Should you build your own helpdesk?
Zendesk costs add up fast. But building a ticketing system is harder than it looks. Here's the honest breakdown.
The temptation
Support software pricing scales with your team. Zendesk Suite at $89/agent/month means $53K/year for a 50-person support team. That feels expensive for "just a ticketing system."
So you think: we could build this. Tickets come in, agents reply, ticket closes. How hard can it be?
The answer: harder than you think, but maybe not impossible with AI tools in 2026.
Build / vibe when...
- Support is your product differentiator
- You need deep product integration
- Small team, email-only (vibe it)
- Unique workflow requirements
- Data residency requirements
Buy when...
- You need omnichannel (chat, phone, social)
- You want built-in AI/automation
- CSAT surveys, reporting matter
- You're scaling fast
- Support isn't your core competency
What about vibe coding?
A basic ticketing system is actually a decent vibe coding project. Inbox, ticket status, assignments, replies. You could have something working in a week.
But the hard parts are still hard: email deliverability (so replies actually arrive), threading (matching replies to tickets), spam filtering, SLA tracking, and the integrations your team will inevitably want.
Vibe a helpdesk if: you have fewer than 5 support agents, email-only is fine, and you don't need analytics. Otherwise, Zendesk's free tier or Freshdesk might be a better starting point.
Real cost comparison
For a 30-agent support team over 3 years:
| Build | Buy (Zendesk Suite) | |
|---|---|---|
| Initial cost | $120K – $250K | $5K – $15K (setup) |
| Annual cost | $60K – $100K (maintenance) | $32K – $96K (licensing) |
| Time to launch | 4 – 8 months | 1 – 3 weeks |
| 3-year total | $300K – $500K | $100K – $300K |
What people underestimate
Email is a nightmare. Deliverability, threading, attachments, forwarding chains, auto-responders, out-of-office replies — email has decades of edge cases. Zendesk has solved them all. You haven't.
Omnichannel is table stakes. Your customers expect live chat, social DMs, maybe even phone. Adding each channel to a custom system is a major project.
AI is already built in. Zendesk, Intercom, and Freshdesk all have AI-powered routing, suggested replies, and auto-resolution. Building this yourself means adding LLM integration, training on your data, and ongoing prompt tuning.
Reporting compounds. First-response time, resolution time, CSAT, agent performance, topic analysis — every metric is another feature to build and maintain.
Compare tools
Our take
Buy, unless support is literally your product.
Support software has decades of edge cases baked in. Email threading alone will cost you months. If you're a support-as-a-service company or support is your key differentiator, maybe build. Everyone else: start with Freshdesk's free tier and upgrade as needed.