IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

IBM and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. IBM is ranked #27, while SolarWinds is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 0.7% mindshare in HDS, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews

401 Views
197 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Read 7 SolarWinds Web Help Desk reviews

632 Views
294 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and SolarWinds Web Help Desk both compete in IT service management solutions. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk appears to have an advantage with its comprehensive features, while SolarWinds Web Help Desk is favored for ease of use.

Features: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers robust IT service management, extensive asset management, and high customization options. SolarWinds Web Help Desk provides an intuitive ticketing system, integration with third-party applications, and automated workflows.

Room for Improvement: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk can improve in ease of deployment, user interface complexity, and integration simplicity. SolarWinds Web Help Desk could benefit from enhanced asset management features, broader customization options, and more advanced reporting capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Web Help Desk is known for simpler deployment and responsive customer service, appealing to organizations seeking minimal downtime. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk requires more configuration, but offers detailed customer support and extensive documentation.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has a higher initial setup cost, justified by its advanced features and potential for long-term savings. SolarWinds Web Help Desk presents a more affordable setup cost with quicker ROI, making it ideal for budget-conscious organizations needing essential IT help desk functionalities.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk

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

SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

18th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 SolarWinds Web Help Desk is 1.3%, up from 0.8% 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.

Read full review

Shadi Shaar

Healthcare Informatics Consultant at Dammam University

Supports case and incident reporting with responsive support

Some features in the product are supposed to run. However, if they don't, it may require some time to configure or fix them, such as asset management. We have been struggling with asset management in SolarWinds Web Help Desk. The software offers a range of features that we haven't fully utilized, such as inventory management and an approval system. While we are utilizing the asset management functionality, there have been some defects that need addressing. Some users prefer to have another big interface, but unfortunately, this option is not available in SolarWinds Web Help Desk.

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

"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 solution is very easy to work with."

"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."

"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in."

"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 has been stable."

"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."

"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

"It is easy to use."

"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."

"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."

"Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."

"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."

"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 solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"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."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"This solution needs to have mobile application support added."

"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk."

"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."

"A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."

"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 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."

"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."

"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

75%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

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What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

SolarWinds Web Help Desk is a case management system. Each user logs their concerns or problems into the portal, which are then assigned to one of our support engineers responsible for managing the...

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What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

SolarWinds Web Help Desk could be beneficial for generating automated responses, such as ONIQ. Since we receive multiple cases from similar backgrounds, it would streamline the process if the syste...

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Comparisons

ServiceNow vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 100% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

Zendesk vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Compared 27% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Compared 22% of the time

ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Compared 20% of the time

N-able MSP Manager vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Compared 16% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Compared 15% of the time

More SolarWinds Web Help Desk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

April 2025

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

March 2025

Download SolarWinds Web Help Desk product report

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

No data available

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

SolarWinds Web Help Desk simplifies service management with unified ticketing, asset, knowledge, and change management. Key features include:

Maintain asset inventory by managing the use, availability, and health of IT assets, and tracking this over time.
Control change management, It regulates and manages change requests through automated approval workflows and panel voting options.
Employs robust reporting and monitoring using a built-in reports and dashboards to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
Automate ticketing management that Automate service request management through ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
Centralize your knowledge management, Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
Meet your SLAs, it has "SLA breach approaching" notifications and date-specific SLA reminder alerts that help customize escalation and de-escalation workflows.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

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

Instacart

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk

April 2025

Free Report: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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