Spiceworks isn't the only option—check out these 4 products to fulfill your service desk needs.
When it comes to managing your IT help desk, Spiceworks can be an amazing product. Capterra reviewers have rated the software highly—it's free and has free customer support, and it's packed with essential help desk features such as ticketing, email support management, and knowledge base management.
But despite these advantages, Spiceworks may not be the best product for your IT help desk needs. In fact, it can even prove more expensive than some paid products.
Wondering how?
Spiceworks makes money from ads, but those ads can be obstructive for some business users. And since there's no paid version of the product, there's no way to get rid of them.
There are other products with advanced functionalities that may better align with your business needs. For instance, Spiceworks doesn't offer SLA tracking and live chat, and therefore will not be useful for businesses that need these features.
If you have to eventually switch to another product because Spiceworks doesn't fit your business needs or lacks particular features, you've wasted time and effort, thereby costing your business in terms of hours worked on deployment and training.
We've analyzed about 190 different help desk software solutions to provide you with the best Spiceworks alternatives for your business.
This article looks at four highly rated Spiceworks alternatives. See the full list of Spiceworks alternatives here.
Selection criteria
Below is the criteria that we used to identify the Spiceworks alternatives:
Comparable pricing: To address the ROI aspect, each alternative has a starting price of less than $20 per agent, per month.
Core Spiceworks features: The product must offer core Spiceworks features: ticketing, workflow management, incident tracking, and reporting.
Small business-specific pricing: The product must offer at least one pricing plan tailored to small and midsize business (SMB) needs.
A minimum of 20 user reviews on Capterra, published in the past two years: This ensures there are a sufficient number of reviews to analyze the pros and cons of the products.
High recommendation rating: The product should have a minimum average recommendation rating of 4 out of 5 on Capterra.
High functionality rating: The products should have a minimum functionality rating of 4.2 out of 5 on Capterra.
4 Best Spiceworks alternatives
Based on our analysis, the following are the best alternatives of Spiceworks (listed alphabetically).
1. Freshservice: IT service management (ITSM) and service desk solution
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Freshservice is a cloud-based IT help desk solution for businesses of all sizes. Key features include incident tracking, knowledge base management, SLA management, reporting, contract management, and audit log.
Freshservice's unique selling point is that it lets you create ticket assignment rules in a visual workflow, and view the workload at each stage.
Pros* | Cons |
---|---|
Capterra reviewers find the product easy to set up and deploy. They are also able to quickly learn its features. | Some users say they are not always able to locate assets using keywords in the search functionality. |
Users like the reporting and dashboard features as they provide an overall picture of agents and tickets. | Some users also feel that the product should integrate with more customer support systems. |
How much does Freshservice cost? Freshservice is available in four pricing plans: Blossom, Garden, Estate, and Forest. Prices range from $19 to $99 per agent, per month.
Ticketing workflow in Freshservice (Source)
2. Lansweeper: IT help desk and asset management solution
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Lansweeper is an IT asset management and service desk solution for businesses of all sizes. Features include email ticketing, SLA management, website ticket management, agent collaboration, reporting, and role-based access.
Lansweeper's selling point is its seamless integration with asset management systems. This allows agents to search for and manage IT assets from within the help desk interface.
Pros* | Cons |
---|---|
Capterra reviewers find the product's interface and features easy to customize according to business needs. | Users find the product's reporting functionality difficult to learn and feel that its interface could be made simpler. |
Users find the product's ticketing functionality easy to learn and use. | Some users would like to see ticket scheduling functionality. |
How much does Lansweesper cost? Lansweeper has four pricing plans: Freeware, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The price range is between $495 and $995 per company, per year.
Defining SLAs in Lansweeper (Source)
3. ServiceDesk Plus: Service desk software for tracking IT incidents
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
ServiceDesk Plus by ManageEngine (part of Zoho Corporation) is an IT help desk solution for businesses of all sizes. The product is available in both cloud-based and on-premise deployment options. Key features include IT service management workflows, incident management, problem management, change management, asset management, change management, and reporting.
ServiceDesk Plus's unique selling point is its project management functionality that allows users to create help desk projects using standard templates, and track progress in Gantt chart and project overview maps.
Pros* | Cons |
---|---|
Capterra reviewers find ServiceDesk's ticketing and reporting functionalities easy to customize according to business's needs. | Users feel that the product's interface could be simpler and easier to navigate. |
Users find the contract management functionality useful as it helps them track the status of active contracts and alerts them if a contract is about to expire. | Some users say the product lacks tutorials and training material for some of its features. |
How much does ServiceDesk cost? ServiceDesk Plus offers three pricing plans: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Pricing varies between $0 and $50 per technician, per month.
Incident management in ServiceDesk Plus (Source)
4. Zendesk: IT help desk software with strong self-service functionality
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Zendesk is a cloud-based help desk solution for businesses of all sizes. While the product is suited to general help desk operations, it also offers an ITSM solution that offers incident tracking, reporting, ticketing, and multi-channel support.
Zendesk's unique selling point is its self-service functionality, which allows employees to submit tickets via emails, web forums, chat, or mobile, phones, and view their status in a web interface.
Pros* | Cons |
---|---|
Capterra reviewers find Zendesk's ticketing features easy to learn and use. | Some users say that Zendesk lacks ticketing features such as ticket forwarding to a third-party service. |
Users say the product's search functionality is effective for locating assets. | Some users say the reports and dashboards can take time to load. |
How much does Zendesk cost? Zendesk offers five different plans: Essential, Team, Professional, Enterprise, and Elite. Pricing varies between $5 and $199 per agent, per month.
Tracking tickets in Zendesk (Source)
The final verdict: Which Spiceworks alternative should you go for?
After you've gone through the list we provided above, the next step is to select the one that best fits your business needs. Follow these steps to find out the right fit for your business needs:
Compare features: Since lack of some features is one of the prime reasons why you'd be interested in Spiceworks alternatives in the first place, ensure that the products you shortlist have the features you need.
Set a budget: Set an annual budget for a help desk software solution. Calculate the total cost of ownership of each of the products and shortlist the ones that fit your budget.
Read reviews: After you've selected the products that have the features you need and that fall in your budget range, go through user reviews on Capterra to learn from the experience of your industry peers.
If you are currently using an IT help desk solution that's working well for you or have any other product in mind, please let us know in the comments section below.