What do you use for support? Forum, ticketing, etc.

I’m getting ready to start my own external support site for my items, I won’t get into details about why . I’m interested in knowing what other authors use and what they have learned along the way.

Any recommendations or better yet warnings of things to stay away from?

Do you use a forum, ticket system or both?

Are your systems integrated with the marketplace API ?

How do you manage the comments area and emails? Do you post regular reminders to the comments area? How do you manage customers that insist on being helped in the comments area?

Thanks in advance for any guidance that you can offer. I don’t want to do this twice (or more) so I’m trying to make the right decisions the first time around.

I would suggest getting a support forum only if you have a large customer base.

In your situation I would recommend a support forum.

ThemeProvince said
I would suggest getting a support forum only if you have a large customer base. In your situation I would recommend a support forum.

I don’t have that much customers but my support forum is great helper. I tried a ticket system too but wasn’t satisfied with it though

revaxarts said

ThemeProvince said
I would suggest getting a support forum only if you have a large customer base. In your situation I would recommend a support forum.

I don’t have that much customers but my support forum is great helper. I tried a ticket system too but wasn’t satisfied with it though

I mean around 50+ support requests per day. I have around 10 – 20 a day and its easy just to use the comments on the item discussion.

Try Vanilla2! Easy to customize & open-source — http://vanillaforums.org I personally love it.

Ivor said
Try Vanilla2! Easy to customize & open-source — http://vanillaforums.org I personally love it.

Yeah, I’ve always been a big fan of Vanilla forums. I think I remember someone posting a patch for it recently that automated the API integration for verifying item purchase codes too. What a community!

Ivor said
Try Vanilla2! Easy to customize & open-source — http://vanillaforums.org I personally love it.

A few of the themes I bought used this too for support. I’ve used them both to post issues as well as browse for similar and I have no complaints as a buyer.

Parallelus said

Ivor said
Try Vanilla2! Easy to customize & open-source — http://vanillaforums.org I personally love it.

Yeah, I’ve always been a big fan of Vanilla forums. I think I remember someone posting a patch for it recently that automated the API integration for verifying item purchase codes too. What a community!

Unless you’re going to modify it heavily, I don’t recommend it. I used to work for someone who used Vanilla and it was hell to get anything done. Took a lot more time than necessary..

I’m using bbPress (the new plugin version) for about 2 weeks and I quite like it.

Regarding the comments and emails, I still reply to comments on the ThemeForest commenting system because I think Buyers shouldn’t have to register in all the support forums of the different authors they purchase items from. I do remind them of the support forum though. The emails I redirect to the forum.

zendesk for ticketing system and vbulletin for forums.

forum registration only allowed for buyers, we wrote a small plugin to check purchase code against Envato API .

zendesk is unvaluable for us, handling all mails from envato and our site and reditecting support request to forum while still being able to answer presale and freelance questions by just replying to ticket.

Also, since we are a team, it allows us to receive each other mails without messing with bcc.

about vbulletin, nothing to add except is by far the best forum software you can find.