IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs Sendbird comparison

IBM and Sendbird are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. IBM is ranked #27, while Sendbird is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 0.7% mindshare in HDS, compared to Sendbird’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sendbird users who would recommend it.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews

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197 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Sendbird

Read 7 Sendbird reviews

76 Views
21 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Sendbird

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and Sendbird compete in IT service management and communication solutions. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has a stronger position due to its comprehensive IT management capabilities, while Sendbird enhances user interactions with robust chat features.

Features: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers IT asset management, service catalog, and incident problem management for complex IT needs. Sendbird provides advanced messaging, chat support, and real-time communication for customer engagement.

Room for Improvement: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk could enhance its user interface, reduce complexity in configuration, and improve integration capabilities. Sendbird might benefit from expanding its API documentation, improving customer support response times, and enhancing scalability for growing user bases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk deploys on-premises or private cloud with customization options and support. Sendbird operates on a cloud-based model for scalability and reduced deployment time, with customer service in line with agile release cycles.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has higher setup costs but high ROI through efficient IT management. Sendbird offers flexible subscription plans for quicker ROI via enhanced customer interaction.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird

April 2025

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Helped 846,617 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

27th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Sendbird

Ranking in Help Desk Software

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Social Software (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 0.7%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sendbird is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Jose Pedro Muñoz

Director of operations at Vetasi

Helps standardize our workflow, track client tickets, and it's very flexible

Initially we used HPE Service Desk. Then, Remedy (IBM SmartCloud Control Desk) version 5. When selecting a vendor, the most important thing for us is the flexibility of the tool. It must be very flexible to change the workflow or to add new workflows for the clients. It must have stability and scalability as well.

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Pranay Koley

Junior Software Developer at Weavers Web Solutions Private Limited

Facilitates user communication with rich features

In our company, we are using Sendbird for building a chat feature within our salon application. I am using the Flutter framework to implement the chat feature, which facilitates communication between users and businesses, specifically salon shops There are many useful features with Sendbird. I…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."

"What I like about the Control Desk is that everything is centralized. You have all the requests in one place, you know which ones are for whom and who is working on them."

"A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset in the company and from which date."

"The workflow capability is useful. It's not a manual helpdesk operation. It's fully automated, even when an alarm has occurred. It covers the complete cycle of initiation to resolving the events. This is its most strong feature that is easily integrable with a monitoring solution. It creates tickets, and the workflow feature is the most important one."

"The solution has been stable."

"The most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs. That's the most important for us."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

"The brand name is the most valuable aspect of this solution for me. It's IBM. It's a global company that supports this product, it's not something open source or something like that."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"Features similar to WhatsApp, such as online and offline statuses, message reactions, and replies, add significant value."

"The most valuable feature for us, besides chat, was file transfer, as we used it for sending files and images in chats."

"The Sendbird developer portal provides each step, including methods, making it easy to implement."

"Sendbird is very flexible, and they have made great strides towards optimization."

"There are many useful features with Sendbird."

"Sendbird is reliable and generally crash-free."

"The backend system was managed by Sendbird, eliminating the need for caching systems or local storage on user devices."

"Sendbird provides many features for real-time messaging, such as receipt ID and typing indicators."

Cons

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"The user interface is not very interesting. If you look at other products like JIRA and ServiceNow, they have made it much easier for the end-users. Maybe not ServiceNow, but JIRA is quite flexible. From a presentation point of view, IBM should make more user-friendly interfaces."

"The main issue that we hear from our customers is that the self-service user interface is a little bit old, possibly due to the fact that IBM is such a large enterprise company. People say that they think they're in the year 2004, because you can very clearly see that the technology is lagging behind modern trends."

"The time calculations can be improved. While working on reports, it was taking the time only in seconds, which was hard for me to work out. While creating some dialogs in the service portal, you have to use certain data types in some fields. It was very tricky to make them work. I was testing a certain type of input, and it didn't work. It didn't show me the domain that the fields have to show. I had to make the change to the database, and only then it worked. It was a tricky thing to make them work with the dialogs. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."

"Support has been the biggest problem for us. I understand that because we use the product of a global company, some changes are not quick to deploy."

"Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. It does work as it should and it's good, but they should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user."

"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"Impersonating a user or using a template user to send messages for development purposes would be very useful."

"The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information."

"The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information. Initially, I struggled to connect users and manage tokens for active and offline sessions, which caused frustration."

"Their pricing is very high compared to competitors, which is a concern for us."

"A major issue was the requirement for a separate connection to Sendbird, resulting in a delay when initiating the chat."

"At times, there are unexpected behaviors where the documentation suggests something different from how the SDK actually behaves, requiring us to create workarounds."

"I thought that there should be the audio and the video call functionality as well."

"More analytics tools could be integrated into Sendbird."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's basically for a big company because of the costs. A small company can't afford the licensing cost. For medium and large companies, it's the best product. The price of the license is on the higher side compared to others."

"The licensing we have for IBM Control Desk is on a yearly basis. They have a concurrent license and an administrative license. And with these, you get all the products. There aren't any additional fees for extra add-ons or anything like that."

"The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a yearly license. There's no additional cost. It's just the license that you need to pay for to use IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"There is a starter plan for $399 per month, and a pro plan for $799 dollars."

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Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sendbird?

Testing Sendbird is challenging due to the trial limitations of only one hundred users. The subscription cost is quite high, which prevents us from subscribing before the project completion and use...

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What needs improvement with Sendbird?

The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information. Initially, I struggled to connect users and manage tokens for active and offline sessions, which caused...

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Comparisons

ServiceNow vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Social Software

April 2025

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Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

Sendbird Calls, Sendbird Desk

Overview

IBM Control Desk on Cloud offer an access to a user friendly self-service, automated service management, and seamlessly-integrated, best-practice based service desk capabilities. IBM Control Desk provides the IT service management (ITSM) needed to simplify support of users and infrastructure. It also offers a unified IT asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets and enables control, governance and compliance to applications, endpoints and assets to protect critical data and prevent outages. Control Desk is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-compliant, accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools.

IBM

Businesses utilize Sendbird for real-time communication in apps, including chat, notifications, messaging for support, and community engagement. It integrates with mobile and web platforms for seamless user interactions and reliable messaging services.

Sendbird is highly regarded for its ease of integration with both mobile and web platforms, providing a robust solution for real-time communication needs such as chat, notifications, and customer support messaging systems. Companies use it to enhance user engagement through efficient, reliable messaging services. The platform stands out due to its strong API, reliable performance, excellent customer support, and extensive documentation. Despite challenges with scalability during peak times and integration difficulties, Sendbird's customization options and real-time messaging capabilities cater to both small and large applications.

What are the key features?

Strong API: Provides a powerful and flexible interface for developers.
Reliable Performance: Ensures stable and consistent operations.
Excellent Customer Support: Offers responsive and helpful assistance.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with other platforms.
Extensive Documentation: Enhances the developer experience with thorough guides and resources.
Customization Options: Allows tailoring to specific needs and use cases.
Real-Time Messaging: Supports instant communication capabilities.
Easy Scalability: Handles growth for both small and large applications.

What benefits should users look for?

Enhanced User Engagement: Promotes active interaction and satisfaction.
Efficient Communication: Provides reliable messaging and notifications.
Developer-Friendly: Offers strong support and comprehensive documentation.
Scalability: Adapts to the changing demands of the business.
Seamless Integration: Simplifies the integration process with other platforms.

Sendbird is widely implemented across a range of industries such as e-commerce, healthcare, and social networking. E-commerce platforms use it to handle customer support and notifications, healthcare apps utilize it for patient communication, and social networks leverage its real-time chat capabilities for community engagement and interaction.

Sendbird

Sample Customers

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird

April 2025

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