Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Avantages

It is a very complete help desk allows you to have a great visibility of what is happening with the statistics of category breakdown, work by engineer, attention time, etc.. In addition you can create an internal knowledge base, allows you to have your inventory of equipment, reports, purchase records associated with a ticket, etc.. It is very easy to use for the end user because he only has to send a mail to a specific email address and his ticket is registered in the system. It is very stable and reliable.

Inconvénients

It takes time to adjust it to your needs, but it has a great forum where everyone helps you.

Avantages

Honestly, Everything! This is great software and it's hard to believe that its free to use. as with anything there are going to be things here and there that some do not like, but the overall Idea behind this software and what it does and what it allows you to do is absolutely great!

Inconvénients

I honestly have nothing bad to say about this software. I just really really like it. I suppose if I am forced to come up with some kind of con I would have to say it would be nice to have a fourth Priority level. One above High such as Urgent. but other than that. This is really a well thought out and well designed "IMO" piece of kit!

Avantages

I really like that it's free, especially because the team I support is drastically smaller than it used to be, and we don't need near the features we had in the past. The Ticket dashboard is easy to understand, and I like that I can easily create new Ticket Views. I also enjoy the amount of support the community aspect brings to the table. The Knowledge Base allows techs to create articles for their users, and it provides the ability for techs to look at articles of other techs outside of their company in order to draw on their expertise. I also really enjoy that I'm able to restrict what domains I can receive tickets from in order to prevent spam/junk.

Inconvénients

It's kind of expected with a free product, but the Reporting feature is pretty bare bones. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of options for configuring custom reports, and the available options are very limited. Every once in a while, the cloud-hosted solution is a bit slow. Other than that, I haven't experienced any issues.

Avantages

If you chose the cloud way, there's nothing you need to install: just register and you're u and running.
The ticketing solution is simple and quite basic, but definitely easy to use and simple to manage: forget advanced automation, multiple queues and automated workflows, but you can define some rules and automatically assign or categorize your requests quite easily and effectively.
You also don't need to add users, just technicians: they're added as soon as they submit a request, and that simplifies user management.
It integrates with other Spiceworks tools such as Inventory, and that's quite useful.

Inconvénients

There's almost no automation (really basic), and you cannot manage different queues to route tickets to.

Avantages

How about a super product, that has everything you need to manage as many companies as you need the right way... and for it to be absolutely free.
That is what spiceworks brings to the table, a top product at an unbeateable price... FREE!
You have unlimited everything, and you can manage your suport with a ticketing system that is well thought out.
Not only that you have access to all the it pros that are also part of spiceworks.
This is a must tool for an IT manager

Inconvénients

There is nothing not to like.
You can't beat the price, you can't beat the software.
This is a solid solution for IT professionals of ANY size.

Avantages

The Spiceworks community is second to none, there is not a day that goes by when some post doesnt help one of the team. The software is also, for SME is brilliand and you are on a budget. After initial setup and agent deployed you can monitor, have tickets and your helpdesk up and runing

Inconvénients

Ive personally experienced a few "quirks" so dont know if its me ! Tickets taking a while to arrive, and network monitoring can be hit and miss

Avantages

This is a free product, which in itself is impressive when you consider what you are being offered. In addition to a customizable ticketing system, you are given an inventory system, and a newly added network monitoring function which so far has been nothing short of impressive (Until now I have been using PRTG Monitor, which in itself is a wonderful tool, but not free.) The initial setup is very easy, and and Spiceworks as a service has very low hardware requirements, meaning you can run it on an older laptop fairly well.

The reporting function is a massive lifesaver, as it can help you generate a flexible list of everything from tickets (very flexible in what you want displayed, and how you want it sorted,) to your IT inventory (sorted by office location, purchase date, etc.) The ability to send these reports to our company's upper management to show hours spent on particular projects per month, or what assets need to be replaced due to original purchase date, is a very big plus.

The community portal itself is full of helpful people who are always willing to share their knowledge. On multiple occasions where I had to find a solution to a technical problem, I found people who were quickly able to pull more details from each instance, and provide a brief list of solutions in a fairly short amount of time. When you are backed against a wall, this can be a massive lifesaver.

Inconvénients

Plugin compatibility. Some older plugins may no longer work well with newer version of the software, as well as some of the newest plugins requiring the latest update, but these are just minor nitpicks.

Avantages

Its somehow easy to use, as IT Sysadmin level 3, I find it somehow easy to use. But when we gave access to non technical persons they take several days to start getting comfortable with them.

Its quick, has a lot of options and we have it integrated with emails. So, just sending an email to an account will generate the ticket and even assign the IT based on the CC. thats a great time-saving option and super easy for end users to open a ticket. Imaging ask an end user to go to a page, do several clicks, fill a form, to open a ticket about change the computer time. They will never do that. So we love spiceworks.

Inconvénients

Not so easy to use for non tech people. Even if you go to the home page and log in, its hard to find the IT Help Desk section, you need to give them the direct link to it, or they will expend an hour to find it. (happen several times).

Avantages

It is free. It works better than some of the others that I have tried. It is completely configurable for whatever category you need. Always works. Perfect for a simple ticketing system.

Inconvénients

Since it is free, there are ads that show on website. Not really an issue. Not as granular as some of the others.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Avantages

this software its amaizing,it can let you control almost any part of your IT management, it let you now a really detailed info about your pc and laptops connected in your network,the report let you know even the internals serials of each part of your hardware , is really professional.

Inconvénients

i dont have to express any cons against this sofware, its really good piece of software.

Avantages

Inventory management is one of the best, with few tweaks on the user end, it is easy to scan all the computers and printers in the network from serial number to installed software in each computer that will come handy in the audit.

Inconvénients

Few basics were missing like currency value of different countries will making a purchase invoice for the new bought devices.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Avantages

Of course the cost since it is Free. Easy to deploy and users to understand

Inconvénients

Does not have all the features and reports that others have, but that is offset by the price

Avantages

Great asset tool and management for the IT department

Inconvénients

I don't have any cons about this software

Avantages

I like that it works well for a small to medium sized environment, I like that it has never crashed or given me a single problem in the five years I've used it as our only help desk ticketing solution, and I like that it costs absolutely nothing. It includes some other features like network monitoring, SNMP monitoring, etc., but we've never used any of those features. If you really need that type of functionality I'd recommend going with a more robust solution built for that purpose. All we needed was something to handle support request tickets and it has been great for that. If you have a very large environment you'll probably want to go with a more robust solution, but for our 100+ users this has been completely fine.

Inconvénients

If I had to find something to complain about, I guess I would say that I don't care for the fact that its HTML based and is rendered in a browser window. I'm sure many people don't find this a con, I'm just personally used to working with an application installed locally and find the interface to be a little laggy compared to the snappy performance of something like Autotask. Not much to complain about in a free solution though.

Avantages

I have used this software several times and it's amazing on how easily it can save you a lot of money. Spiceworks community is amazing in helping you out resolve your everyday problems. I highly recommend before you waste your money on other server monitoring software.

Inconvénients

You need to keep on top of the errors and do backups so that everything works smoothly but besides that, if all goes bad. Just do a system restore and your backup in no time.

Avantages

I have been using this product for a good 14 years. Our use has been waning as we have integrated a ticket system into our Case management system. However this is has been a beast of a program. Reliable and easy for the end user to submit a ticket and easy for the tech team to review and resolve.

Inconvénients

There really isn't too much I didn't like about this software. Maybe the worst flaw is that there is not much follow up from the program side--(although if there is I haven't found it)).

Avantages

We used Spiceworks for over a year. We lived and breathed in the Help Desk environment. It was great. We had memes on the office, making sure everyone put in our tickets, and tracked everything we possibly could. When techs were in the field, a quick app click, and recording our voices to tickets. It was just awesome.

Inconvénients

Then administration wanted to try getting logs / reports from the system. Spiceworks was excellent for IT, but junk for a non-IT administrator wanting oversight. The reports were too techy, too details, no summary. EG: Bar Graphs, Pie Charts, and fluff. Spiceworks was all business, which was the problem, I needed to show a little fluff.

The advertisements also made it a little, meh, for when other users were posting tickets. Lets face it, they weren't the kind who were looking for datacenter solutions (typical ads we saw).

Avantages

This is an extremely full featured monitoring software with great helpdesk and inventory support. Technical support is extremely responsive and the community is amazing

Inconvénients

Hard to create a concentrated help desk, wanted to pull several reporting sessions together but would have lost history and much funcationality

Avantages

It was free and easy to use. Lots of support from other users that also help out with other software.

Inconvénients

Asset tracking wasn't the best, inaccurate and the reporting isn't the greatest.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Avantages

Very easy to use and the initial setup and normal operation is user friendly enough to where even a novice user could get it working for their needs. When it comes to Help Desk software, you can't beat the low price of FREE!

There is a large pool of add-ons and user created plugins that will fill in the blanks to add additional functionality.

If you get stuck on an issue while using Spiceworks Help Desk, the official email support and user forums are very helpful.

Helps you keep track of inventory.

Overall if you are looking for a cost effective HelpDesk ticketing solution for a small/medium business, you can't go wrong here.

Inconvénients

Users have reported that on very large networks the initial network scan can take days to complete.

Official support is limited to email or user forums.

You can't hire an expert through Spiceworks to help set up or configure Spiceworks Help Desk to meet your needs. It is up to you to figure it out.

Avantages

I would say it is the most fantastic way of monitoring numerous devices quickly and easily. It is the most user-friendly software. I love its interesting features and dashboard through which we can easily see the frequency of open as well as closed tickets. Moreover, another plus point is that of using this software is that we do not have to worry about using our important data as it has the option of saving history also that can be reviews anytime.

Inconvénients

Spiceworks Network Monitor is one of the best IT tools. When I started using this tool it was a little difficult to learn, but it did not take long for becoming me an expert of having a great command. Now I feel this is the best network monitoring tool I have ever used that does not keep cons.

Avantages

This is a very good website to join and discuss any IT related issues, we just recently joined it and already got help in resolving a big email issue we had. This site has a very large community with hundreds of thousands of members, they have categories for just about any questions about anything IT related. They also have quick support system to help you fast with approving things. Users are very knowledgeable and eager to discuss problems

Inconvénients

You need internet access as this is only available online, if you are traveling and might not have internet access, you have to wait until you can have access

Avantages

It's Free. It has a great mobile app that allows my techs to have access to the portal from anywhere. It is simple to use. It is cloud based. It comes with a free remote control tool (ZoHo) as well.

Inconvénients

Advertisements. You have to expect that with anything that is free. We may upgrade to the paid version this year. Limited options in regards to the User Portal.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

Free; Easy to set up and use due to minimal features; Very easy customer dashboard set up; Good communication abilities

Inconvénients

Minimal out of the box features means it's quick to set up and use, but it takes more effort to customize.

Avantages

We moved to spiceworks about 4 year ago. What we most like is how the helpdesk and the network monitoring is helping our daily tasks. We can easily check the computer in our network, find the apps installed and let customers to enter their tickets synced with they machine. This reduces a lot our effort to give our customers a good quality of support

Inconvénients

We are using the free version and the ads are really the problem, but we can leave with it.

Avantages

Myself and my team have been using Spiceworks for the last 2 years now as our Help Desk Ticketing software solution. We have now also recently changed over to their cloud version of this software which incredibly is also free and still have zero issues with the software. To date, it has never let us down. Spiceworks software delivers all the functionality we need out of a Help Desk Solution and is still running strong for us. We manage over a 500 tickets daily through this software and have never found to have had any technical issues with it.

Inconvénients

I do however have only one small issue and that is I wish it had better sorting of submitted tickets and improved search capabilities. Otherwise this software is amazing and only look forward to any future updates they may have for us.

Avantages

Easy to setup (cloud or on-premise versions). I was also able to copy the configuration from an onsite installation to a cloud installation. Tickets are easy to manage, and we can keep track of what work we've done on various assets. User management is also easy, though we don't use it much.

Inconvénients

I don't think there is anything I dislike about it. Since we only use it to generate our own tickets for the IT team to communicate about what needs to get done, I don't have any user complaints.

Avantages

Where to begin - there are so many features and services that we have come to rely on in regard to Spiceworks such as:
-Remote data collection on all devices: you can see when a hard drive is out of space before it becomes a problem
-Remote data collection on logs: you can see when someone had some log errors and they don't know about it and you catch a system-wide upgrade issue before it affects everyone
-Software reports: see who has what installed and if it fits in the companies guidelines
-Seamless integration between ticket creation and purchasing.
Also, Vendor participation that allows vendors to directly communicate with the whole community and help out, without all the trouble of phone calling and long wait times.

Inconvénients

The only thing we have identified that Spiceworks doesn't do is patch management but word is they are working on that.

Avantages

I loved that the price is free! This makes a huge impact to the success of a startup or small company. The other key feature is the fact that the product works. It functions exactly how a ticket system should function.

Inconvénients

I hate that it is so difficult to be able to get our clients to use the site. This is primarily because routing the DNS information from our domain to their site is cumbersome at best. If they provide a simpler way to route your domain to their site it would improve the offering and would even be worth a few dollars per month for this functionality.

Avantages

IT Assessment and HelpDesk are the most beneficial applications, making the dual combination that all IT Administration would need to perform daily tasks.

Inconvénients

For sure all tools need to improve but Spiceworks is a complete tool.

Avantages

Inexpensive and simple SNMP monitoring
easy to download and setup within minutes
Monitor multiple devices from a variety of manufactures
notifications

Inconvénients

Installable only on Windows
a little top heavy
hasn't evolved much since conception
notifications are aggressive and needs a lot of time to tune properly

Avantages

FREE, FREE, FREE - in a world where IT always has to watch the budget, its nice to have a great helpdesk management system out there that is FREE!!!! Easy to setup, deploy and track assets quickly

Inconvénients

The only draw back is that you have to wait for support in the user forum/community. instead of being able to pickup a phone and call someone you have to rely on others to answer the questions that you run into (which often only takes a few minutes)

Avantages

Extremely involved community. Lots of experts. Local server client with some cloud capabilities. Excellent forums. Good documentation features. Good price point.

Inconvénients

Lacks some features that other "big boy" helpdesk software might have, like integrated remoting. Discovery tool is a bit obstuse and not very useful.

Avantages

Spiceworks was a God-send for me and my team. We needed a tool that could adequately query requests and Help-desk calls whilst keeping it simple. We were almost instantly able to achieve this. It's fully customizable to suit whatever need we have. I'd even recommend it for non-IT teams. It's that flexible.

Inconvénients

It's great out of the box, and support is great but it was still a bit of a learning curve to configure. All in all an awesome product.

Avantages

We have been using Spiceworks for 3-4 years and I absolutely love it. It allows our team to stay on task, easily communicate through notes on tickets, and most importantly get work completed efficiently. We obviously chose this software because it was free, but kept using it because it was easy to use, easy to configure, and had a large community of support behind it.

Inconvénients

Some features of Spiceworks simply don't work well. Such as the inventory component of the software. It attempts to gather all the computers in your domain and place them in an inventory so you can track and monitor them, but at least half of our PCs just don't report in no matter how much troubleshooting we try.

Avantages

This system is very easy to use and configure, even for users who are just starting out in these activities. It has the main property of always keeping us informed of the state in which our servers and switches are located and in case of any problem Spiceworks will alert us even before it occurs. Another feature that has benefited us is that it is not necessary to log on to an individual computer, we just have to open the system and be able to buy everything. It is a fully automatic system and we can use it from any type of device that is integrated into a browser compatible with the system, provided that the data is hosted on the computers of the internal network of our company.

Inconvénients

Sometimes the system can become a bit slow, especially when we access the system through low-income or old-order ones.

Avantages

Feature Set is amazing - there are plugins to do things if you want to do more than is built in but the built in is plent for us.
Price is right (free) and it works amazingly well!

Inconvénients

Inventory module is confusing and there is no way to keep it as updated as I would like. It has lots of old data that is hard to get out of the way.

Avantages

We love Spiceworks! Speed of site is great (from email to ticket creation). Good reporting, Activity tab is great to see what has been happening.

Inconvénients

Searching through tickets can be painful using the Cloud Helpdesk.

Avantages

Automatic updates and notifications through email are great for us to keep on top of requirements and notify customers of progress.

Inconvénients

Customers do not get regular updates summarising their open tickets and monthly closed tickets. Also the UI could be improved to make it easier to view tickets and update them in order.

Avantages

The ease of putting in tickets and meeting resolution target without much communication loss is imperative to all IT operations.

Inconvénients

So i used the free version of the software being in a start up environment, that being said the software has a ton of adds.

Avantages

It offered an excellent IT resource for tracking devices and getting a general overview and sense of control regarding the devices on our network/domain. Before we used to store inventory data in an Excel spreadsheet and rely on someone to update that accordingly. Now, thanks to the network scan and server level service running, we can easily stay up to date on what PC needs updates, user changes to the system, and security warnings.

Inconvénients

I wouldn't recommend installing the service on a heavily used machine (a personal one or IT staff PC) because it can hog memory when it's doing it scans. Plus the PC has to be on the network to run the scan so even if you schedule the scan to run overnight if you have a laptop it would be pointless if you take it home with you. Install it on a service terminal or server

Avantages

I like the fact that replies to the user that sent in the ticket are automatic and show who is assigned to the ticket.

Inconvénients

Ticketing system could use the ability to not open new tickets when an auto reply is sent back. When an auto reply is sent back, the system will open another ticket causing a massive amount of new tickets till you figure out how to correct the issue.

Avantages

Has almost every feature a help desk solution should have - beside basic ticketing tracking, has features for tracking inventory. Provides access to great documentation, and solutions to so many technical issues.

Inconvénients

The interface on the admin and client side seem a bit cluttered, little simplification could help.

Avantages

Spiceworks functions as my to-do list, and allows me to reprioritize throughout my day as tickets come in to the system. The reporting is helpful and allows me to identify trends. It's easy to communicate with ticket creators, ask questions, and organize any supporting documentation.

Inconvénients

Currently have an issue with due dates not populating, but this is something the administrator should be able to fix.

Avantages

The price is what gets you to download the software, the features are what keep you from looking for an alternative. It will find all of the nodes on your network and associate them based off of their MAC address.

Inconvénients

While not really a "Con", the free version does have ads but they are typically "techie" in nature and sometimes they are relevant to what you may be working on at the time.

Avantages

It's free. The help desk functionality does exactly what it's supposed to do. Users can submit tickets via email or through a portal, and support staff are notified and can acknowledge the tickets right away. When ticket updates are entered promptly, it provides excellent visibility into the life of a trouble ticket.

The Spiceworks community is amazing. It's our first stop when searching for answers to tough problems.

Inconvénients

We occasionally have issues with the system not checking email for new support tickets. A restart of the software solves the problem.

Avantages

This is a simple software that will allow you to manage the opening and closing of tickets for your organization.

You can keep track of open tickets, assign them and make comments.

All changes in a ticket automatically generate an email to those involved in them.

It also detects on the network new computers, software changes, even can send alerts when there is little tonner in some printer or when there is little disk space on some computer in the network. This can be of great help to an organization's IT teams

Inconvénients

It can be difficult to install and configure and help is not always immediate. Apart from this it can be a simple tool for the end user.

Avantages

FREE! Yes, it doesn't cost a thing other than ads, but we find they really they are not all that obtrusive. This is not just bare bones free either, its literally the entire enterprise level suite.

Inconvénients

Network scanning is quite slow and we find that sometimes device outages are not found right away. When scans do finally complete, often some manual edits are necessary.

Avantages

Excellent set of features
Amazing community

Inconvénients

Can sometimes be a little slow
Ad-supported