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Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) vs. Freshservice

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

    Score4.3 out of 10
    N/ACherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.N/A

    Freshservice

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AFreshservice is a cloud-based service desk and IT service management (ITSM) solution that currently serves more than 10,000 SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers worldwide.

    $29

    per month per agent

    Pricing
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter
    $29.00
    per month per agent
    Growth
    $59.00
    per month per agent
    Pro
    $119.00
    per month per agent
    Enterprise
    Custom
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Freshworks Inc
    Chose Freshservice
    The responsiveness and sheer number of features are really where they shine above the rest. Also the fact that the support team really cares about the product and the users using everything they've paid for. While other software such as TOPdesk has a lot of the same features …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    148 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    141 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    148 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    113 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    117 Answers
    Features
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Freshservice
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    53 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Freshservice
    8.2
    142 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets10.052 Ratings9.1142 Ratings
    Expert directory10.041 Ratings8.3100 Ratings
    Service restoration10.035 Ratings8.485 Ratings
    Self-service tools10.051 Ratings8.1126 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications10.038 Ratings7.9103 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation10.048 Ratings7.6117 Ratings
    ITSM reports and dashboards10.051 Ratings8.1122 Ratings
    ITSM asset management
    Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Freshservice
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    44 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Freshservice
    7.7
    114 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Configuration mangement10.042 Ratings7.4106 Ratings
    Asset management dashboard10.041 Ratings7.5111 Ratings
    Policy and contract enforcement10.031 Ratings8.278 Ratings
    Change management
    Comparison of Change management features of Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) and Freshservice
    Feature
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
    10.0
    50 Ratings
    18% above category average
    Freshservice
    8.0
    109 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Change requests repository10.048 Ratings7.7103 Ratings
    Change calendar10.044 Ratings7.887 Ratings
    Service-level management10.045 Ratings8.4102 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Small Businesses
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
    Score4.5 out of 10
    Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
    Score4.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (57 ratings)
    8.5
    (143 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    8.7
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    8.9
    (5 ratings)
    9.5
    (13 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Performance
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    7.8
    (6 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (16 ratings)
    8.3
    (107 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.2
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    7.9
    (5 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    6.4
    (7 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    Professional Services
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (4 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Freshservice
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    Freshservice is well suited for companies looking to implement ticketing / case management across the organization, but only if IT will be using it. Otherwise, I'd recommend Freshdesk. IT departments that don't function in the ITIL style of incident, request, change, and project management may find it overkill if they are only looking for a simple Help Desk solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
    • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    • The smartphone app is very well designed and adding assets from there is very easy
    • If you have questions or support, the support desk is fast to respond and setup a meeting to explain the features
    • Very customizable and everything can be easily changed with a wizard
    • Reporting feature does what it needs to do and is not complicated to work with
    • The overall ticketing system is very good and we have not run into any issues
    • The whole system is incredibly responsive and does not hang or freeze
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
    • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
    • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    • To have more options on what to do with the emails that arrive in the support mailbox (which goes to Freshservice), Setting some special rules or detailed filtering is not possible.
    • Non 3rd party tools to connect to Intune are missing. Additionally, the third-party tool available in the store is not satisfactory. It would be nice to have native support for importing devices from our Azure cloud.
    • The contract requires you to prolong your contract end-date by two years instead of just one year, which to us is a bit aggressive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    We are pretty invested in Freshservice right now and have integrated it pretty heavily into our environment, so it would be hard to move away from it. For the most part, we are happy with Freshservice and the ease of use it gives us in managing tickets through the system. The only complaint we've had is customer service.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    The UI design of Freshservice is simple and intuitive. You don't have to be a technical expert to navigate your way into the different pages/modules available. There are no buttons that are hidden in plain sight. Even our HR team required little to no help when they started using Freshservice.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    Downtime is minimal (it does happen but not often)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    Most reports are quick, however, it can take some time for emailed exports to come via email. It would be helpful to have the exports live in the system rather than having to wait on emails.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
    Read full review
    Freshworks Inc
    Support from OEM is decent but needs improvement. Sometimes OEM also needs to understand the criticality of the customer and help as an Ad-hoc, which is somewhat lacking at Feshservice. Although the normal support team is well-equipped and helps according to the matrix, if something critical for the partner or customer requires immediate attention, it still goes through the L1-L2-L3 levels, which wastes a lot of time.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Discontinued Products
    I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    Training was enough to use the base website
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    Their documentation is pretty good, but only available in English. This makes it difficult for some of our users to understand. There are also some basic video courses available.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    Creating the correct groups for the stakeholders and enabling the right notifications are one of the most important aspect of the implementation. Creating Change templates will also help in the long run and it's a good practice to create one, if applicable.
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    Easy setup and a lot of customization which can be made. They offer the full ITSM tool for 75$ per agent and all the PRO are included in the package, which makes it easy to calculate and use. There are only a few add-ins that you need to pay for, based on the number of agents or the number of executions.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Discontinued Products
    We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    Was not able to update us proactively about our renewal causing lost of access
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    The software is very scalable from a small to mid sized team. The features have seemed to scale exceptionally well.
    Incentivized
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    Professional Services
    Discontinued Products
    As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    We did not have professional services.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
    • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
    • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
    Incentivized
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    Freshworks Inc
    • We had no ticketing system at all so we had no idea of the workload, we now do
    • We have been able to go from nothing to seeing workload to identifying areas for improvement by having the metrics
    • We have lowered MTTR every month since turning on fresh service
    • We have increased 1st all resolution every month
    • We have been able to start talking about real SLA's with the business
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Freshservice Screenshots

    Screenshot of Android App SupportScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Project ManagementScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Change ManagementScreenshot of Project Management