My startup is currently developing a new ticket tracking system named Tracker, and it might be exactly what you're looking for. Tracker's focus is helping you do email support for external customers, but it also works well for internal company support.

Tracker is lightweight, fast, and has exceptional search and email integration. The web interface is quite quick and has some nice features, but you can also perform most functions (replying to customers, creating tickets, commenting) straight from your mail client.

We're currently in private beta, but if you're interested you can email me at dave AT madwombat DOT com, and I'll set you up with an account.

I've had http://tenderapp.com/ recommended to me - anyone with experience with this app?

We are on tender.app hooked up with lighthouse.app It works great. Your support tickets can be flagged to the lighthouse issue tracker.

If you have any questions about Tender, I'd be happy to help answer them. Just ping me on support@tenderapp.com or here, whichever works for you.

I’ve heard of people using a shared Gmail account for support tickets and handling ownership with labels.

We do the same thing, with a simple label system ("Follow Up", "Request for Feature X", "Request for Feature Y") to give us a little more overview visibility.

I'd certainly recommend this approach, especially if your workflow is well defined (we answer, then archive - Follow Up and start a ticket in Lighthouse if it needs to fixed. Unread == unanswered).

Have looked at ZenDesk and Tender, but we feel like they force people to jump through too many hoops in order to ask a question. For a logged-in user, it should really just be a "what do you want to ask us?" field, and for a logged out user just email/question. In my humble opinion, of course. ;)

That's something we definitely need to market better in Tender then or talk with user about. I hope that's not the under understand most people have. One of our main focuses was to allow for anonymous submissions of issues and implement a straight forward email option so people do not have to register for accounts. Implementing a Single Sign On system was our very first priority to avoid all need when coming from another web applications, so you can go straight to the form and ask what you need to without any hassle.

This is what we use - haven't found a need to go with anything else. I've heard of some people using this up to large volumes of email, but I guess it could become a problem once you get to multiple support people working at the same time (as opposed to multiple working shifts) just because you could both start writing an email at the same time. But until you reach that point this solution works great.

I've been using Zendesk at the company I work at for about a month and at first I didn't like it, but after getting used to it, it's not that bad. We don't use the public forums however, so I can't speak to that. But reply via email, iPhone app, and the macros are all nice touches.

Switched over to Zendesk a few months back. Our support people love it, and their API is a pleasure to work with. Best integration I've done in a long time.

Haven't used it myself, but a company I interviewed with mentioned using Zendesk too. It's gaining quiet a following!

http://getsatisfaction.com/ or http://lighthouseapp.com/

Thanks for your comment.

I'm talking more about when users register an issue about your startup/site/service that you need to track and resolve. Lighthouse seems to be more about internal project management, and I'm confused about how Getsatisfaction relates to this?

GetSat and Lighthouse are two totally different things. While Lighthouse has been used for support in the past, it's a privatized ticket tracker and not a support system.

We built Tender out of what we learned from dealing with Lighthouse support, which is why we added some pretty cool Lighthouse integration.

You're right, I replied too fast; typed getsatisfaction almost automatically when I read support requests.

It doesn't.

The only reasonable hosted support system out there is Zendesk, and unfortunately it's more "good" than "great".

Trellis Helpdesk - http://www.accord5.com/trellis at the moment it does not have a good reporting, but v2 is going to be released soon (aplha available now at http://www.accord5.com/trellis_desk_v2_alpha_1.zip)