SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) vs. SysAid

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Service Desk
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage) is a cloud-based, multi-tenant IT service desk and asset management software for IT and enterprise service management. Samanage is on a single, always new instance of software. The service desk includes a self-service portal, service catalog, knowledge base, and SLA management tool. The integrated agent-based asset management solution collects contracts and licensing data from Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix systems.N/A
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
SysAid is an ITSM platform that enhances service delivery with AI Agents, chatbots, workflow automation, and asset management. AI Copilot categorizes tickets, provides case summaries, and offers sentiment analysis. The AI chatbot, available via chat, email, and Teams, speeds support.N/A
Pricing
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SysAid
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Service DeskSysAid
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional DetailsSysAid Copilot is available as an add-on for any plan. It bakes generative AI into every aspect of service management.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SysAid
Features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SysAid
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.0
Ratings
15% below category average
SysAid
9.1
Ratings
11% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Expert directory6.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Service restoration6.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Self-service tools7.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.90 Ratings9.90 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards7.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.3
Ratings
12% below category average
SysAid
8.6
Ratings
5% above category average
Configuration mangement8.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Asset management dashboard6.90 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement7.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
7.0
Ratings
18% below category average
SysAid
9.8
Ratings
16% above category average
Change requests repository7.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Change calendar7.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Service-level management7.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
User Ratings
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SysAid
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.5
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.7
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)SysAid
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking for a way to support a company and bill based on the outcome this software works really well. If it's a quick password change there was no charge, but if it's troubleshooting things you click the box to charge. It works really well for this. Also bringing all your assets into this and associating them to a client works well. I can't think of anything that this software would not be less appropriate for. It works well for what we use it for.
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SysAid is Great for IT Support. Tickets can be easily entered using the portal that has a more modern look and feel. We have also used SysAid for our Customer Service Team. Tickets can come in through email or direct access through the cloud. They no longer get lost in the shuffle. Reports can be produced for the managers to better undersand where issues are.
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Pros
  • Approval flows: You can have multiple layers of approval required for the tickets and service requests you design. This helps us show auditors that access to privileged systems and data was formerly reviewed and approved by the appropriate managers.
  • Easy to design forms: You don't need to spend hours reading the documentation to figure out how to create forms. It's simple enough that you can just jump right in and start creating them with minimal training.
  • Lots of options and features are available for you to include in your forms.
  • Integrates well with SAML-based SSO and has capabilities for MFA.
  • Easy and useful search function. Need to find that ticket from last year that you worked for a particular user or issue? Just search by keyword or username, and it'll quickly find the ticket.
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  • Ease of use for end users creating tickets from their own Self-Service Portal (which is tied into Windows Active Directory so no login is needed).
  • Ease of use and management of tickets by the IT staff.
  • Flexibility. We currently have IT teams associated with a single program, a single department, and all other IT items. SysAid allows us to easily manage this, add to it, change it, etc.
  • Support - SysAid support has remained consistently great throughout the years that we have had the product. That is a fairly rare thing for hosted solutions these days.
  • Expandability. We have a lot more that we can still do with the product and are working on expanding what it can do as we move forward in time. There is a lot to this product overall.
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Cons
  • Being a web platform, some of the refresh is problematic. Not sure this can be solved in the tool, it's important to have a clear understanding who owns the ticket.
  • Some time the performance / update speed is slow, but I have to give them credit, this has never resulted in an outage and in general it is solved within a couple of hours.
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  • [I would like it if the] Due Date [could] recalculate if a ticket has been stopped (awaiting user).
  • [The] dashboard could have more options when creating a new graphic.
  • [The] end user portal [could offer] the ability to customize more info, like font and adding more images.
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Likelihood to Renew
My renewal is soon coming up, it is fairly likely I will renew again for the 5th year. I may consider evaluating what else is out there, It was requested by my staff to not make a change. They feel that SSD fits our needs, is easy to use and should keep it.
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Because through SYSAID is how the operation of all IT is carried out and in this way the performance indicators of the services, systems, operation, trends, workloads, project control and their deviations are known; as well as the requests for changes and requirements that are requested by both users and that is where the system improvement projects are triggered, such as change controls, which by the way are audit topics.
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Usability
The stem is easy to use. Having transitioned from Solarwinds Web HelpDesk, the usability change was massive! This has an easy to use interface, common options are front and centre so this makes it simple for staff to dive into. The mobile app makes on the go work easy as well. Being able to snap a picture for a ticket is very helpful.
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It is a very simple tool to use, the training required to implement it is minimal and it is also very simple for end users. There is a quick guide to configure and it was the only thing we used to configure the tool. The response of the users was good to the implementation because they did not feel that it was a big change that complicated the request of tasks by the IT department.
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Reliability and Availability
For the most part the availability is fine. However, every now and then we have an issue where the system is very slow to respond. It can go from 2-5 seconds to load a page to 15-20 seconds to load a page. That doesn't seem like much. But, when you spend most of your day in the system, those extra seconds add up.
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Another of the benefits of sysaid is that it is highly available when working in on-premise environments.The only times the system is down is when a restart of the services is required to add a new feature. Apart from that, we have not had any problems.In the case of the cloud, the only condition I have seen where sysaid is not available is because the internet link is down or damaged.
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Performance
We don't integrate Solarwinds with any other software or system so I can't comment on that, but the few times there has been an outage for SolarWinds/Samanage the notification has come quickly that there is an outage and they're working on it. Overall though everything loads quickly and it is very reliable
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In the case of system performance, I have seen that no matter the number of assets and users, Sysaid responds in the same way and at the same speed. The reports that are scheduled do not have any details because they arrive directly to your email. In the same way, when it is integrated with other systems, for example through the API or by email, we have not seen any failure due to the integration. It works very well with or without integrations.
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Support Rating
Only had to use support to help launch the service. Do wish they would have some templates in place that support would have provided. It did feel like we did most of the work even though we paid for a support package.
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I have had nothing but positive experiences working with the SysAid support team. There are multiple pathways to request and receive support, which are all connected with each other. I get an efficient and effective response most of the time and when there is not immediately a good answer, they create a support request to follow up for resolution.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
My team was greatly assisted and trained well. Despite the time zone difference the trainer made every effort to be available during times that were suitable for us and the assistance and help offered was extremely appreciated by my team. A wonderful experience by the team.
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Online Training
When we first purchased Samanage (now Solarwinds) they provided us with an informational training session to show us all of the basics on how the service works and showed us everything we were interested in using. There are still some areas of Solarwinds that we do not yet utilize but I know if we choose to use them in the future we would be able to schedule another session with our representative to have them show us what we need to know.
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The training I received was very good, they gave me tasks to carry out and then they checked what I had done.It was gratifying that the instructor noticed that I had made very fast progress because I had done the implementation myself and it was very fast. At least I remember that after 5 days I had already finished almost 90% of all the implementation tasks.
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Implementation Rating
The implementation process for our organization was fairly simple. We set up an email address to receive the emails from the system (for incident creation), and we allowed the system to spoof our IT email to respond to requests. Solarwinds helped us with the rest of the implementation, and it took less than a week to get the system fully operational.
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In the initial stage we implement separate SysAid servers for head and branch offices. When we managed to link up our offices via point to point VPN, we manage to console them into one server. All the assets and devices on branch office were divert back to the server in head office
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Alternatives Considered
SSD has more features and simplicity in implementation, and working with it is very important to us. It is also very reputable in terms of company security and safety. Helpdesk software should be designed user-friendly in mind. The SolarWinds desktop is created in the cloud and works in the secure cloud, and is constantly updated for usability and performance. We looked at different platforms, most of them were limited and must buy a separate plugin and module for every common feature, but SolarWinds has all the basic features as standard and by default.
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The value of SysAid just seemed to be much better than Kaseya. The review was relatively short with Kaseya, but I immediately liked what SysAid offered. The overall capability compared to the costs associated with SysAid made it a great choice.
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Scalability
We have over 500 computers and tablets across our organization and this has helped us greatly in keeping track of where computers are and who is currently using it. I can see this product being useful to groups both larger and smaller than us and I really appreciate this product.
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Le doy esta calificación porque los módulos que contiene se pueden usar para casi cualquier departamento, tanto gestión de tickets como inventarios de equipos, hemos utilizado una versión gratuita en Ingeniería para gestionar sus tiempos en las tareas asignadas, es lo único que utilizan pero podrían usar fácilmente el módulo de inventario para su herramienta y el módulo de proyectos también
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Return on Investment
  • With SLAs, better reporting, and a single incident portal, the productivity of both service desk staff and users has improved. Incidents are tracked and responded to more quickly and fewer incidents "fall through the cracks".
  • Purchasing approval workflow has focused technology purchasing priorities.
  • Tracking contract expiration ensures services stay available.
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  • Our resolution time has increased a lot compared to not using a ticketing system.
  • We have reduced communication load significantly for our helpdesk admins.
  • The knowledgebase is rough, but still allows us to preserve and share our collective experience and expertise.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Service Desk Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

SysAid Screenshots

Screenshot of Monitoring & Fine Tuning - Gives the admin control over the quality of answers that the AI Chatbot provides, through the ability to edit and fine-tune the answers.Screenshot of Ticket Journey - Admins can deep dive into the history and context of a ticket, quickly, with ticket journey filters, while reviewing a chronological, consolidated view of everything to help reach a resolution, faster – including all actions takenScreenshot of a Ticket Queue, which offers a consolidated, easy-to-navigate view of the ticket queue to help admins resolve issues more more efficiently.Screenshot of AI Chatbot, a conversational self-service experience that uses Generative AI to help employees work through issues by delivering answers based on what it has learned by absorbing knowledge base articles, internal data, and ticket resolution historyScreenshot of the workflow automation that digitizes processes without coding or scripting. Users can automate complex processes with simple design and editing capabilities, and real-time visibility of the end-to-end process.Screenshot of the SysAid AI Agents that empower IT teams with intelligence that thinks, learns, and acts securely. Designed to enhance—not override—IT operations, they anticipate needs, make informed decisions, and adapt responsibly