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) — on Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook/Microsoft 365, or any IMAP provider.
• 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. 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 — and if a teammate invited you, see Accept an invitation rather than signing up.

2. Tell Kit about your business

Kit is your AI support agent. The onboarding wizard asks a few quick questions so Kit 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.

Then set your existing support mailbox to forward to that address (Gmail, Outlook, Google Workspace, Yahoo, and others — step-by-step in the How to set up forwarding guide on the screen). Click Continue. Every message your customers send is then turned into a ticket automatically.

ℹ️ Onboarding sets up forwarding only. To connect your mailbox directly instead, go to Settings → Channels → Email after onboarding and choose Connect your email account. You either sign in to your email account or enter your IMAP details. See Set up email forwarding for the forwarding steps.

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 — Kit 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.