Getting started with LittleDesk

This walkthrough takes you from nothing to a working helpdesk: your support email flowing in as tickets, and your team invited. It takes about 15 minutes, and most of it is a guided wizard.

🎬 Companion video: V2 — Connect your email and go (coming soon)

Before you start

• The support email address your customers already write to (e.g. support@yourcompany.com), with any email provider that can forward mail.
• Optionally, the email addresses of teammates you want to invite.

1. Create your account

Go to /signup. First tick the box to agree to the terms — it's required, and gates every sign-up method. Then choose how to sign up:

• Sign up with Google — fastest; approve with your Google account.
• Sign up with email — opens a short form: Your name, Email, Password (8–128 characters), and Company name (this names your workspace). Click Create account.

With email, you're signed in automatically and taken straight into onboarding, and we email you a link to confirm your address. Until you open it, a banner at the top of each page says so, and inviting teammates, starting the free trial, adding a payment method and adding custom tools or webhooks wait. The link works for 24 hours, and Send the link again in the banner sends a new one. Open it on a device where you're not signed in and it asks for your password first. With Google, you first see No organization yet. Click Create organization, enter your Company name, and click Continue to setup to start onboarding.

ℹ️ Already have an account? Use Sign in instead. If you were invited to an organization, open the invitation link in your email. Signing up with email here creates a new organization rather than joining that one. The steps are under How do I accept an invitation? in the getting started how-to.

2. Tell the AI about your business

The AI answers your customers for you. The onboarding wizard asks a few quick questions so the AI can set up sensible categories, routing, and response targets. Click Get started, then work through:

1. What kind of business do you run? — pick all that apply.
2. What does your business involve? — products, subscriptions, bookings, etc.
3. How big is your support team? — Just me / 2–5 people / 6–10 people / 10+ people.
4. What do your customers reach out about? — these become your ticket categories.
5. How fast do your customers expect a reply? — sets your response-time target.

Each question offers Skip for now, and you can change any of this later in Settings. Use Back to revisit a step.

3. Set up your workspace and support email

This is the one must-do step — you can't skip it, and once it's set up, customer emails become tickets automatically. Two things on one screen:

1. Name your workspace — choose a short name (your subdomain), e.g. acme. Your support addresses live on it (support@acme.littledesk.io), your replies send from it, and it's the link to your customer portal. You can change it later, but after each change you have to wait 30 days before the next one. Changing it here counts as a change.
2. Set up your forwarding email — pick the local part of your support address (support is standard, but you can change it) to get your full address, e.g. support@acme.littledesk.io.

Click Continue. The step shows Setting up while your address gets ready, which usually takes a few seconds, then says it's ready and shows the How to set up forwarding guide. Set your existing support mailbox to forward to that address now: Gmail, Outlook, Google Workspace, Yahoo, and others are covered step by step. Then click Continue again. Every message your customers send is turned into a ticket automatically.

4. Build and open your helpdesk

Continue to the last steps:

• What tools do you use, and how else do customers reach you? — optional; helps recommend integrations later.
• Here's what we'll build for you — review your choices (use Edit on any row to change one), then click Build my helpdesk.
• Your helpdesk is ready — the AI shows what it set up (categories, any teams, workflows, and response-time targets). Click Open your helpdesk.

You land in My Inbox.

5. Invite your team

Go to Settings → Teams & Members. Under Team members, click Add teammates. Then:

1. Enter a teammate's email address.
2. Pick their role. Agent is the default. See roles for what each role can do.
3. To invite more people at once, click Add another and repeat.
4. Click Confirm & send.

Each person gets an email invitation. When they accept, they join with the role you chose.

ℹ️ Admins and agents each take a paid seat, so the dialog shows what the new seats cost before you confirm, and confirming can charge your card. Collaborators are free. On the Free plan with no trial, the dialog asks you to Choose a plan → before you can invite anyone.

You're done

You now have a live helpdesk: support email arriving as tickets, AI categories and response targets in place, and your team invited. To check, send a test email to your support address. New tickets that nobody is assigned to show in the Unassigned section of My Inbox.

Next steps

• Send from your own domain (instead of your {slug}.littledesk.io subdomain) and verify DNS — Channels.
• Understand roles (admin, agent, collaborator) before inviting more people — Teams.
• Work your first tickets — the agent inbox.