting gate rather than a software gate, so the ladder sells channels and German operations, not capability. No autonomous resolution agent ships. Hosting is German only, with no US or APAC region. Four platforms import in through a free wizard and nothing bulk-exports out. Annual plans need two months notice, self-hosted contracts ninety days, and mid-term downgrades are refused.

Chatwoot keeps SSO, custom roles and audit logs out of its free build; Zammad ships all three. FreeScout is free too and sells the same features back as paid modules. Zendesk is a named import source. All four sit in help desk software.