Great help desk software can improve the productivity, efficiency, and communication of a business by enabling its IT department to quickly respond to customer or employee requests. This can do wonders for customer and employee satisfaction in a business of any size—from a small to midsize business (SMB) to a larger enterprise organization with thousands of employees. Great help desk software does this while making lives easier for the IT department that is handling the requests.
Spiceworks Help Desk is an entirely free service. There are no IT administrator, ticket, or user limits, and no charges for hosting, storage, support, or for adding multiple locations. Popular Alternatives to Spiceworks Help Desk for Mac. Explore 25+ Mac apps like Spiceworks Help Desk, all suggested and ranked by the AlternativeTo user community.
Help desk software Freshdesk offers some of the best features when it comes to ticket management and the customization that's integral for creating a smooth help desk experience. So, when IT software provider Spiceworks, Inc. recently announced the release of its namesake cloud-based help desk software solution (which is available for free), Freshdesk seemed like the ideal product with which to compare it. As we compare, we'll note which features give each product the edge over the other.
Help Desk Alternatives. Whether you’re looking for help desk software for an internal, employee-facing help desk or an externally facing help desk that serves the customers of your business or your clients’ businesses, there are some robust alternatives to Spiceworks out there. Dragon Dictate For Mac 4. Ethernet Adapter Pro 3. Ethernet Adapter Surface. Ibm Windows Server Rds 2012 5 User Cal Bios Locked. Kingston HyperX FURY Black DDR3 2x4GB DIMM 240 Pin 1600mhz/PC3-12800. Spiceworks is a network management and monitoring solution that’s specially designed for networks with up to 1000 devices (there is no limit and it will run on larger networks but performance is optimized for 1000 devices or fewer). Spiceworks runs on Microsoft Windows and discovers Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS X machines along with other IP-addressable devices such as routers, VOIP phones, printers, etc. Below, I’ll discuss Spiceworks alternatives for your ITAM, help desk, and network monitoring needs to help you compose a short list and find the combination of tools that’s best for your business.
Let's begin with Spiceworks, which is known for its large IT professional network and product suite that's focused on enterprise project management and network monitoring (which includes Spiceworks Network Monitor). The company's recently announced Spiceworks Help Desk is a fully loaded help desk software solution aimed at helping IT departments handle whatever requests customers and employees throw their way.
Spiceworks Help Desk is not designed to support the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a comprehensive set of best practice guidelines for IT Service Management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with business needs. Each library module provides a code of practice intended to improve IT efficiencies, reduce risks, and increase the effectiveness and quality of IT service management and infrastructure.
But like Spiceworks, Freshdesk is also not designed to support ITIL. Rather than adhering to ITIL's guidelines, both Freshdesk and Spiceworks Help Desk zero in on increasing productivity via solid ticket management and automated response capabilities, a comprehensive knowledge base, and intuitive, self-service user portals.
Business Size and Pricing
Freshdesk offers a free 30-day trial and four different tiers that are priced at flat rates on a per-agent basis, billed annually. The Blossom tier is $16 per agent per month and offers social support channels, community forums, and a gaming mechanic. For $25 per agent per month, the Garden tier adds live chat, and multiple products and locations. Following this is the $40 per agent per month Estate tier that offers enterprise reports, portal customization, and custom agent roles. The $70 per agent per month Forest tier adds IP whitelisting and custom email servers. Freshdesk offers 24/7 email support and access to its knowledge base at no extra cost.
Spiceworks Help Desk is an entirely free service. There are no IT administrator, ticket, or user limits, and no charges for hosting, storage, support, or for adding multiple locations. It is available as both cloud-based and on-premises.
Freshdesk's tiers are fairly well-delineated, with the Blossom tier appealing more to SMBs and each ascending tier adding more features for enterprises. But 'free' scales to any size business and Spiceworks offers their service gratis, without any glaring feature gaps compared to paid solutions like Freskdesk. Edge: Spiceworks
Ticket Management
Companies Freshdesk and Spiceworks both bill ticket management as the most important feature of their respective IT-focused help desk software. Spiceworks Help Desk offers ticketing via email, through the user portal, or in the Admin user interface (UI). Additional features in Spiceworks Help Desk include ticket collaboration, ticket auto-assignment to designated owners through IT-set 'Ticket Rules,' the ability to add custom fields on tickets, and the option to add replies, as well as private comments and attachments in the same ticket window.
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Freshdesk's tickets are simple to generate and manage, and can be assigned to individual agents or in bulk (depending upon the issue and work required). Freshdesk also includes unlimited email ticketing, a dedicated call center, private note functionality on tickets, a rich text editor, and 'agent collision detection' that is integrated with team inboxes to prevent IT overlap on a ticket. Additional features in Freshdesk include in-ticket contextual customer information, smart suggestions for IT solutions, and ticket merging over multiple channels.
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Freshdesk can also reply to commonly asked customer questions on incoming tickets with automated responses written by IT that provide the relevant information; this saves time and keeps the most common tickets off of the IT department's plate; it's a mature feature that the newer Spiceworks, despite its comprehensive ticketing, can't quite match. Edge: Freshdesk
Customization and Interface
Freshdesk offers a feature-packed, easily navigable, and almost completely customizable UI. It includes a Help Desk Rebranding Settings page with options for customizing logos and URLs plus branding customization that includes the hexadecimal color choice for headers, tabs, and background. Freshdesk's dashboard is also gamified with Freshdesk Arcade, a productivity-boosting system that uses 'quests,' badges, and points to encourage swift and accurate ticket resolution.
The Spiceworks dashboard offers less baked-in customization options, but offers extensions to more than 150 third-party applications to add new features and rearrange the UI. The interface itself also provides customizable permissions and team productivity metrics. The on-premises version also provides advanced customer data sets and IT asset monitoring. Freshdesk's gamified dashboard and extensive customization options give it the edge over the more straightforward layout and add-on capabilities of the Spiceworks Help Desk interface. Edge: Freshdesk
Self-Service Knowledge Base
Spiceworks offers an editable user portal where users can submit tickets, track their progress, and view custom knowledge base articles (though the knowledge base is only available in the on-premises version). The knowledge base includes a searchable database of IT and user-submitted articles along with an auto-suggest feature, hands-on exercises, and auto-responses integrating relevant knowledge base articles with ticketing responses.
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Freshdesk's knowledge base includes FAQs, technical documentation, product tutorials, and tips. Like Spiceworks, it automatically displays knowledge base suggestions when customers create a ticket. Freshdesk's knowledge base also includes GIF embed functionality to make a knowledge base article a bit more fun. As for the user portal, Freshdesk provides full color and font, cascading systle sheets (CSS), and fluid template customization. Edge: Freshdesk
Extra Goodies
Freshdesk offers the ability to handle incoming tickets directly from social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and provides community forums to augment its knowledge base. It also offers extensive reporting options for IT and a focus on security with IP whitelisting and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-encrypted servers.
Spiceworks Help Desk dwarfs Freshdesk's community forum offering by granting its users instant access to its IT professional network, which contains millions of members worldwide. IT staff members can pose questions to Spiceworks' network, search its product reviews, and even have individual chats with network members. The IT professional network accessibility is one feature that Freshdesk can't match. Both software offerings also offer mobile applications, though the Spiceworks application is still in beta. Edge: Spiceworks
Bottom Line
Spiceworks has created a well-designed, standalone help desk software offering that's based on the help desk capabilities in its existing solutions. Spiceworks Help Desk contains all of the core features a young SMB's IT department would need, and the relatively new standalone option will grow more feature-rich in time (not to mention it's free). But for more established businesses and larger enterprises with deeper pockets, Freshdesk's mature feature set, intuitive and automated ticketing, and general ease of use will provide value worth the cost and gets the overall edge over Spiceworks as the most comprehensive help desk service. Recommendation: Stick with Freshdesk
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