Pulseway vs. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Pulseway is well suited for just about any situation where there is a need to remotely monitor and manage computers. The most basic features are available to anyone with a free account, so even a home user can set it up and use to keep an eye on computers. The more sophisticated features require a fairly inexpensive subscription, but are well worth the cost for a business wanting to monitor the health of their servers, etc. My experience with Pulseway is limited to using it in situations where there are fewer than a dozen or so computers/servers being monitored. I'm not really sure how well it scales up, so I can't say if it is a good solution for a large corporation with hundreds or thousands of machines that need to be monitored.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Running windows updates: Pulseway really helps us keep our end-user devices up to date, without the need to handle each device individually.
• Sending notifications on our servers really helps with taking care of issues before they cause downtime.
• Pulseway's remote desktop client works very well, even over slower internet connections.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• File transfer
• There are a couple of computers that I keep ScreenConnect around for - as I lose connection with Pulseway and have to reestablish with ScreenConnect. I can't seem to get tech support interested in resolving this issue and it cost's me many $$ just to keep ScreenConnect running.
• There is an issue with Webroot, their new endpoint solution. I can't get it to work - again, no help from Pulseway - they ignore my emails.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The tool is easy to use however it is can be daunting with the amount of features available in it. Last I checked, their knowledge base was not very expansive and they relied a lot on the changelog for how to do some stuff. This can make it hard to learn how to do some more advanced things like the automation.

Incentivized

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?

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have never had to use the support for Pulseway. However, when initially starting out, we would receive emails every so often asking how we are doing and if there is any support that they can provide. I would imagine that any request would be supplied with the same great support!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The 2 major factors were: 1. The fact there was no contract, we believe vendors should have to validate the usefulness of their product and their support to their customers every day, not just 1 or 2 months every few years. This is the same reason we allow our clients to leave at any time if we fail to meet their standards. 2. The ease of managing the product, we demoed other products that would have almost required a full time employee just to manage the RMM tool itself. The ease of use of Pulseway meant a tech could manage it as part of their other duties much improving the ROI. Note: We also felt NinjaOne met these same conditions but we evaluated it after having used Pulseway for a few years and while we found it a great product, possibly even superior, we didn't find enough reason to go through all the work and retraining to change over.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Problems can be dealt with more rapidly because I have access to systems from anywhere. I don't have to carry a computer with me nor do I have to find a location with potentially non-secure wifi to gain access to my systems.
• I can handle 99% of my system admin tasks using Pulseway and never have to touch a system or connect to the console.
• Pulseway gives so much control over a system that I don't need to spend extra money on other software to perform management tasks.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized