Free help desk software almost always means one of two things: a free tier with real limits (agent seats, ticket volume, history retention), or a time-boxed trial of a paid product wearing the word "free." Neither is dishonest, but they answer different questions. If you are searching for "free help desk software," here is what to check before you commit a team to one.
Free for who, exactly
The first question is who the limit applies to. Some tools count every person who can log in, including the people just reporting problems, against a free seat cap. Others, GoReportIt included, only charge for staff seats (agents and admins) and leave reporters, the people who raise tickets, free and unlimited. That distinction matters most for internal help desks (IT, facilities, HR) where the reporting side of the company can be ten times the size of the team resolving tickets.
What "free" usually does not include
Read the fine print on three things specifically:
- Ticket history. Some free tiers only keep tickets for 30 or 90 days, which quietly erases your record the moment you need it for an audit or a pattern you are trying to spot.
- Automation and routing. Rules, on-call rotations and assignment logic are frequently the first thing paywalled, which is a problem if urgent issues need to reach a specific person reliably.
- Number of agents. A free tier capped at one or two agents stops being free the moment a second person needs to help with the queue.
None of these are red flags on their own. They are just the actual shape of the product, and worth knowing before setup rather than after.
What a genuinely useful free tier needs
For a free or low-cost help desk to be worth adopting, it should cover the core job without an asterisk: a shared queue everyone reports into, clear status and priority on every ticket, notifications that reach the right person, and enough history to actually look back on. Anything beyond that (SLAs, advanced reporting, integrations) is reasonable to pay for once you are past the "does this work for us" question.
Where GoReportIt fits
GoReportIt is not free, but it is priced so the free-tier trade-offs above do not bite: EUR 5 per staff seat per month, reporters free and unlimited, no ticket volume cap, and on-call rotation included rather than gated to a higher tier. Every plan starts with a free trial, so you can run a real queue for a few days before paying anything. See pricing, or compare GoReportIt to other help desks if you are weighing it against a specific tool.