I chose Assistly to handle our customer contact, after assessing it against ZenDesk. Both are good. I went with Assistly because I found the user experience to be better (ZenDesk defaults to updating the user on every stage of their ticket's progress) and I found Assistly themselves to be responsive (answered my questions quickly and honestly, weren't afraid to admit that they don't have features and say what is / isn't under consideration for future updates).<p>I'm using the Assistly knowledgebase feature too, and it is well integrated. It's a bit basic so I expect to migrate as we grow. Probably to Joomla.<p>Do you plan on email support only, or are you looking at social media and phone too?
There're many solutions, from installable software such as Redmine[1] to hosted services such as TenderApp[2], GetSatisfaction[3], UserVoice[4], ZenDesk[5], FreshDesk[6], Groove[7], etc.<p>It all depends on what your needs are.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.redmine.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.redmine.org</a><p>[2] <a href="http://tenderapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://tenderapp.com</a><p>[3] <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com" rel="nofollow">http://getsatisfaction.com</a><p>[4] <a href="http://uservoice.com" rel="nofollow">http://uservoice.com</a><p>[5] <a href="http://zendesk.com" rel="nofollow">http://zendesk.com</a><p>[6] <a href="http://freshdesk.com" rel="nofollow">http://freshdesk.com</a><p>[7] <a href="http://groovehq.com" rel="nofollow">http://groovehq.com</a>
ZenDesk seems to be the most popular and the price is quite reasonable. Assistly has made some inroads but is quite a bit more expensive. Kayako used to be popular in the startup community but I'm not sure it's held up. FreshDesk is a new entrant somewhat similar to ZenDesk.
I use <a href="http://snapengage.com" rel="nofollow">http://snapengage.com</a> to interact with users of my website as well as companies who are inquiring about working with us. It works great and people really utilize the live chat.