Freshdesk vs. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses of all sizes to deliver customer support. Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets, and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets the user automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics, to stay on top of customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot,…
$0
Up to 2 agents
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management.
$0
Pricing
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 2 agents
Growth
$15
per month (billed annually) per agent
Pro
$49
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$79
per month (billed annually) per agent
Core Plan
$0
Premium
$6
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Features
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.20 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Expert directory8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.40 Ratings9.00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.60 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Ticket response9.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
7.0
Ratings
11% below category average
External knowledge base8.10 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.3
Ratings
6% above category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
8.9
Ratings
13% above category average
Customer portal7.50 Ratings9.00 Ratings
IVR8.20 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Social integration8.40 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Email support9.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.80 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
4.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
6.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshdesk is really good for start-up companies that want to update their current system or buy a new one. It is the best option possible when it comes to having a structure, following up, and making a better strategy because you can always see what your team is doing, and you have some great reports to help you.
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Spiceworks Help Desk from the user end is very simple. Once you submit your technology needs, I automatically receive an email stating that my ticket was received and is being processed. It's also helpful to have the VNC feature so that my IT department can automatically VNC into my computer if it's a quick fix. At times Spiceworks Help Desk can be tricky because as someone who's not in a Tech role at my company, it can be hard to describe what I need assistance with writing.
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Pros
  • Follow up on all conversations that enter and are easy to use by the employee and save responses ready for use.
  • Find out the average rate of the number of conversations that occur in the company and conduct the analysis.
  • There is a feature it allows one to take a permit in the name of the employee who responds to the conversation and to know the problem faced by the customer and the solution.
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  • It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
  • We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
  • Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
  • Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.
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Cons
  • Data Security.
  • SLA Policies where it is not customer / contract driven but agents / groups driven.
  • Audit Trail is not available in Pro version makes the tool adoption difficult from compliance perspective.
  • Chat Bot and Fresh Chat Services has greater potential to explode, but the pricing model tagged to chat bot sessions .are illogical as it limits the ability to use the fresh chat feature
  • Agent Logon Screen use earlier version of Captcha as it is annoying for the agents to login. Very frustrating experience.
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  • I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
  • It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
  • Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.
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Likelihood to Renew
My company that used Freshdesk was acquired by another company that uses Salesforce, so our only reason to keep Freshdesk would be records, but migrating the tickets, notes, and company details from Freshdesk to Salesforce was straightforward enough. Had the acquisition not occurred, we would have renewed Freshdesk because the cost of switching would've been too great in terms of price, time, and sunk cost (our Freshdesk customizations would not port over well).
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There is no contract to renew, since it's free. Spiceworks has helped me so much that I couldn't imagine trying to replace it with a different product. I'd have a hard time finding a single product that does everything that Spiceworks does, let alone one that does it as well as Spiceworks and for free
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Usability
I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 because they delivered on everything we asked them to do. Easy to setup, easy to deploy to end users, easy to customize, easy to enter tickets and so much more. Our experience with their support is top notch! After opening a ticket for support they call use back within 10 minutes every time!
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1. Its free. 2. Its easy to install. 3. You can have it up and running in under 1-hour. 4. You get dashboards that are easy to read so you know the state of your network. 5. You can create your own reports and not just the ones already installed. 6. Excellent tool for network administrators and security practitioners. 7. Did I mention that its free?
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Reliability and Availability
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.
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Performance
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The main thing about Freshdesk user service is that once a request has been made for information about a feature of the platform, the support team responds to tickets quickly, within a day of writing and submitting them, with information that is concise enough so that there is no need to ask for help on the same topic again.
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Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.
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In-Person Training
Support Team's knowledge and understood the company's requirement, and always shared the insight of the usage of the tool to it s full potential, moreover the team checks periodically to check if we using the tool right and if we are facing any kind of challenges. Also they would update us on new features that can make the work easy.
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
Video tutorials, questions answers round before and after testing and Fresh desk team would always share best practices on the needs. Furthermore would periodically check if we are able to work smoothly. Would send alerts to known any issues, send recommendation on new features. Freshdesk team always available when we need certain advise.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Most important, Freshdesk is a user- friendly platform which directly supports interfaces and navigates user to start. Helps to provide multiple and complex documentation and troubleshooting. It provides build templates for different workflows and processes also refuces effort and time to implement and perform corporate tasks and complete the execution.
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If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth
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Alternatives Considered
I use Freshdesk over other similar products I've tested because the price difference and ease of use for the end user seem to me to be the most suitable for achieving a better return on investment within my company. I also found the various AI-powered automation tools to be more optimal and automated, without having to go through long learning curves.
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EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.
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Scalability
My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
  • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
  • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
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  • Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
  • Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
  • Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
  • Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.
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ScreenShots