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IT Service Management

OTOBO

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Rother OSS GmbH · otobo.io

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OTOBO: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai OTOBO: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

OTOBO at a glance

Vendor
Rother OSS GmbH
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Data hosting
Default not stated; pages mention Germany and Switzerland source, captured 1 Nov 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Starting price
“Entry 3.900€ pro Jahr” (vendor’s words) source, captured 1 Nov 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates OTOBO 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. OTOBO, from Rother OSS GmbH of Leiblfing, Germany (Amtsgericht Straubing, HRB 12744), is an open-source IT service management platform with published support tiers of Entry 3.900€, Professional 9.900€ and Enterprise 24.500€ pro Jahr, each with unlimited service agents and incidents. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 1 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 2 Nov 2026. all sources

OTOBO alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Service Desk Lead

Weighted verdict

Leads a team of eight agents at a machine builder with 1,400 employees across three plants in Germany and one in Poland. Most tickets still arrive by email, and the same printer and VPN questions come in every Monday. Wants incidents and requests told apart, SLAs that escalate on their own, a portal with a catalog people actually use, answers that deflect the Monday tickets, and reports the IT director reads without a spreadsheet.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Service Desk Lead

Panel median The Service Desk Lead This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Service Desk Lead
Service desk, incidents & requests 3 of 5 3.5 of 5
Change, problem & release management 2 of 5 2 of 5
Assets, CMDB & discovery 3 of 5 3 of 5
Self-service portal & service catalog 3 of 5 3 of 5
Deployment, integrations & multi-client operation 3 of 5 3.5 of 5
European sovereignty 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 3 of 5 3 of 5

Service desk, incidents & requests

How this is scored

How tickets come in and get resolved: intake by email, portal, chat, phone and Microsoft Teams or Slack, incidents and service requests told apart, categories, priorities and an impact-urgency matrix, assignment rules and queues, SLAs with escalation and business hours, major incidents, templates and canned responses, a knowledge base for agents, automations and workflows, time tracking on tickets, and reports and dashboards on volume, resolution time and SLA compliance.

0 — Not a ticketing or service desk product; requests cannot be recorded and worked in it.

3 — Tickets from email and a web form with status, priority and assignment; SLAs, automation and reporting are basic or not described.

5 — Multi-channel intake (email, portal, chat or Teams), incidents and service requests told apart, assignment rules and queues, SLAs with escalation and business hours, an agent knowledge base, rule-based automations, and standard reports on volume, resolution time and SLA compliance.

8 — A visual workflow builder for any ticket type, major incident handling with communication to affected users, SLAs per service, customer and contract, skills- or load-based routing, time tracking on tickets, AI suggestions or classification with what they do stated, custom dashboards and scheduled reports, and a mobile app for agents.

10 — A service desk an organisation of thousands runs on: every workflow, form and SLA configurable without code and versioned, omnichannel intake with one history per requester, AI features documented with their data use and limits, operational level agreements and underpinning contracts tracked, and every report reproducible from an exportable ticket history.

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The Service Desk Lead

Tickets arrive by email, phone and the self-service portal, incidents and service requests are kept apart, and SLAs carry response and solution times with multi-level escalations on working-time calendars — automatic escalation is documented, not promised. Major incident processes with separate escalations and notifications, master–slave ticket bundling, configurable queues, response templates and a free load balancer assigning by workload and service capability lift this above the solid core. We found no public information on time tracking on tickets, a visual workflow builder, AI suggestions or an agent mobile app. 3 12 18 20

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Change, problem & release management

How this is scored

The ITIL processes behind the ticket: problem records linked to incidents with root cause and known errors, change requests with standard, normal and emergency types, risk and impact assessment, approvals and a change advisory board, a change calendar with blackout periods, release and deployment records, links between changes, problems, incidents and configuration items, process certifications (PinkVERIFY, PeopleCert/AXELOS) named with their scope, and audit trails that a regulated buyer can show an auditor.

0 — No change or problem management of any kind; only tickets.

3 — A change or problem ticket type with a status and an approval step; change types, risk, calendar and links to incidents are basic or not described.

5 — Problem records linked to incidents with root cause and known errors, change requests with standard, normal and emergency types, multi-step approvals, a change calendar, changes linked to incidents and configuration items, and an audit trail of who approved what.

8 — Risk and impact assessment that reads affected services from the CMDB, a CAB workflow with agenda and decisions recorded, blackout periods and collision detection on the change calendar, release management with deployment tasks, change templates for standard changes, and an ITIL process certification named with the processes it covers.

10 — Change and problem management a regulated organisation can be audited on: every process configurable and versioned, change success and failure rates reported, a full trail from incident through problem and change to release exportable, the mapping to ISO/IEC 20000, ITIL 4 or DORA requirements documented, and certifications published with their scope and date.

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The Service Desk Lead

Problem and change management are named modules — recurring causes identified and eliminated, changes planned, approved and carried out — with the CMDB mapping relationships between CIs and incidents, problems and changes, multi-step approvals described and the ITSM Change Management package carrying its own documentation. We found no public information on change types, risk assessment, a change calendar, release and deployment records or known errors, so this stays near the basic end. 3 11 13 15 18

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Assets, CMDB & discovery

How this is scored

What the product knows about the things tickets are about: an asset inventory of hardware, software and licences, a CMDB with configuration item types, attributes and relationships, a service map or dependency view, agent-based or agentless discovery, imports and synchronisation from Active Directory, Entra ID, Intune, SCCM, JAMF or a discovery tool, software licence compliance, contracts, warranties and the asset life cycle, and assets linked to users, tickets and changes.

0 — No asset or configuration data at all; tickets cannot be linked to devices or services.

3 — A list of assets with basic fields that can be linked to a ticket; relationships, discovery and licences are basic or not described.

5 — An asset inventory of hardware and software, a CMDB with configurable CI types and relationships, network discovery or an inventory agent, an import or sync from Active Directory or Entra ID, contracts and warranties per asset, and assets linked to users, tickets and changes.

8 — A visual service and dependency map used for impact analysis, discovery documented for named platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, network devices, cloud accounts), connectors to named sources (Intune, SCCM, JAMF, VMware, AWS, Azure), software licence compliance and metering, the full asset life cycle from purchase to disposal, and data quality rules for the CMDB.

10 — A CMDB an organisation can trust for audits and outages: a documented data model with reconciliation of several sources, CI history and change tracking, service models from business service to infrastructure, licence optimisation for named vendors, and every CI and relationship exportable and reachable by API.

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The Service Desk Lead

The open-source CMDB ships with predefined, extendable CI categories (Location, Infrastructure, Network, Software, Contract, Workplace), a YAML editor for class definitions, relationship mapping to users, tickets, changes and services, a tree visualization, and the full asset life cycle from procurement to retirement for IT and non-IT assets, with data synced via webservice and the REST/SOAP interface from auto-discovery, inventory, directory services and product databases. We found no public information on discovery for named platforms, connectors such as Intune, SCCM or JAMF, or software licence compliance. 4 15

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Self-service portal & service catalog

How this is scored

What employees or clients see: a self-service portal with the service catalog, request forms with fields and approvals per service, ticket status and history for the requester, a searchable knowledge base for end users, announcements and outage notices, a virtual agent or chatbot, password reset or other automated fulfilment, branding and languages, single sign-on for the portal, access from Teams or a mobile app, and satisfaction surveys.

0 — No portal or end-user access of any kind; requests can only be emailed or phoned in.

3 — A web portal where users open tickets and see their status; a catalog, knowledge base and approvals are basic or not described.

5 — A branded portal with a service catalog, request forms with approval steps, an end-user knowledge base with search, ticket status and history, announcements, single sign-on, several languages, and satisfaction surveys after resolution.

8 — A service catalog with conditional forms, costs and delivery times per item, automated fulfilment for named requests (password reset, software install, onboarding), a virtual agent in the portal and in Teams or Slack, deflection measured, portals per client or department, and accessibility (WCAG) stated.

10 — A portal that runs as the front door of the organisation: catalog, forms and fulfilment built without code and reused across IT, HR and facilities, the virtual agent documented with its sources and data use, deflection and satisfaction reported per service, and accessibility conformance published with its level.

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The Service Desk Lead

The portal offers a searchable, authorization-based service catalog spanning IT, HR, facilities and fleet, runtime-generated ticket forms, multi-step approvals, an end-user knowledge base with keyword suggestions during ticket creation, ticket status overview, a news ticker for major disruptions, corporate-design branding, single sign-on and automatic CSAT surveys, with visibility restricted per customer or organizational unit. We found no public information on automated fulfilment such as password reset, a virtual agent, measured deflection, portal languages or accessibility conformance. 5 17 18

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Deployment, integrations & multi-client operation

How this is scored

How the product is run and connected: a cloud edition and an on-premise or open-source edition with feature parity stated, system requirements and update cadence, a documented REST API and webhooks, integrations with Microsoft 365, Teams, Entra ID, Slack, monitoring tools, RMM and remote support tools, single sign-on (SAML, OIDC) and SCIM, roles and permissions, multi-client or multi-tenant operation with separated data for MSPs, time and contract billing for MSPs, a migration path from other tools, and a public status page.

0 — No documented way to run, connect or administer the product.

3 — Runs as one edition with user roles and an email connection; the API, integrations and other editions are basic or not described.

5 — A documented REST API, integrations with Microsoft 365, Teams and Entra ID or Active Directory, single sign-on, role-based permissions, at least one monitoring or remote support integration, and either an on-premise edition or a stated hosting model with uptime terms.

8 — Cloud and on-premise or open-source editions with feature parity stated, webhooks and an integration marketplace, SCIM provisioning, multi-tenant operation with separated client data for MSPs, time and contract billing, named RMM and monitoring connectors, a documented migration from named tools, and a public status page with uptime history.

10 — Operation at scale and on the customer's terms: open-source code under a named licence or a self-hosted edition with full parity, configuration as code or a staging-to-production transport documented, an API covering every object, high availability and disaster recovery documented, and SLA and support terms published.

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The Service Desk Lead

One 100% open-source codebase runs on premise — with full control over all your data — or as a managed cloud service, with Docker installation recommended, downloads via Docker Hub, sources or FTP, and a published release cadence with support-end dates per version of at least three years. A REST/SOAP API with web services, authentication against Active Directory, LDAP or a customer database, single sign-on, role/group/ACL permissions, multi-client visibility separation and a step-by-step migration from OTRS are documented. We found no public information on webhooks, SCIM, monitoring or remote-support connectors, or a public status page. 6 7 17 19

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where tickets, attachments, user directories and CMDB data are stored and processed, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, email delivery, AI features, support and payment tools). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; a service desk holds personal data about every employee and often credentials and network details, so the whole chain counts, not only the database. An on-premise or open-source edition the customer runs on its own European servers counts as the customer's chain, whatever the vendor's seat.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (email delivery, AI features, support access, payment) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard, or the vendor is non-EU with an EU data centre option.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, BSI C5, SOC 2) stated — or an on-premise edition documented that keeps every record on the customer's own servers.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, or a self-hosted open-source edition with no call home, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Service Desk Lead

The contracting entity is Rother OSS GmbH, registered at Amtsgericht Straubing with its seat in Leiblfing, Germany, and on-premise operation is documented as keeping full control of all data, so records stay on the customer's own servers. The vendor's website, email system and support portal run in data centres in Germany and Switzerland, with named subprocessors (Rapidmail in Germany, Google under a signed data processing agreement) and contracts with the hosting providers. We found no public information on where the managed cloud service hosts customer data, product-level subprocessors, a customer data processing agreement, or security certifications. 7 9 10 19

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per agent, technician or analyst and tier, whether requesters and portal users are free, what counts as an asset or node and how it is priced, which modules (CMDB, change, asset discovery, AI, ESM) cost extra, the on-premise licence or subscription and its maintenance, the free or open-source edition and paid support, minimum term, onboarding and setup.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free edition exists, but how cost scales with agents, assets or modules is unclear.

5 — Tiers are public with their price per agent and main inclusions, but at least one commonly needed piece (asset packs, CMDB or discovery, AI features, on-premise licence, onboarding) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its scaling rule (agents, assets, clients), add-ons and asset packs priced, the on-premise licence and maintenance or the open-source support plans priced, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of agents, assets and modules, cloud or on premise, with every add-on, setup, training, support and overage fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Service Desk Lead

Three support tiers are published with exact annual prices — Entry 3.900€ pro Jahr, Professional 9.900€ pro Jahr, Enterprise 24.500€ pro Jahr — including support-entitled users, unlimited service agents and incidents, service-request quotas, response times and support hours, while the software downloads free with no license costs, add-ons are open source and free of charge, and there is explicitly no agent-based pricing. Managed-service hosting, consulting, training and migration pricing are not published, and minimum term and VAT treatment are not stated; we found no public information on setup or onboarding fees. 6 7 11 20

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Hosting options Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about OTOBO

Is OTOBO European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies OTOBO as EU-Made.

Where does OTOBO store data?

The default storage location for customer data is not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026. The vendor’s pages mention Germany and Switzerland as hosting locations, per the vendor’s page captured 1 Nov 2026.

Does OTOBO have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

What are the best alternatives to OTOBO?

As of 2 Nov 2026, the panel rates ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus (3.5/5), Xurrent ITSM (3/5) and GLPI (3/5) highest among the other 14 IT Service Management products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is GLPI (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: OTOBO alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (20)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Features page (ITSM) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Features page (incident management) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Features page (CMDB) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Features page (self-service portal) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Download page (open-source edition) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Support plans page (no prices) otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Security / trust page otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Legal notice otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Privacy policy otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Service desk, incidents & requests — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Service desk, incidents & requests — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Change, problem & release management — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Change, problem & release management — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Assets, CMDB & discovery — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  16. 16 Assets, CMDB & discovery — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  17. 17 Self-service portal & service catalog — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  18. 18 Self-service portal & service catalog — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  19. 19 Deployment, integrations & multi-client operation — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  20. 20 Deployment, integrations & multi-client operation — found from sitemap otobo.io Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →