osTicket
Penpot
| Feature | osTicket | Penpot |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $12/mo | Free / from $8/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
| Best For | small-businesses, budget-conscious-teams, self-hosted-advocates, it-departments | open-source-teams, privacy-focused-designers, developers, educational-institutions |
| Founded | 2003 | 2015 |
| Ticket Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Email Piping | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sla Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Agent Collision Avoidance | ✓ | ✗ |
| Knowledge Base | ✓ | ✗ |
| Vector Editing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Prototyping | ✗ | ✓ |
| Components | ✗ | ✓ |
| Design Tokens | ✗ | ✓ |
| Real Time Collaboration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Css Output | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self Hostable | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ osTicket Pros
- Completely free self-hosted version
- Active open-source community
- Highly customizable
- Supports multiple departments
✗ osTicket Cons
- Dated user interface
- Requires server management
- Limited automation compared to paid tools
✓ Penpot Pros
- Open-source and self-hostable for free
- CSS-based design outputs production-ready code
- Real-time collaboration (Figma-like experience)
- SVG-native (no proprietary formats)
✗ Penpot Cons
- Performance slower than Figma on complex files
- Smaller plugin and community ecosystem
- Missing some advanced design features
The Verdict
osTicket is built for small businesses and budget conscious teams, with a focus on ticket-management and email-piping. Penpot targets open source teams and privacy focused designers and leads with vector-editing and prototyping.
Pricing is close: Penpot starts at $8/mo versus $12/mo for osTicket — not a deciding factor on its own.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Feature-wise, Penpot offers broader built-in capabilities (7 features vs 6), while osTicket takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Bottom line: Penpot has a slight overall edge — but if completely free self-hosted version matters most to you, osTicket may still be the right call.