How to Create a Free Support Ticketing System in WordPress (2024)

Can a Free WordPress support ticket system work as well as a paid WordPress support ticket plugin? It definitely can! Just follow this simple tutorial…

A good helpdesk ticketing system should allow your business to handle and rank multiple customer support inquiries and manage these so your customers get faster replies from the right support person or team.

Many paid WordPress support plugins can help you do this. But, what about a free one?

Free help desk ticketing systems that can only handle basic customer inquiries are no more useful than just using a plain old contact form.

Unless, of course, you add a pinch of ‘zing’ that will automagically transform a contact form into a full-on WordPress helpdesk and support ticket system… for free!

This is exactly what we are going to do, so watch my hands. (Nothing up this sleeve…)

Continue reading, or jump ahead using these links:

• From Free Contact Form To Free Support Ticket System
  • Step 1: Create A Customer Support Ticket Form
  • Step 2: Integrate Forminator With HubSpot
• Charge Users For Providing Support

From Free Contact Form To Free Support Ticket System

Can you say prestidigitation?

It doesn’t matter if you can’t because you don’t need magic tricks to change a plain contact form into a free support ticket system that will allow your business to:

• Handle multiple customer inquiries.
• Create separate support tickets for each submission.
• Assign support tickets created by users to different staff members or areas of your business.
• Group customer emails and chats with each ticket.
• And so much more.

Alakazam… but this defies logic! How does one perform this great feat?

Magicians never reveal their tricks, but I’m no magician, so here are the three simple steps we’ll take to make this all happen:

Step 1: First, we’ll create a support ticket form using WPMU DEV’s Forminator plugin.

Step 2: Next, we’ll integrate our form with a complete customer support ticket system usingHubSpot’s plugin.

Step 3: Pffftt! (magic cloud of smoke). There is no ‘Step 3’. Only Step ‘Free’ … You’ve finished your free WordPress ticket system!

Let’s go through this step-by-step and make some customer support magic appear before your very eyes.

Step 1: Create A Customer Support Ticket Form

If you’ve just landed on this page looking for a free WordPress helpdesk plugin or support plugin, download Forminator, our free drag and drop form building plugin for WordPressfrom the WordPress.org plugin repository.

And if you’re a WPMU DEV member, then you already have access to the powerful Pro version of our expandable form builder plugin along with all the other exclusive goodies our members have access to, so make sure you install The Hubon your WordPress site then go to WPMU DEV > Plugins.

Download and install the Forminator plugin from your WordPress dashboard.

Once you’ve installedForminator, activate the plugin and head on over to ‘Forms’ in the Forminator menu.

Forminator lets you easily create and import forms. For this tutorial, we’ll create a simple contact form, so click on the ‘Create’ button.

Select a template for your form (e.g. a Contact Form template). You can start with a blank form if you want to create your support ticket from scratch.

Add all the fields your users or customers will need to complete in your support ticket to your form, including options for different products, services, or departments, then save and preview.

For detailed tutorials on how to create forms using Forminator, including what kind of fields and options are available, see the Forminator documentation section.

Creating your support ticket submission form is the first step to making the magic happen. It’s just like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. First, you need a hat, which Forminator provides (look, nothing in here…yet!)

Now let’s add the rabbit.

Step 2: Integrate Forminator With HubSpot

HubSpotis an inbound marketing, sales, and service CRM software. You can use this tool for managing all your customer relationships, including tracking interactions with leads and customers, automating sales and marketing activities, sending out newsletter emails, and, more importantly for this tutorial, as a help desk and support ticket system.

Since we’ll be integrating our form with HubSpot in this step, you will need to have an account.

The good news is that HubSpot’s Service Hub provides all the functionality we will need to start our WordPress support ticket system for free.

You can upgrade later if you want more features likecustomer service automation, a knowledge base, customer feedback, multiple ticket pipelines, and more.

To get started, let’s download and installHubSpot’s WordPress plugin.

The easiest way to install the plugin is via your WordPress dashboard.

Go to Plugins > Add New and type “HubSpot” into the keyword search field. Locate the ‘HubSpot All-In-One Marketing’ plugin, then click the buttons to install and activate it.

A new entry will display on the main WordPress menu. Click on ‘Sign in’ to log into HubSpot if you already have an account. Otherwise, click on ‘Create a free account’ to set one up.

If you are creating a new HubSpot account, go through the set up process, then make sure to confirm your email address so you can activate your account.

Create and confirm your account, set up your lists, forms, etc. via the plugin or in the HubSpot website.

Follow the tutorials for more information in the HubSpot Academy to learn how to use the software, create lists, forms, use support tickets, etc.

After setting up an account with HubSpot, come back to your WordPress site and go to Forminator > Integrations.

Click on the ‘+’ symbol to integrate HubSpot with Forminator.

You can also confirm all integrations with Forminator inside your HubSpot account.

Once you’ve integrated the app, go back to the Forminator dashboard, click on the gear icon next to the name of your form, and select Edit from the drop-down menu.

Depending on whether your web browser has been resized or not (or if you’re working on your site using a mobile device), you will either see the editing options listed next to your form or displayed in a drop-down menu format in the ‘Navigate’ section.

Select the ‘Integrations’ option in the Edit Form screen and click on ‘Activate App’ to add the integration with HubSpot to your form.

If you have followed the previous steps in this tutorial, you should already have your lists and forms set up in HubSpot, so the next step is to map the HubSpot and Forminator fields. This ensures that data will be sent through correctly from your form to your ticketing system.

Click ‘Continue’ to create your HubSpot tickets and complete the integration and set up process.

As per the instructions on the form, as well as adding new contacts, you can create a new ticket for each form submission just by flicking a switch.

Once you’ve created your support ticket form, you can add it to any page or post using a form shortcut.

Hey Presto! Yourfree support ticket system is now live!

Charge Users For Providing Support

Want a free WordPress ticketing system that lets you charge users for support? Forminator lets you add payment fields to your form.

Add a Stripe or PayPal payment field to your form, click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button (saying“abracadabra” is optional) and your setup willtransform like magic into a premium WordPress ticketing support system.

The Magic Of Integration

As you can see, integration is the key to transforming a free contact form into a free WordPress support ticket system.

Forminatorprovides you not only with a way to create a support ticket form for free, but if you integrate Forminator with a third-party application like HubSpot, you will instantly get a complete free ticketing support system added via the backend with the ability to extend support functionality with more advanced features later if required.

In addition to all the automation you can already integrate into your forms, our formidable Forminator team is working on new plugin features like:

• Email routing that will let you sendemail notifications to specific departments or areas of your business dynamically depending on the options that users select on your forms.
• Email conditions where you can add as many email notifications as you need and send those emails out conditionally based on what customers input on your form.
• Dynamic formsthat let you pre-fill forms with query parameters, making it easier for customers to lodge support tickets and many other types of forms.

Of course, you don’t have to use this option. You can always choose a premium WordPress helpdesk plugin, but if you’re on a tight budget and need to pull something quickly out of the hat, then follow the tutorial above and it will work just like magic!

Before You Disappear…

Special thanks to WPMU DEV member @Levent for requesting the HubSpot integration with Forminator.Also, a bow to DesignerMukulChawla from our Forminator team for his valuable help answering questions about the plugin’s capabilities, as well as Developer Cvetan Cvetanov and QADevendera Mishra for their work on making this feature ‘presto’ appear.

Need help setting this up with HubSpot? Check out their plugin information for more details and support.

If you’re a WMPU DEV member already, you canping our support team 24/7 with questions about all things WordPress – including this brand new integration.

And for those that haven’t experienced the magic of being a WPMU DEV member yet, we invite you to step right in and give us a try, 100% risk-free, and get full access to all of our WordPress plugins …with no illusory hidden tricks.

Have you used free help desk ticketing systems? How do you think they compare with the WordPress support ticket system using Forminator and HubSpot? Do you have a different, preferred set up? Let us know in the comments.

Tags:

• forminator
• hubspot
• support
• Wordpress plugins