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
TOPdesk
Score 8.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
TOPdesk is the flagship highly-modular cloud-based or installed ITSM service desk and asset management solution from the Dutch company of the same name, for enterprise companies.
$76
per month Per agent
Pricing
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
TOPdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essential
$76
per month Per agent
Engaged
$109
per month Per agent
Excellent
$155
per month Per agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Service Desk
TOPdesk
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
The TOPdesk license model:
- Modular: Organizations purchase only the modules needed
- Saas or On premise
- Supports unlimited number of assets.
- Service agents based.
- Discount available for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
TOPdesk
Features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
TOPdesk
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
TOPdesk
8.1
Ratings
0% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets
8.00 Ratings
8.80 Ratings
Expert directory
6.00 Ratings
7.70 Ratings
Service restoration
6.00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Self-service tools
7.00 Ratings
8.40 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications
8.90 Ratings
7.50 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation
6.00 Ratings
8.20 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards
7.00 Ratings
7.70 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
TOPdesk
8.2
Ratings
0% below category average
Configuration mangement
8.00 Ratings
8.60 Ratings
Asset management dashboard
6.90 Ratings
7.80 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement
7.00 Ratings
8.10 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
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.
As TOPdesk is pretty intuitive it is often not needed to instruct colleagues on how to use TOPdesk. Most modules and fields do explain themselves. This means there aren't many additional instructions needed for the applications itself. Most information we do need to support our colleagues on based on organizational processes, not our ITSM tool of choice. And if there is more information needed, the knowledge base system can be used for this. On the other hand this could create the idea that no additional instructions are needed. Which might be true for the application itself, but not for how it is being used within your organisation
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.
TOPdesk provides a clean and modern interface for all of its modules. Many of the modules have a similar look and feel, which makes it easy for users to utilize each one.
Its workflow system allows administrators and developers to define what needs to occur when certain events happen. This can ensure that processes happen in the correct sequence.
TOPdesk includes a vast API system to allow for external systems to integrate with it, and for TOPdesk to communicate with external systems.
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.
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.
We are very content with the application. We use it now for 1 year and we are still learning. We still discover new features withing the application that help improve our efficiency and customer-friendliness and reduce costs. We feel like we can still improve the use of TOPdesk within our organisation and make more use of more modules.
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.
Sometimes I think some things are hard to find. I often do not know if I have to search in Settings or in Modules. In some cases the user has to do a lot of clicks for example to link a key to a user. Something could work a little smarter.
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.
Like I said somewhere else in this review: the helpdesk of TOPdesk is top of the bill! In the Netherlands, that is. I can not plea for the helpdesks in other countries, but I guess the TOPdesk organization will make sure the quality of the helpdesk is the same in every country.
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
Although being a SAAS solution, TOPdesk performs pretty fast. One can imagine that any SAAS solution is slow or has hiccups, but we have not experienced such with TOPdesk. Pages load quickly, logging in goes smoothly. We have made reports on premise in the past - that always took some time, as you might expect with such complex tasks. It seems that in the SAAS solution TOPdesk somehow has managed to make it even faster!
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.
Most if not nearly all questions are answered within the same or a few days. The helpdesk is very knowledgable about their product and are always willing to help. The only downside is that for more difficult questions it can take a while due to the experts being further removed from the helpdesk. But they are always willing to answer questions, even if they are not directly related to a problem with the service.
We had Topdesk in-house here training staff for almost a month (2-3 hour meetings 3x a week.) It was invaluable and we were able to take that training and share with the rest of our IT staff. Once implemented we were able to fly from there. The challenges we found were in how to get started. Once started the knowledge base offered from Topdesk has been invaluable.
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.
Online training documentation is easy to access and consume. There is no real challenges with finding information on how to use the product and some really helpful knowledge base items that show us how valuable these options are in our own implementation of it. The online training we've used has been self driven
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.
It was a challenge to port over years of the same thing and we ended up keeping old ideas in Topdesk that we will eventually weed out as time passes and we learn how users view categories and flows of tickets. Planning is key but bear in mind that just because you used to do it this way doesn't mean you still have to
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.
Spiceworks is an easier-to-use Help Desk solution but it lacks all other features that Topdesk has. Freshdesk was just too much for our environment. It was cost-prohibitive for our intended use. TOPdesk fit our org size and budget better than the others.
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.
Topdesk is a saas solution. As far as we can notice, there are no scalability problems. We are a small organization, so performance issues are for now not an issue
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.
