osTicket
Windmill
| Feature | osTicket | Windmill |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $12/mo | Free / from $10/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4 / 5 | 4.4 / 5 |
| Best For | small-businesses, budget-conscious-teams, self-hosted-advocates, it-departments | developers, devops-teams, internal-tools, data-pipelines |
| Founded | 2003 | 2022 |
| Ticket Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Email Piping | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sla Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Agent Collision Avoidance | ✓ | ✗ |
| Knowledge Base | ✓ | ✗ |
| Workflow Editor | ✗ | ✓ |
| Script To Ui | ✗ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| Approval Flows | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi Language | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self Hostable | ✗ | ✓ |
| Audit Logs | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ 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
✓ Windmill Pros
- Open-source and self-hostable
- Supports Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL natively
- Auto-generates UI from script parameters
- Excellent scheduling and workflow orchestration
✗ Windmill Cons
- Smaller community than Zapier/n8n
- Self-hosting requires infrastructure knowledge
- Less polished documentation for beginners
The Verdict
osTicket is built for small businesses and budget conscious teams, with a focus on ticket-management and email-piping. Windmill targets developers and devops teams and leads with workflow-editor and script-to-ui.
Pricing is close: Windmill starts at $10/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.
Windmill edges out on user ratings (4.4 vs 4). While both are well-regarded, that gap reflects real differences in user satisfaction worth considering.
Feature-wise, Windmill 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: Windmill has a slight overall edge — but if completely free self-hosted version matters most to you, osTicket may still be the right call.