Email helpdesk software, built for small UK teams.
Solves turns shared inboxes like support@, info@ and accounts@ into owned support tickets, with a clear owner, a state, public replies, private notes, first-response and resolution SLA timers, and reports, across every brand you run, in one queue. It is email-first by design, so a small team gets accountability without an enterprise contact centre.
Inside a ticket
Replies to customers, notes to colleagues, never crossed
Every email becomes an owned ticket where a public reply goes to the customer and a private note stays internal, kept hard apart so a note never reaches the customer by accident. One owner, one accountable thread.
- Public replies and private notes are hard-separated on the ticket
- An owner and a state make the next move clear and accountable
- A wrong-brand send guard locks the composer to the ticket's brand
The short answer
What the best email helpdesk does for a small team
A support ticket system takes the email your team already sends and receives and adds just enough structure to make it accountable: an owner per message, a state you can trust, a private place to talk to colleagues, and a timer that tracks your response targets. Solves is that, email-first, for a small UK team that has outgrown a shared inbox but does not want a contact centre.
The workflow is short on purpose. You connect a support mailbox. Every email that arrives becomes a ticket with an owner and a state, so two people never answer the same message and nothing slips through. You reply to the customer with a public reply, or talk to a colleague with a private note the customer never sees. A first-response and a resolution timer count down to the target you set, and a breaching view surfaces what is overdue. Reports show the backlog, the ageing and your response times. And all of this works across every brand you support, in one unified queue.
That is the whole loop: connect a mailbox, email becomes an owned ticket, reply in public or note in private, let the timers and reports keep you honest, and do it for as many brands as you run. Everything below is shipped today. Where a feature is on the roadmap, we say so plainly.
What you get
Everything a shared inbox should have done
Each capability has a page of its own. These are shipped, not coming soon.
Shared inbox ticketing
Forward a support address in and every email becomes an owned ticket with a state, a priority and tags, so the queue stays accountable instead of chaotic.
How ticketing worksMulti-brand support
Run several customer-facing brands from one login and one queue, each with its own mailbox, signature and saved replies, and a guard against replying as the wrong brand.
See multi-brandPublic replies, private notes
A hard separation between what the customer reads and what your team says internally, with a wrong-brand send guard and stale-reply prevention so mistakes are structurally hard.
Replies vs notesSLA timers
First-response and resolution timers with per-brand or organisation targets, plus a breaching view and ageing so nothing rots quietly.
How SLAs workEmail deliverability
Guided, forwarding-first mailbox setup with copyable DNS, so replies land in the inbox not the spam folder. Live sending stays blocked until a mailbox is verified.
Deliverability setupSaved replies
Reusable answers scoped to a single brand or shared across the whole organisation, so the right wording and tone reach the right customers without copy-paste from a doc.
Reports
Open backlog, ageing, waiting, first response, resolution and created-versus-resolved, all filterable by brand, so you can see the queue clearly and spot trouble before a customer does.
Freshdesk import
Bring contacts, saved replies, open tickets and their conversations into a chosen brand, with a preview before you commit, encrypted credentials and private notes that stay private.
Team permissions
Role presets, per-brand access and ticket visibility decide who can reply, who can only add notes and who can manage a brand, without learning an enterprise role builder.
How it works
From shared inbox to owned tickets in three steps
No migration weekend, no rip-and-replace. You keep replying by email.
Connect a mailbox
Add your support address and follow the plain-English, forwarding-first setup with copyable DNS. Forward mail in straight away; live sending stays blocked until the mailbox is verified or a founder override is recorded.
Email becomes an owned ticket
Each incoming email lands as a ticket with a state, ready to be assigned. Pick it up, set a priority, add tags, and reply in public or leave a private note for a colleague. The customer only ever sees public replies.
Let timers and reports keep you honest
First-response and resolution timers count down to the target you set. The breaching view flags anything at risk, and reports show backlog, ageing and response times, across every brand.
The states
A ticket lifecycle a small team can actually trust
A shared inbox fails because read does not mean handled and a flag does not mean owned. Solves gives every ticket a state you can rely on, so a glance at the queue tells the truth:
| New | Just arrived, no owner yet. The freshest work, waiting to be picked up. |
|---|---|
| Open | Owned and in progress, with a person responsible for the next move. |
| Waiting for Customer | The ball is with the customer. The ticket sits here, off the active queue, until they reply. |
| Snoozed | Parked until a chosen time, then back in the queue without anyone having to remember. |
| Resolved | Answered and closed off, but still easy to reopen if the customer comes back. |
| Closed | Fully done. The full history stays in the contact record, grouped by brand. |
Alongside states, every ticket carries an owner, a priority and tags, and a metadata audit history that records what happened and when, without ever logging the message body. Enough structure to be accountable, little enough to stay close to email.
Replies and notes
The difference between a public reply and a private note
The single most useful thing a helpdesk adds over a shared inbox is a safe place to talk to colleagues. In Solves a public reply goes to the customer over email, and a private note is internal only, with a hard separation so an internal note cannot reach the customer by accident.
Guards that stop the classic mistakes
Light collaborators can be limited to notes only, so a helper who picks up overflow can chip in without any risk of emailing a customer. A wrong-brand send guard locks the composer to the ticket's brand and mailbox, so a reply for one brand cannot go out as another. And stale-reply prevention warns you when the conversation has moved on since you started typing.
Saved replies make the common answers quick, scoped to a single brand or shared across the organisation. None of this needs training; if your team can send email, they can work a Solves ticket.
Reports and history
See the queue clearly, and trust what happened
A shared inbox hides the numbers that matter. Solves surfaces them without a spreadsheet. The reports cover the open backlog, ageing, the tickets waiting on you, first-response and resolution times, and created-versus-resolved over a period, so you can tell at a glance whether the queue is keeping pace or quietly growing. Every report filters by brand, so a busy brand never masks a struggling one.
The first-response and resolution timers measure against the targets you set, per brand or for the whole organisation, so the figures in your reports match the commitments you have made. The breaching view turns those numbers into a worklist: anything at risk of missing its SLA rises to the top, so the next action is obvious rather than buried.
Underneath every ticket sits a metadata audit history: who took ownership, when a state changed, when a reply went out and which brand it went out as. It records what happened and when, so a handover or a dispute has a clear trail, and it never stores the message body, in keeping with encrypted-at-rest content and metadata-only logging. You get accountability you can show, without turning the desk into a surveillance tool.
Honest comparison
Solves vs a broad helpdesk suite
Where an email-first desk fits a small UK team, and where a broader suite is the better choice.
| Solves | Broad helpdesk suite | |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Email support, done well | Many channels at once |
| Owned tickets, states, notes, SLAs | Included and email-first | Included, amid a lot more |
| Several brands in one login | Core to the product | Often a higher-tier add-on |
| How you pay | GBP team bands, ex VAT, no per-seat penalty | Usually per agent, per month |
| Live chat, phone and social | Not included, by design | Often available as add-ons |
| Best fit | Small UK teams on support email | Larger teams needing many channels |
Competitor facts last verified 13 June 2026. Re-check the vendor's current plans before deciding.
Solves does not claim feature parity with a full contact-centre suite, and does not win for large teams that need phone, live chat or social at scale. If those channels are central to your support, a broader platform is the better fit.
Email-first, on purpose
Solves handles support email: tickets, ownership, notes, SLAs, reports and multi-brand. It does not do live chat, phone or social inboxes, and it is not a contact-centre suite. Some adjacent features such as customer satisfaction surveys, a customer portal and a knowledge base are on the roadmap and described as coming, never as live. That focus is why a small team can run real support without drowning in channels.
FAQ
Email helpdesk questions
What is the best email helpdesk software for a small UK team?
For a small UK team that has outgrown a shared inbox, the best email helpdesk turns support email into owned, trackable tickets without the cost and complexity of an enterprise contact centre. Solves does exactly that: it takes addresses like support@, info@ and accounts@ and turns each message into an owned ticket with a state, an owner, public replies and private notes, first-response and resolution SLA timers, and reports, across every brand you run, in one queue. It is email-first by design, so it stays simple.
What is the best helpdesk software overall?
There is no single best helpdesk for everyone. The right choice depends on your channels and team size. If you need phone lines, live chat and social inboxes for a large team, a broad contact-centre suite fits better. If your support genuinely happens over email and you want owned tickets, notes, SLAs and multi-brand without per-seat penalties or features you will never use, an email-first desk like Solves is a better and cheaper fit for a small UK team.
Does Outlook have a ticketing system?
Outlook on its own is a mailbox, not a ticketing system. It has folders, categories and rules, but no owner per message, no ticket states, no SLA timers and no private notes separated from the customer. Teams often bolt shared mailboxes and flags onto Outlook to fake a queue, and it works until two people reply to the same email or a note meant for a colleague reaches the customer. A helpdesk adds ownership, states, notes and timers on top of the same email, which is what Solves does: forward your support address in and keep replying by email.
What is the easiest email program for handling support?
If by easiest you mean the least to learn, a plain inbox wins until the volume grows; after that it quietly costs you missed replies and duplicated work. The easiest support tool is the one that keeps the email feel your team already knows while adding just enough structure: an owner, a state and a note. Solves is deliberately email-first and avoids an enterprise role builder, so the day-to-day stays close to email, and setup is forwarding-first.
Is Solves a support ticket system or a shared inbox?
Both, joined up. Solves takes a shared support address and turns each email into a support ticket: an owner, a state, a priority, tags, public replies and private notes. So you get the simplicity of a shared inbox with the accountability of a ticket system, without choosing between the two. Every ticket is scoped to its brand and to the people allowed to see it.
What does Solves not do?
Solves is email-first, so it does not run live chat, phone or voice, WhatsApp or social inboxes, and it is not a contact-centre suite. Some adjacent features are on the roadmap and described as coming, not live: customer satisfaction surveys, a customer portal, a knowledge base, custom forms and AI-assisted drafting. We would rather ship a focused email helpdesk that does its job well than a broad tool that does many jobs poorly.
Turn your support inbox into owned tickets
Start at £29, or let us help you connect your mailboxes and set up your brands.