Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Avantages

It's free! I can't think of a better free IT software out there. It handles tickets exceptionally well. i love the email to ticket functionality.

Inconvénients

The Hardware part of this can really bog down and run slow. We stopped using this part.

Avantages

It is an open source, cloud based easy to use and intuitive ticketing system especially if one is looking to get started quickly for a smaller user user environment. It has a very good user community that provides help in case we need help on getting started and daily use of the system.

Inconvénients

The one issue that we faced was not getting a complete, accurate picture of the inventory on the network when we used the in built feature to scan the inventory of assets on the network - we were able to resolve this with community help.

Avantages

Metrics on help desk detailing what users have issues with, inventory reporting on hardware/software that helps with compliance, reports available.

Inconvénients

It's difficult to say, nothing really pops out and having used both cloud and premise solution, I would not consider any other Help Desk.

Avantages

With Free tools and free support, what is to hate. This product did what it said it would do. I am able to monitor my windows and linux servers from my PHONE!

Inconvénients

it is a free product and development doesn't owe you anything. That being said they have been very helpful and useful.

Avantages

Spiceworks has an excellent product that is continuously evolving. The full featured suite give any IT professional the ability to use one module, several modules, or all the modules to meet their needs. New versions come out at least once a year with updates more frequently.

Part of the evolution has been to a hosted, cloud based solution as an option for IT professionals who don't want to pay to host the server in their own environment.

The product is and always will be free. The online forum boasts more than 2 million members with the employees actively involved in the social portal. The vendors that are part of the community are very helpful and many have a dedicated employee who actively monitors their portion of the forum, ready to help.

Finally, the company hosts a great convention every year in Austin Texas which is always very well attended.

Inconvénients

Spiceworks moves the product forward, but sometimes they don't come back to the basics of what makes the software great. Adding new features can be a plus, but enhancing old features is very important as well.

Avantages

I love the ease of the ticketing system and the professionalism of the emails that come out from it. I have used some other IT help desk platforms but this one works really well.

Inconvénients

The app isnt particularly slick but it works. I think in they could spend a bit more time on the app it would increase their portfolio tenfold. For the price it is a gem and you cannot go wrong.

Avantages

- Free
- Easy to use for both the IT staff and end users
- Great customizable reports
- Supports plugins and extensions
- 12000 tickets and counting!

Inconvénients

Not much honestly. The software is free because it's ad supported, however this is one of the few platforms where the ads are not intrusive and can be quite useful. Spiceworks vettes their sponsors, so you know you're supporting the product.

Avantages

It is a good tool for work tickets. Easy for users to open tickets and keep track of what's being done (when staff update the notes on a ticket). Can keep track of ongoing issues or past issues.

Inconvénients

I think this tool would be working better for us if the person that is supposed to be maintaining it would actually maintain it. For a while we were getting lots of errors where users weren't able to open tickets, or when they did open tickets the email wasn't being sent out to the IT staff.

Avantages

Easy to use and navigate software from the get go. The ability to monitor your entire network from one program makes my job so much easier. The ability to track inventory, issues as well as print out reports helps me stay on top of any issues that come up last minute.

Inconvénients

I cannot think of any as it does what it is created to do. I could see them added some premium features that would be prices based but then that might turn people away.

Avantages

The community and support. the software has all the basic features of a ticketing system but so many I never thought of needing.

Inconvénients

Some more advance customization and addons.
the plugins are fine but no longer support open source addons.

Avantages

You really can't get any better pricing. Unlike most other software as a service, you get this product free! Instead, they serve you advertisements. Honestly, I wish more companies would go towards this model. Or at least give you the option too!

Inconvénients

You are a bit limited in the functionality. I would say you really need to test it to make sure it has everything that you currently or foresee that you will need in the short term.

Avantages

The software reasonable easy to install and get working. The Help Desk ticket module was easy to configure and get working. The remote PC agents were simple to install(and uninstall) and once setup they communicated as expected. The help desk software does exactly as it was intended.

Inconvénients

Most guides and integrations are several years old at best. The base software is solid and being worked on but it is kind of limited on integrations as they are mostly provided by the public. Without extensive knowledge or developer skills it only functions as a help desk.
It is free but I could not give it 5 Stars for value because there are other free products that can do it better with a lot of additional modules available from the developers.

Avantages

I have used it to support my off site clients and have had great results. It enables my clients to log in and open a case, I get an email, my staff is notified, and we are able to follow through the entire process all at a very reasonable cost.

Inconvénients

the support is not up to where it might be. They should turn around support calls a little faster. they rely on the community to solve some issues instead of offering really high end support in house

Avantages

It's a one stop solution and a single point of contact that does not get lost in the shuffle like emails often do.

Inconvénients

It sends too many emails. Every time any change is made on a ticket, it sends me an email. I get hundreds of emails!

Avantages

I love that it's free! Spiceworks is one of the best companies and products you can find for IT related things.

Inconvénients

There have been issues with deploying the agent, but those issues have been resolved by the spiceworks support team

Avantages

It has own asset collector.
Free to use
It has its knowledgebase

Inconvénients

Machine you installed spiceworks must be strong. It needs performance

Avantages

It is user friendly with intuitive front end interface that offers excellent customer experience.
It offers satisfaction to end users since an issue is only resolved when the person requesting for assistance confirms that the matter has been solved.
It is also an affordable solution.

Inconvénients

The software is mainly IT based and does not fit well in other fields that my require such a solutions.
Although it is meant for both small and large scale businesses,it is not robust enough to efficiently serve the large scale.

Avantages

Built with IT professionals needs first. Remote control, auditing, ticketing system! Very easy to use!

Inconvénients

It offers a lot and the price point is right on but there are still quite a few other features we would like to see.

Avantages

I love the ticketing system! They are always improving it. There is a free and a paid version which both work very well. The free version obviously does not have as many options, but it does work very well

Inconvénients

It is not very customizable. When you add fields you cannot build a report on them (at least I can not figure it out)

Avantages

I really liked the customizable network alerts. Alerts can be set to send emails about low toner on printers, low hard drive space on workstations, server power loss, and too many more to name. Helps a lot at being proactive.

Inconvénients

Alerts for new items added to network has never worked for me. I've tried all kind of different variations in setup but none of them sent an alert when a new client was added.

Avantages

The helpdesk feature is excellent, it saves time and allows for seamless tracking of issues and updates to users

Inconvénients

The configuration of the helpdesk was a little challenging

Avantages

Free and uses very little computer and network resources to function.

Inconvénients

Cannot export reports about help desk tickets for management.

Avantages

Spiceworks is very easy to use. It may vary depending on your organization, but for us it is a simple one page form that lists all the questions and fields you are required to complete to submit a help desk ticket. There's nothing confusing about the set up or layout.

Inconvénients

There may be some questions that are not required, depending on the type of ticket you are submitting. For example, at our company both IT and facilities tickets are submitted through spiceworks; however, there are some questions specific to IT tickets only. It would be good if some questions automatically collapses or appears depending on the "pathway" of your ticket.

Avantages

This Software is easy to use, customization to whatever you need, and you can't beat the price! Even though this software could do even more than it is for us now, it is exactly what we need and keeps our support requests, hardware/software inventory, and vendor information all in one great place! My absolute favorite feature is email setup for support requests, all the details that go along with that feature!

Inconvénients

I can't think of anything negative about the software, I only wish I had more time to customize and look into the many endless additional features we could probably use in addition to what we use now.

Avantages

It is absolutely free and easy to use for the technicians and clients.

Inconvénients

Sometimes navigating from one section to another to find what you want is more difficult than it should be.

Avantages

Quick to set up, free, allows us to track software issues and follow thru to resolution. Users can track their tickets in the system so aren't always asking status of resolution of their issue.

Inconvénients

Not particularly initial user friendly. Users find it easier to send in an email to our help desk rather than entering their own ticket.

Avantages

You can use it on your server or easier use it on a subdomain in the Spiceworks site, a lot of my friends do that and they love it.

Inconvénients

Responsiveness could be better but they have an app now for your phone and works great.

Avantages

I love how it keeps our department organized. We have it set up so that when an employee emails our department with a question/concern, it generates a "ticket" on Spiceworks for us. We've found that it's easier to keep track of than emails. Sometimes emails can get overlooked.

Inconvénients

There is nothing I don't like. It's extremely helpful.

Avantages

Spice Works have assign task easily and take follow up with people

Inconvénients

No code repository is need to maintain separately is hard

Avantages

I was genuinely surprised when my IT manager told me Spiceworks was free. Spiceworks offers a good way to create an IT ticketing within the company.

Inconvénients

If you don't know how to use Spiceworks, it may be a little confusing to difficult to navigate. I can't really say anything bad other than that about a free software.

Avantages

This product is easy to use and managed. It doesn't take much time to implement this product. It has many packaged included like network device inventory, locate devices, alerts and asset location tracking.

Inconvénients

Their help desk feature tends to be quirky for end users. Knowledge in SQL to get special reports. Load limitation for larger companies.

Avantages

- Free
- Simple to install
- Good overview of your current inventory
- Scans your network in the background
- You can ask other IT techs via forum when you have a question
- Really good and simple ticket system
- You can add warranty information to hardwares

Inconvénients

- network scan sometime doesn't use given user/pass and scan fails
- requires a fast machine

Avantages

I love Spiceworks helpdesk and inventory and have tried the network monitoring tool. Of course, cost is a big factor here as other monitoring tools are quite expensive. This tool does provide a good set of features and provides alerts to monitors critical network components.

Inconvénients

It seems a bit clunky and somewhat difficult to setup. Also have had issues with performance and reliability.

Avantages

Extremely easy to deploy and configure. It is easy to use as well. I like how you can categorize easily tickets and that it is not based on "customer service" like many competitive products; it is really for IT support.

Inconvénients

Ads. I'm not a big fan and I would refuse to deploy this live as is. I find their option to remove ads hard to find (I found a link through a google search) and although I don't mind paying, I would prefer to get the space used by the ads usable for dashboards or more usable stuff than my logo, say.

Avantages

Spiceworks excels in reporting including reports on response time. The added bonus is the community which knows the answer to almost every problem!

Inconvénients

There could be less marketing and advertising from other vendors.

Avantages

Easy to use, free and Great UI. Love the ticketing system. It's greatest feature is the inventory management system, it scans and inventories practically everything on your network.

Inconvénients

The only thing I dislike is that spiceworks only supports Windows Servers. I hope in the future they start supporting Mac OSX.

Avantages

The biggest Pro for me is the price -- FREE -- and the fact that this tool will do what other software companies charge thousands of dollars to do. It detects when a new computer has been added to the network, or if a change has been made (software added or uninstalled). As a side bonus, it is possible to use along side PDQdeploy.

Inconvénients

The only issue that I have with Spiceworks is that it takes a very long time to do a scan, and I mean SEVERAL hours.

Avantages

It's really full featured, with inventory management. Help desk features. Even some remote management features the really set it apart from other software that is similar.

Inconvénients

However, do you really need these features in a helpdesk, and do you really need a self hosted help desk? For us, the answer ultimately was no and we went with a cloud based help desk software.

Avantages

One place for all IT requests. Customize to meet your needs. Not many Pros except that its free and once its set up its easy as most others like it to use.

Inconvénients

The only thing I dislike is that spiceworks only supports Windows Servers. I hope in the future they start supporting Mac OSX. Spiceworks is that it takes a very long time to do a scan, and I mean SEVERAL hours.

Avantages

Free helpdesk system with network monitoring and network inventory! That's pretty awesome in my book.

Extremely active community with Spiceworks. Some resources are better than others, but it is nice to see certain parts of their site not only dedicated to the 'work' side of Spiceworks, but the more 'human' side of a lot of people in the technology field(s).

We like to talk about more than work, and when we do you can get some great ideas from those folks.

Inconvénients

I would just love it if Spiceworks could run on a Linux platform. While running on windows makes installation and I'm sure a lot of the back-end stuff a lot easier to do, but I would like to put it on a server and let it do it's thing there.

Avantages

I have used Spiceworks for over 11 years. I mainly use it for the outstanding help desk. My users are able to easily submit their issues and I can keep them updated on the status.

Inconvénients

I have trouble with the inventory feature.

Avantages

I like the ability to manage the entire software via a webpage. Also the software allows you to have direct connection to a huge community of like-minded IT professionals.

Inconvénients

The software at times when I try to collect data kind of crash on my system many times with time outs and it became very hard and less intuitive compare to other helpdesk systems I have used

Avantages

Okay, it is free, not like a trial version but fully free. As is the cloud based version but that doesn't do the Asset management. Install it and use it. easy. Oh yeah did I mention it is free. Help is community based but it is very good and active.

Inconvénients

We had some issues getting ti to talk correctly to some of our older switches but other than no real negatives

Avantages

This helpdesk has a lot of features considering that it's free of charge. Inventory is a nice feature, it can even get hardware information on branded PCs (serials...).
Reports can be customized as needed, a query can even be written if you are familiar with SQL.

Inconvénients

Software can only use built-in SQLite DB, cannot use MS SQL.
Sometimes there are problems with sending emails, then a service restart is needed.
Admin accounts are linked to online forum account and cannot be locally managed (password reset...)

Avantages

Helps centralize ticketing and other requests, instead of emails, which can be lost or read and forgotten easily. easy to use and helps keep everyone updated about their ticket status.

Inconvénients

Lacks a few features, namely the complete customization of some of the portal ticket fields that would be nice to have. We have adapted it to work, but slightly less than ideal.

Avantages

Spiceworks network monitor is incredibly easy to get up and running, and provides you with real time notifications about the most vital information you could need to know about your systems at any given time,

Inconvénients

I don't have any complaints about this software, I think that Spiceworks provides an incredible value for for what you're getting.

Avantages

Spiceworks gives you the flexibility to categorize different types of tickets and priority. It also gives a summary and quality of how the ticket responders respond to the ticket. It gives category breakdown and frequency of requests in chart and graph format.

Inconvénients

I don't like the fact that when trying to get the weekly or monthly summary of tickets, tickets that their information were not totally inputed would not come out or populate in the report

Avantages

Spiceworks is very well laid out. You can add several different sub categories to bigger categories and makes it easier to categorize what the user's problem is.

Inconvénients

The analytics suffer when it comes to running numbers at the end. There are some numbers to calculate but you can't go as deep as some people would like to.

Avantages

- Simple and easy to use interface.
- Contains tons of features
- Easy to deploy with tons of "howtos" available on Spiceworks website.

Inconvénients

- Because the software is free, the support is only available through Spiceworks forums. Can be frustrating if an immediate help is needed as at times getting an answer on the forums can take few hours.

Avantages

It is very easy to get used to using. I also love the inventory tracking

Inconvénients

It seems to freeze up a lot. I wish I could work a little faster in it