We have recently been approached with a request to create a website that would primarily serve as a support portal. And because we love WordPress, I looked at the possibilities within WordPress, because why invent a bike when it already exists.
In general, we can look at the support portal from different perspectives if we are only interested in looking at client / customer interaction and it should be public. For example, an open forum such as BBpress , which has long been works on WordPress . If we look outside the WordPress area then it is very popular today to have “public” support for various open-source software directly at GitHub or GitLab , where there is room to report an error and possibly discuss the problem. If we look away from open-source software, another popular option is to have a community on Slack or Discrod , where you can discuss issues again and get user advice.
However, if we want to provide a support portal only for “paying” customers, ie have some limited access, nothing public and everyone will see only their “problem” or discussions, then it is necessary to use a different solution than the one above. Let’s show you some solutions again.
- FAST – WordPress Support Ticket Plugin – This is a paid plugin for $ 39
- JS Help Desk – paid plugin from $ 69
- Awesome Support – the plugin is free but has paid variant from $ 149
- FluentSupport – This is a plugin that can be used in both the free and paid extensions.
FluentSupport
And we will take a closer look at FluentSuport. If you are interested in its Free variant, you can find it in the official WordPress repository . Then, get the paid variation directly from the plugin author’s site . The current prices for paid extensions are $ 129 or $ 249 or $ 399 , with the only difference between these prices being the number of uses on the website. The first for $ 129 is for one site, $ 249 for 5 websites and $ 399 is for 50 sites. Otherwise, in terms of functions, you get all available functions.
Now let’s see what the difference is between the unpaid and the paid version.
| Function | Free | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | Yes | Yes |
| Basic settings | Yes | Yes |
| Integration with Slack | No | Yes |
| Workflow | No | Yes |
| Pre-prepared e-mails | No | Yes |
| Tagging | No | Yes |
| Webhooks | No | Yes |
So as you can see from the above tables, you can also do the core stuff with the FluentSupport free plugin, but if you wanted some automation in the form of ticket labeling or connection to Slack and similar “tweaks” you would already they had to reach for the paid version of the plugin.
If you are also interested in creating a website with a support portal, do not hesitate to contact hello@visionslabs.io .
