Hipporello turns Linear into a customer-facing ticketing system: portal, form, and email submissions become Linear issues, your team replies from inside the issue, and customer replies stay attached to the same conversation. Customers never need a Linear seat — they work from a branded portal or their inbox while engineering works in Linear.
Linear is where many product and engineering teams already do their best work. Bugs get triaged, releases get planned, and most of the day-to-day moves from idea to shipped without anyone leaving the app.
Customer support tends to start somewhere else, though. A bug report lands in an inbox, a feature request arrives through a form, a CSM drops a note in Slack — and at some point someone has to turn all of that into an engineering issue with enough detail to act on. That handoff is the gap a Linear service desk closes — and it is what we built Hipporello Service Desk for Linear to handle.
Why Linear Teams Need a Service Desk Layer
Linear works well for the team that lives in it. The friction shows up at the edges. Product and engineering want to stay in Linear because it keeps work focused and visible. Customers want a simple place to report a bug, ask a question, attach a screenshot, and check what happened to their request.
When there is no dedicated intake layer between the two, support agents end up retyping details from one tool into another. Engineers inherit issues stripped of the context that would let them start.
Support workflow | What usually happens | Impact on the team | Impact on customers |
|---|---|---|---|
Email-only support | Requests arrive in a shared inbox and are manually rewritten as Linear issues. | Context is easy to drop, and duplicate work becomes normal. | Customers often have to ask for updates. |
Separate help desk plus Linear | Support agents work in one tool while engineers work in Linear. | Integrations may help, but teams still maintain two systems. | Customers get ticket updates, but product context can be separated from engineering work. |
Hipporello Service Desk for Linear | Customer submissions create Linear issues with their context attached. | Teams work from Linear while request details, attachments, and conversation history stay connected. | Customers use the portal or email instead of entering the Linear workspace. |
Exposing Linear directly to customers is not the aim here. Customers stay on a friendly, branded surface, and your team gets a clean, structured queue inside Linear. Keeping the two layers separate protects the focus of your engineering workspace while still giving support a real home.
What Hipporello Adds to Linear
Hipporello is built for teams that want to keep Linear as their system of record for product and engineering work while still running a proper Linear ticketing system for customers. It connects to your workspace and creates issues from customer-submitted forms and incoming support emails. Each issue carries the details that normally get lost in a handoff: form fields, attachments, requester information, company records, and message history.
Hipporello capability | What it adds to a Linear help desk |
|---|---|
Custom-branded portal | Customers get a dedicated place to submit requests, browse knowledge base articles, and track open tickets. The portal can be customized with logo, colors, domain, and layout options. |
Forms to Linear issues | Teams can collect structured information such as product area, reproduction steps, screenshots, severity, and expected behavior before the issue reaches Linear. |
Emails to Linear issues | Incoming support emails can create Linear issues, which removes the need to manually copy email threads into the backlog. |
Replies from Linear | Your team can respond from within the Linear issue, while customers receive updates through email or the portal. |
Contacts and companies | Hipporello includes a built-in company and contact database, giving teams a clearer view of who submitted the request and their request history. |
Automations (Premium plans) | Automations can help with acknowledgments, routing, escalation, SLA-related workflows, and follow-up steps. |
A few plan details are worth knowing before you roll this out. Every Hipporello plan for Linear includes:
public forms, form embedding, and a drag-and-drop form builder
emails to Linear, with inbound email addresses
unlimited agents, communication from inside Linear, and canned responses
The Free plan covers 5 Linear issues per month and opens with a 14-day Premium trial. Premium is listed at $10 per agent per month and adds unlimited issues, private forms, automations, custom field support, and custom notification settings, as detailed on the Hipporello pricing page.
How to Build a Customer Portal for Linear with Hipporello
Setup starts with the decision that shapes everything after it: where support requests should land in Linear. An admin authorizes Linear, picks the Linear team or project that should receive service desk issues, approves the required permissions, and then finishes configuration in the Hipporello Admin Panel.
1. Choose the Linear Destination for Support Issues
A support workflow runs more smoothly when incoming requests have a predictable home. Some teams use a dedicated Linear team for support escalation; others prefer a project, a triage flow, or a label-based setup. What you want to avoid is dumping customer issues into a general backlog where ownership is unclear. Hipporello lets you choose exactly which Linear team or project new service desk submissions are created in.
2. Create Structured Intake Forms
A ticket that says "it does not work" rarely gives engineering enough to start on. A better intake flow asks for the right details up front. A bug report form might request the affected product area, browser or device, steps to reproduce, expected behavior, actual behavior, severity, and screenshots.
Picture a customer who emails that the export button is greyed out on Safari. With a structured form, that report arrives with the browser, the affected feature, and a screenshot already filled in — so triage takes minutes instead of a back-and-forth. Once the form is submitted, Hipporello creates the Linear issue with all of that context attached.
3. Connect Support Email to Linear
Plenty of customers will still reach for email even when a portal exists. Hipporello can create Linear issues straight from incoming emails, which is handy for any team that already publishes a shared support address. It is the classic shared-inbox-for-Linear setup: a customer writes to your support address, your team gets a new issue, and the full thread stays attached to the work.
4. Customize the Customer Portal
The portal is the part customers actually see, so it should read like an extension of your product rather than an exposed back-office tool. In Hipporello, customers can submit requests, browse knowledge base articles, and track open tickets from a branded interface. Some branding options depend on the plan you are on — custom portal branding, a custom domain, SMTP, and removing Hipporello branding. Confirm the right plan before you publish the portal.
5. Reply from Linear and Close the Loop
Once a request becomes a Linear issue, your team handles it where product and engineering already operate. Hipporello keeps the customer conversation tied to that issue. You reply from Linear; the customer gets the update in whichever channel they started from and can answer right there. That is what most teams actually want from a service desk: customer communication that stays attached to the issue being worked, not a second system to babysit.
Where Linear Asks Fits
Linear Asks is a strong option when the requester is part of your internal workplace. It turns internal requests such as bug reports, questions, IT needs, feature ideas, HR requests, and operations work into Linear issues. It shines when employees already work in Slack or email: a teammate can create an Ask, even without a Linear account, and the request lands in the right Linear team's triage inbox.
For internal helpdesk-style work, Asks may be all you need. It supports:
Slack intake and emoji triggers
email intake and replies, with comment threads synced between Linear and Slack or email
templates, private Asks, and other workplace request flows
Asks is available on Business and Enterprise plans, with additional Advanced Linear Asks features on Enterprise. One concrete distinction is worth keeping in mind: web forms for Linear Asks require Linear's Enterprise plan, whereas Hipporello includes public web forms across its service desk plans.
So the line between the two is about who you are serving. Linear Asks is primarily for internal workplace requests coming through Slack and email. Hipporello fits when the requesters are external customers and the workflow needs a public or branded portal, support forms, email intake, customer and company records, and replies that revolve around Linear issues.
FAQ: Linear Service Desk and Customer Portal
Can Linear be used as a help desk?
Linear can track support-related product or engineering work, but on its own it is not a complete customer-facing help desk. Hipporello adds the portal, forms, email intake, contact and company records, and customer communication layer needed to run external support around Linear issues.
Can customers submit tickets to Linear without a Linear account?
Yes. With Hipporello, customers submit requests through a portal, forms, or email. Those requests become Linear issues for the internal team, and customers keep using the portal or email instead of entering the Linear workspace.
Can support emails become Linear issues?
Yes. Hipporello supports emails to Linear, including inbound email addresses and creating Linear issues directly from incoming mail.
Can my team reply to customers from Linear?
Yes. Teams reply from within the Linear issue. Customers receive updates by email or in the portal, and their replies sync back into the same conversation.
Does Hipporello support a branded customer portal for Linear?
Yes. Hipporello supports a custom-branded portal with logo, colors, domain, and layout options. Some branding features depend on the selected plan, so confirm the right Hipporello plan before launch.
Turn Linear into a Customer-Ready Support Workflow
Support breaks down when customer conversations live in one place and engineering work lives somewhere else. Hipporello connects those layers without forcing customers into Linear or pushing engineers into a separate ticketing system. Submissions become Linear issues; your team manages the work and replies without leaving Linear.
Ready to connect customer requests to Linear? Start with Hipporello Service Desk for Linear and pick the plan that matches your workflow on the pricing page.
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