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Freshdesk vs Spiceworks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (5th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (4th)
Spiceworks
Ranking in Help Desk Software
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (47th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 4.0%, 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 26, 2024
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.
Hassan Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 4, 2022
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."
"We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources."
"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."
"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 is very easy to make reports."
"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
"The UI is easy to use."
"There is the option to create different roles for specific users. We make use of groups for each customer service team which has been very effective. We are able to apply different sets of rules for each group which determines how they interact with customers and escalate issues."
"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."
"It's easy to understand."
"It was easy to integrate Spiceworks with our existing setup."
"If you're in the market for a low-cost service desk system, Spiceworks is a good software solution to start out with, especially when it comes to startups and those organizations that don't currently have any existing service desk software in place."
"The solution is very stable. It's reliable and efficient."
"Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product."
"The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful."
"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."
 

Cons

"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities."
"It would be helpful to pull reports or schedule them based on agents, users, ticket numbers, or responses."
"For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."
"Asset management and branding are two areas in the solution that have scope for improvement."
"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."
"We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."
"There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."
"I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets."
"Sometimes, it can be difficult to integrate what you need."
"Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable."
"The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice."
"With Spiceworks, like, when I open the websites, I have to Zoom in. I need to zoom in on those websites sometimes because it makes it horrible to use."
"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 a lot of disadvantages to Spiceworks because it's not an agent-based solution."
"The SNMP sniffer requires a lot of work to get right."
"Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"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."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"It is costly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's free."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

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?
The solution's inbound calls could be improved.
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
I use Freshdesk to manage IT support tickets for our team of 15 IT professionals across multiple countries. It has been effective in ticket management, and we find the price-to-functionality ratio ...
What do you like most about Spiceworks?
The solution is easy to use and easy to manage.
What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
The GUI must be improved. The GUI looks old-fashioned. The vendor must do some web development for it.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshdesk vs. Spiceworks and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.