Spiceworks Reviews

In addition to being free, it has a simple modular design with a lot of extensibility – although the plug-in format has recently changed and it has been difficult getting information on the new process.

When I began my current professional role, there was no formal method for tracking user requests. Exchange Public Folders were used and the promise of SCCM integration was being made. We very quickly needed a low-to-no cost way to improve accountability and tracking of open incidents/requests. Spiceworks offered everything we needed and more, and has improved response times to staff as well as providing an audit trail and growing database of information that can be referenced when similar problems arise.

I would like to see an easier means to customize the user interface, and would gladly pay a reasonable licensing fee if this were available as an additional feature. Attachment handling within a ticket could be improved; only one item can be attached at a time unless email is used. Finally, a way to strip selected blocks of text/images from emails would be huge; graphic attachments in email signatures create a mess in the UI.

We've used it for three and a half years.

The deployment is excellent.

The stability is excellent, but it can be affected by poorly written 3rd party add-ins, so beware.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

Tech support - for a free product - is amazing and responsive. They treat me better than some vendors who have expensive maintenance agreements in place.

I have used several ticketing systems in my career, including CA.

Set-up is pretty simple – configuring email is probably the most complex piece.

I personally handled the implementation. Create a special mailbox/mail account specifically for your help desk and let Spiceworks handle the rest. It’s good!

There was no investment, and we did not attempt to measure the cost savings resulting from the implementation.

It's free.

Spiceworks does wonders for a free product. It’s ad supported, so watch for that. It is also flexible and customizable and probably does everything you need. Support is great, and that frankly was a surprise.

• Network discovery
• Ticketing system

Spiceworks provides a centralized system through which all IT requests are funnelled, with requests being auto-assigned a ticket number, thus streamlining organization and prioritization of requests. Users can track the status of their requests, leading to greater company-wide satisfaction with our IT team. Prior to roll out, IT received requests in person, via email, via phone, sticky note, etc. Now things are in one tidy place, and that has made everyone happy.

The only issue encountered was setting up the email server information. It took a little testing, but got it working in a couple of days.

We've used it for less than six months.

There was an issue with the email server set-up.

There was no issue with the stability.

There was no issue with the scalability.

I haven't contacted the customer service.

I haven't needed to use the tech support.

We did not previously use a ticketing or network monitoring system. I opted for Spiceworks since the non-pro version is free, I briefly used it at a past job, and the network discovery tool is provided.

Everything was pretty straightforward aside from getting the email server settings done, since we are Google apps-centric. There are several Gmail server options to try for incoming/outgoing ports/settings/etc. and it took testing many combinations of settings before finding the best suited.

I implemented it solely, in-house. I had little issue. Best advice I can give is- test, test, test!

Since the version I use is free, the ROI is excellent and I, as well as my company, are very satisfied with the results.

There are other free ticketing platforms available out there. Keep in mind, however, if the network discovery, inventory, of your endpoint and software is critical, then Spiceworks may be best suited for your needs.

Automatic inventory of network connected assets and ability to add assets that are not connected to network - such as monitors and docking stations.

Spiceworks replaced our previous attempts to track inventory and Help Desk related issues via spreadsheets. It provides the ability to generate custom, very detailed and on-demand or scheduled asset inventory reports. Help Desk feature was helpful as well, and replaced many walk-ups and tracking of issues via email.

The main issue we had with the Spiceworks was always performance related. A dedicated server would sometimes become unresponsive, and would need to be restarted.

We've used this solution since Spiceworks version 2.0.

We had no issues with deployment.

The server would become sluggish as more assets were populated in the system.

Scalability was an issue. The server would become sluggish as more assets were populated in the system.

Customer support was great, I was always able to find solutions in the forums.

Spiceworks was very active on forums and was always aware of performance issues and included improvements with every version release.

Spiceworks was the best product per our testing, and was recommended by other IT professionals at the time. We evaluated many low cost or free solutions, and none came close to Spiceworks abilities and ease of use. Price was also a big factor during times when management was not looking to spend capital, but still demanded consistent process, asset tracking, and reporting improvements.

Initial set-up is the simplest I've ever seen in such a product. I was able to initiate a discovery network scan in less than a few minutes after initial installation.

In-house team. Just make sure you dedicate appropriately sized server to accommodate the size of your environment.

Other than dedicating an ageing server and some initial set-up and configuration time, ROI for a free product is great.

Be aware that Spiceworks free tier is an ad driven product, but you can remove ads for a reasonable monthly fee if needed.

We're using Spiceworks mainly for infrastructure monitoring.

Spiceworks is generic and free.

Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable. 

I've used Spiceworks for two years.

Spiceworks is stable for our purposes.

Spiceworks' scalability is fine. Our usage has been moderate and we have five admins managing the solution.

I haven't contacted Spiceworks tech support. But support isn't readily available. They probably send you to a third party, so we really haven't pursued support for it. Spiceworks could add paid support as a service.

I would rate Spiceworks four out of 10. Just because it's free and out of the box, and you get what you pay for, and you didn't pay for it. So, not getting much. All right. Know what you're getting because it's free.

The help desk ticketing system is of the most value to us, also the knowledge-base and network scanning is used often.

The ease of using the ticketing system has formalized or project and process work a great deal, because now we have an easy to use central location to store ticket related data.

I’d like to see a more formalized classification system for tickets that would allow me to analyze where (on what functions) our team is spending most of the time and resources.

We have used Spiceworks for three years – transferred from SysAid.

Spiceworks could improve the upgrade procedure. It regularly fails and we have to use the workaround to get a new version installed.

It regularly fails when we're upgrading.

We've had no issues scaling it.

Very good – the community is very fast to respond and is full of professionals.

Before Spiceworks we used SysAid which was quite good also, but not worth the extra money compared to Spiceworks.

Initial set-up is very straightforward – any semi-pro can do it in an hour or so.

We implemented it in-house. There's no ned to use an outside contractor because the setup is very easy and you learn a great deal by doing it yourself.

ROI is very good since this is AdWare software.

Considering this is AdWare this is a very good product with all the right tools for a medium sized IT department. I would recommend it for any IT department that has less than 20 members.

From what I know, the software has a very vast range of functionalities but what we mainly used it for was for incident/ticket management and network hardware & software inventory (workstations, laptops, licenses, IPs, etc.).

Before implementing Spiceworks we had to manage all our incidents through email. This was pretty tiresome and time consuming and so, as time passed and the company grew larger, we realized that we were working in an inefficient manner and that incident management itself was something that was draining precious time. After the software got deployed it all became much faster, easier and more organized. By collecting and classifying emails, it helped us greatly in areas such as: ticket assignment, team & individual workload measurements, incident takeover, information transparency and follow up with the users (clients), etc.

Personally, I haven't used it in over an year, I haven't got to see the latest updates or major releases but if there's something I'd improve about version 5.x is its scalability.

I've used this software for about a year and a half during some of the time I've spent as a HelpDesk Specialist.

Only issue was with scalability. After some time, as the back-end DB grew bigger, the solution started to perform slower. In the end we even had to reset the DB and archive the old one so it could run smoothly again.

I don't really have that much experience on that side with the product, but from what I remember you could usually find a lot of useful tips, tricks and even solutions to issues on public forums and even in the software's documentation.

Before and even after implementing Spiceworks we've been working with HP Service Manager. Although a classic in incident management software, it was sort of avoided by users (clients) because they considered it to be way harder and slower to use than emails. Once we implemented Spiceworks to collect user incident mails, HP Service Manager started to be avoided even more from our internal clients.

I wasn't involved.

Implementation was done in-house by my team's technical coordinator.

If you've got a small to medium sized company (<500 employees and <500 network objects) than this software can really cut time for some of your Help Desk and even Sys Admin operations and optimize Incident Management in your team.

The help desk feature is by far the most valuable. It is easy to use and offers lots of features for different types of organizations.

I have used this product at two different organizations. At Addison Community Schools I introduced Spiceworks as an easy to use Help Desk solution that came with no cost and minimal setup. It revolutionized the way support requests were handled. Before Spiceworks it was a strictly email or word of mouth support system. Not very efficient at all.

The area I have always struggled with is the network scanning and asset management parts of the program.

I've used it for eight years.

Deployment is simple. It requires installation and some key configs like SMTP/POP services for email interactions.

Stability has been a problem only a few times but barely a blip.

I went from an organization serving 100 employees to one serving over 500 employees and saw no issues.

Most of the tech support for Spiceworks is via their forums which are very active and very helpful.

The initial set-up really is very easy. Again, some SMTP/POP stuff is about as tough as it gets.

I implemented it in-house but there are vendors that will do implementation if you want to pay for it. I think that the typical Spiceworks user is going to end up implementing on their own. My advice is to test it. Everything is free so no harm in downloading and installing on a virtual server.

ROI is hard to determine because the product is free but what I can say is that the value is huge.

I have evaluated several help desk products and it comes down to overall value. I never made the change because the products I looked at didn't offer enough value to justify their cost.

Spiceworks gives you a very good but basic help desk platform that is easy to implement and use. The development is regular and updates happen often. They are constantly adding features and making the product better.