Customer Service & Helpdesk · head-to-head
OTRS vs Zammad
The short answer
Zammad's means run higher on ticketing core (6.0 to 1.0), omnichannel (6.8 to 0.3), knowledge and self-service (4.2 to 0.2), integrations (4.0 to 0.0), sovereignty (6.3 to 3.5) and pricing transparency (6.8 to 0.0); OTRS publishes no prices, and pricing was not weighted against it. The split: customer data protection (3.8 to 2.8), one judge leaning OTRS, five lean Zammad. OTRS's case there is legal posture — German contracting entity, named external data protection officer, stated retention periods — scored 2–4 on the credit those practices earn; Zammad's captures show no tenant DPA, retention period or audit log evidenced. OTRS's other scores rest on legal pages where we found no public information on queues, routing, SLAs, APIs or connectors. Weighted totals per judge run Zammad 5.3–5.6 against OTRS 0.5–2.2. Zammad's gaps: only GitHub/GitLab and Grafana/Elasticsearch named as integrations; telephony appears in no tier's channel list and carries no price.
Choose OTRS if
- Your contract must sit with a German-registered vendor — OTRS's legal entity jurisdiction is DE, and the imprint names OTRS GmbH, Oberursel (Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main HRB 143059, VAT DE453344897).
- You need a named external data protection officer documented before signature — OTRS's privacy-policy captures show one.
- Your compliance gate is stated retention periods in a published privacy policy — OTRS's captures state them.
- Your reviewers credit data-protection practices evidenced on the vendor's own site — on customer data protection, where OTRS scores spread 2–4, one judge leaned OTRS.
Choose Zammad if
- You need core ticketing evidenced — states, assignment, escalations, SLAs, macros, templates and automation rules are named in Zammad's captures; ticketing core means 6.0 to 1.0, with 6 judges leaning Zammad.
- Your customers reach you on many channels — email, web form, SMS, chat, Telegram, Facebook and WhatsApp are priced per tier into a unified ticket view (omnichannel 6.8 to 0.3).
- You must budget before pilot — Zammad publishes €7/€16/€25 per agent per month plus a metered €0.03 per AI call, with VAT treatment stated (pricing transparency 6.8).
- Your residency requirement is EU-only — Zammad's data residency attribute reads EU only and its subprocessor exposure reads none.
- You want the self-hosted option — Zammad is offered cloud or self-hosted, and its sovereignty scores of 6–7 credit that option (sovereignty means 6.3 to 3.5).
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The bench's picks
Same scores, different priorities: each judge's weighting applied to both products. The split is the finding.
- The Support Lead OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
- The Agent Advocate OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
- The Data Protection Officer OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
- The Shop Operator OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
- The Integrator OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
- The Skeptic OTRS Zammad picks Zammad
Criterion by criterion
| Criterion | OTRS | Zammad | The bench leans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ticketing, queues & SLA | Zammad, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Channels in one queue | Zammad, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Knowledge base & deflection | Zammad, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Customer data protection | Zammad, 5 of 6 judges | ||
| Integrations & API | Zammad, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| European sovereignty | Zammad, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Pricing transparency | no published price | not comparable |
Stars show the bench average per criterion; the lean counts which product each judge scored higher. Open a judge's tab for their reasoning on both sides.
Sovereignty, side by side
| Dimension | OTRS | Zammad |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Incorporated in DE | Incorporated in DE |
| Ownership | Not determined | Not determined |
| Data residency | Not determined | EU only |
| Subprocessors | Not determined | Not determined |
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
| Legal · Address | Oberursel · Zimmersmühlenweg 11 · Germany · 614401 | 10117 · Berlin · Marienstraße 18 · Germany2 |
|---|---|---|
| Legal · Commercial register | Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main · HRB 143059 · commercial register B1 | Charlottenburg · HRB 163946 B2 |
| Legal · Entity | Zimmersmühlenweg 11, 61440 Oberursel, Germany · OTRS GmbH3 | support@zammad.com · Zammad GmbH · Marienstraße 18, 10117 Berlin4 |
| Legal · Entity name | OTRS GmbH1 | Zammad GmbH2 |
| Subprocessors · Matomo | Matomo · web analytics · yes3 | Matomo · visitor access analytics · no4 |