Freshdesk vs Spiceworks comparison

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Freshdesk

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Spiceworks and Freshdesk compete in the inventory and helpdesk software market. Freshdesk seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive integration capabilities and support for multiple communication channels, although at a higher price than Spiceworks, which is free.

Features: Spiceworks offers a free inventory and helpdesk tool with network and device inventory scans, basic time and cost tracking, and a ticketing system. Freshdesk, by contrast, has polished integration capabilities, support for multiple communication channels, and customizable reporting that enhance its ticket automation systems.

Room for Improvement: Spiceworks faces criticism for its dated interface and limited scalability and integration features in large environments. Freshdesk's areas for improvement include additional costs for full integration with social media and certain lacking automation flows. Enhancements could make it more user-friendly for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Spiceworks operates on-premises, facing scaling issues in larger environments but benefits from strong community-driven support. Freshdesk is cloud-based, offering quicker deployment and scalability, although some users report limitations with its support system.

Pricing and ROI: Spiceworks provides an excellent ROI as a completely free solution, ideal for SMBs not requiring extensive IT service management tools. Freshdesk, requiring a subscription, justifies its higher costs with extensive feature sets and integration capabilities, appealing to organizations needing robust functionalities.

To learn more, read our detailed Freshdesk vs. Spiceworks Report (Updated: December 2024).

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Freshdesk vs. Spiceworks

December 2024

Helped 823,875 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (6th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (4th)

Spiceworks

Ranking in Help Desk Software

17th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.9%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spiceworks is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Alexey Timchenko

Senior Vice President Information Technology at TASC Towers

Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable

Automation and ticket routing rules in Freshdesk save us daily by streamlining routine tasks. We use reports to identify issues, allocate resources, and continuously improve our processes. It is a vital part of our daily operations, helping us stay proactive and efficient in handling various types of tickets. The reporting and analytics tools in Freshdesk are effective for measuring customer service performance. While our current subscription level has some limitations in terms of reporting, the next level provides more options. Budget constraints currently prevent us from upgrading, but the available reporting features still meet our basic needs. I highly recommend Freshdesk, especially for companies in their early stages. It is user-friendly, easy to configure, and great for those with a moderate volume of customer requests. The cost is reasonable, making it a quick and efficient solution to implement. Overall, I would rate Freshdesk as an eight out of ten.

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Hassan Zia

IT Service Desk Manager (Global Delivery) at MLOGICA, INC.

Good low-cost service desk system, but lacks in automation workflows and categorization

One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows. For example, in another solution called ServiceDesk by ManageEngine, you can have levels of approval in the event that there is a request for new software, or when someone requests a VPN or WiFi connection. This kind of multi-stage approval feature provided by ServiceDesk does not appear to exist in Spiceworks, and it is one of their main shortcomings for me. There are also several other automation features in ServiceDesk that are not present in Spiceworks. Another feature that I have always wanted in Spiceworks is categorization. Let's suppose that I select a certain piece of software within Spiceworks, and I want to see the subcategories, Spiceworks should be able to auto-populate those subcategories. This is unfortunately not possible within Spiceworks at the moment.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."

"It generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests."

"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."

"The organization that is possible with other departments is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"I like that it's very user-friendly. The way they designed this application, any layperson can just do some drag and drop actions and use it. It's not that difficult. It's also easy to implement. The most important thing is, you don't need to go to this application to create a ticket. You just send out an email, and the ticket is created automatically. I have never seen a feature like this before."

"The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well."

"Omnichannel is one of the most valuable features of the solution."

"I used Freshdesk for communication with the clients, such as real-time chats."

More Freshdesk pros

"The solution is easy to use and easy to manage."

"Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product."

"It was easy to integrate Spiceworks with our existing setup."

"Spiceworks is generic and free."

"The solution is very stable. It's reliable and efficient."

"It shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know up front."

"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space."

"The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful."

More Spiceworks pros

Cons

"Asset management and branding are two areas in the solution that have scope for improvement."

"If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."

"The dashboards are useful but could be so much better. As a product manager, and data scientist, we couldn't use the dashboard for analytics and had to move the data in Power BI."

"Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."

"Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs."

"I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution."

"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities."

"There are a few things we have asked for, like a forward button. When a ticket comes in, we forward it, but it doesn't sync up with the forward. That is the one they have to rework. The other is when we forward the ticket, it doesn't go all, or certain things don't go with it. We have told them about it, and they are working on it. It would be better if they gave us a more standard reporting template. Although they already have some, many aren't usable. It would be easier if we had more templates to work with."

More Freshdesk cons

"Once a device was recognized on the network, Spiceworks never got rid of it even after you took it off the network. You had to go in and manually remove it."

"The SNMP sniffer requires a lot of work to get right."

"There are a lot of disadvantages to Spiceworks because it's not an agent-based solution."

"I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging. When I click a note or a device, I should be able to see more details about the router and modem. For example, I want to see the version, downtime, availability, latency, etc. I should have easy access to everything about our assets at a glance."

"The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice."

"I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves."

"One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows. For example, in another solution called ServiceDesk by ManageEngine, you can have levels of approval in the event that there is a request for new software, or when someone requests a VPN or WiFi connection. This kind of multi-stage approval feature provided by ServiceDesk does not appear to exist in Spiceworks, and it is one of their main shortcomings for me."

"Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good."

More Spiceworks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."

"The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."

"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."

"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."

"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."

"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."

"It is costly."

"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."

More Freshdesk pricing and cost advice

"It's free."

"The product is free! Get it now."

"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."

"The tool is cheap."

"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."

See which vendors are best for you

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Real Estate/Law Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Freshdesk?

Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.

What needs improvement with Freshdesk?

Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs. Despite having third-part...

What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?

The customer's primary use case for Freshdesk is handling emails and social media queries. It is mostly used for managing transactional queries such as deposits and withdrawals. Our support team is...

What do you like most about Spiceworks?

The solution is easy to use and easy to manage.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spiceworks?

The tool is cheap.

What needs improvement with Spiceworks?

The GUI must be improved. The GUI looks old-fashioned. The vendor must do some web development for it.

JIRA Service Management vs Freshdesk

Comparisons

ServiceNow vs Freshdesk

Compared 25% of the time

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Freshdesk

Compared 9% of the time

BoldDesk vs Freshdesk

Compared 5% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs Freshdesk

Compared 5% of the time

More Freshdesk Competitors

Zabbix vs Spiceworks

Compared 31% of the time

Lansweeper vs Spiceworks

Compared 24% of the time

ServiceNow vs Spiceworks

Compared 23% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs Spiceworks

Compared 7% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Spiceworks

Compared 4% of the time

More Spiceworks Competitors

Product Reports

Download Freshdesk product report

Freshdesk

December 2024

Download Spiceworks product report

November 2024

Learn More

Freshworks

Overview

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that provides organizations with the features necessary to effectively streamline their support processes. This includes powerful multichannel capability, integrated game mechanics, smart automations, and more.

The solution is designed to automate agent workflows and resolve routine questions using AI and bots. Freshdesk allows managers to prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets to their agents, making it easy for them to collaborate and quickly respond to customers.

Freshdesk Features and Benefits

Some of the solution's top features and benefits include:

Simplified ticketing: With Freshdesk, you can easily prioritize, manage, and assign trackable tickets. The management system ensures that multiple agents don’t work on the same ticket by accident. You can easily set deadlines for ticket resolution based on specific categories and create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.

Automation: Automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords and requests and set up automated repeated actions and provide quick, consistent responses to common questions using pre-formatted replies. In addition, you can choose to prevent the reopening of tickets when customers reply with a thank you.

Improved collaboration: Share tickets with other teams while retaining full visibility into the progress being made on the issue. Related tickets can be linked together to better keep track of the big picture. Tickets can also be split into smaller child tickets and assigned to multiple agents to help resolve complex, multi-stage issues.

Build up your knowledge base: Create effective support documentation by enabling agents to convert their ticket replies into knowledge base articles, while they reply.

Metrics and reporting: See how different agents and groups are performing by viewing various help desk metrics and improve performance by identifying problems based on insights.

With Freshdesk’s reporting tools, you can schedule the periodic delivery of out-of-the-box and custom reports to your inbox. The solution’s customer satisfaction reports provide you with feedback on how your customers rate your support.

Forum moderation: Set up moderation workflows to ensure that forum posts that violate your guidelines are not immediately published. Critical issues raised in the community are automatically converted into tickets to ensure they get the required response.
Integration: Freshdesk’s open API can be used to integrate the solution with multiple third-party systems.

Comprehensive security: Freshdesk’s security features allow you to:
- Set custom access permissions for agents.
- Perform comprehensive audits of networks and systems.
- Secure your own support domain or vanity URL with custom SSL certificates.
- Whitelist IP ranges and restrict login access outside of work, or link IP whitelisting to a VPN.
- Set up SSO scripts for credential authentication.

Reviews from Real Users

Freshdesk stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its effective ticketing system and its intuitive interface.

Deepak B., an application manager, writes, “Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings.”

From network inventory and network monitoring to help desk software, and mobile device management (MDM) to cloud services detection, Spiceworks helps you manage everything about your IT workday from one easy place.

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember

Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino