Overview
What is Spiceworks Help Desk?
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management. The Spiceworks Network Monitor provides information on observed IT for problem tracking…
TrustRadius Insights
Best free product available
Great Tool for Small and Midsize Enterprise IT Departments
Lots of features, and you can't beat the price!
Spiceworks, the T-Rex of Help Desks.
Spiceworks Help Desk Review
Great ticketing system
Spiceworks Help Desk Makes My Job Simple
Spiceworks Help Desk gets the job done!
Great Free Help Desk
Spiceworks is highly recommended. Did I mention it was free?
Spiceworks Help Desk- A Great Deal Even if They Charged for It!
Spiceworks Help Desk is a great ad-supported option for coordinating end user support
Spiceworks Help Desk is powerful software at a community price.
Spiceworks' Help Desk will SAVE your IT department! And your budget.
Awards
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Popular Features
- Ticket creation and submission (53)9.595%
- Ticket response (52)9.292%
- External knowledge base (47)8.989%
- Organize and prioritize service tickets (53)7.676%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
All Tiers
Free
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Spiceworks Help Desk Demo
Features
Incident and problem management
Streamlining ticketing and service restoration processes
- 7.6Organize and prioritize service tickets(53) Ratings
Prioritize tickets to ensure most urgent are tackled first
- 5.8Expert directory(46) Ratings
Directory of IT and businesses services available to customers to help route tickets to appropriate subject matter experts
- 7.5Subscription-based notifications(41) Ratings
Users subscribe to notifications for ticket updates
- 6.6ITSM collaboration and documentation(44) Ratings
Issue resolution through collaboration mechanisms like discussion threads, social tools; agents can attach notes, files, etc. to tickets in order to maintain a record of all interactions related to the case.
- 9.5Ticket creation and submission(53) Ratings
Users and agents can easily enter new support requests.
- 9.2Ticket response(52) Ratings
Agents can easily follow up with customers.
Self Help Community
Features that allow customers to self-service for support issues.
- 8.9External knowledge base(47) Ratings
Customers can self-service by searching through help articles.
- 5.9Internal knowledge base(47) Ratings
Internal knowledge base helps agents answer customers' support questions.
Multi-Channel Help
Features related to providing customer service and support via different communication channels. Communications are organized by ticket/customer/channel for the convenience of agents.
- 6Customer portal(45) Ratings
Customer portal allows customers to submit tickets themselves and/or access self help resources.
- 4IVR(10) Ratings
Includes an interactive voice response system for routing callers to the correct agent or information.
- 3Social integration(26) Ratings
Agents can communicate with customers via social networks like Facebook and Twitter; may also include brand activity monitoring/reporting capabilities.
- 8Email support(45) Ratings
Integrates with email so that agents can send and receive information related to support tickets via email; email communications are attached to support tickets.
- 5Help Desk CRM integration(27) Ratings
Integrates with CRM so that tickets and support communications are coordinated with customers' records.
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Spiceworks Help Desk?
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management. The Spiceworks Network Monitor provides information on observed IT for problem tracking and server performance monitoring. And finally, the Spiceworks Help Desk Software lets IT personnel stay on top of issues across the network with a ticketing system. Help desk roles with role-based permissions and notifications allow tasks to be allocated across team members. If the user wishes to host Spiceworks apps and tools locally, then they are free. For cloud-based service, Spiceworks bills $12 per IT user per month, or $10 monthly per user if paid annually.
Spiceworks was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, also with a European headquarters in London (since 2012), and was backed by multiple investors, notably Goldman Sachs. In 2019 Spiceworks was acquired by Ziff Davis, a division of J2 Global. It is now a J2 Global company, operating under the name Spiceworks Ziff Davis.
Spiceworks Help Desk Video
Spiceworks Help Desk Competitors
Spiceworks Help Desk Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(243)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Spiceworks Help Desk has proven to be a versatile and valuable tool for various organizations. Users have utilized this software to efficiently manage their IT support requests, providing a solid interface and quick communication with both users and the IT team. The built-in help desk facilitates smooth communication with vendors and resellers for quotes on hardware, software, and services, making it a convenient one-stop solution. Additionally, Spiceworks Help Desk serves as an asset management discovery tool for networking and computing equipment, offering a primary inventory for desktops, mobile PCs, tablets, and software licenses. With its scanning capabilities, it can even identify security vulnerabilities in the network infrastructure.
The community forums within Spiceworks Help Desk provide a valuable resource for IT professionals to share advice, support, reviews of software and hardware, and user-generated scripts and plugins. Users have reported solving computer problems from start to finish by utilizing features such as inventory comparison, advice from the community forums, and vendor quotes within the platform. The software also allows for analytics on types of requests, time to resolution, and request volume, enabling users to track trends and optimize their support processes.
Spiceworks Inventory is another essential component of the Spiceworks suite that enables users to discover and inventory network-connected devices like iLO, Windows, Linux, Macs, printers, routers, switches, etc. It provides detailed device information such as make, model, warranty info, RAM, CPU, disk space, hardware components, and applications. This feature allows for effective system management within the organization.
Overall, Spiceworks Help Desk has been praised for its ease of use during setup and its clean interface. It offers incredible monitoring features along with a variety of customization options that cater to individual needs. With its wide range of functionalities encompassing help desk management, inventory tracking, security monitoring, and knowledge base centricity - all backed by excellent customer support - it has become a go-to solution for IT professionals across industries.
Intuitive and User-Friendly Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and user-friendly interface of Spiceworks Help Desk. Many reviewers have stated that the clean and efficient design of the ticketing system makes it easy to navigate and manage support requests. This user-friendly interface contributes to a smooth and seamless task completion, enhancing the overall user experience.
Convenient User Portal: The user portal in Spiceworks Help Desk provides a convenient landing page for end users to create and update tickets. Numerous users have expressed appreciation for the accessibility factor, as the user portal can be accessed via a browser without requiring specialized software. This accessibility adds to the usability and convenience of Spiceworks Help Desk, allowing anyone to submit help requests easily.
Customization Options: The ability to customize workflows, inventory management, and response management in Spiceworks Help Desk has been highly valued by users. Many reviewers have mentioned how they appreciate the flexibility provided by this software, as it allows them to tailor it according to their specific business needs. The customizable aspects contribute to its adaptability and usefulness for different organizations.
Loss of desktop functionality: Several users have reported that the replacement of the desktop version of Spiceworks with the online version has resulted in a loss of core functionality.
Limitations in cloud email integration: Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the cloud version of Spiceworks, specifically regarding its limitations when receiving emails from specially made applications. This limitation negatively impacts the overall user experience.
Resource-intensive and occasional hanging: Users have experienced issues with Spiceworks using a significant amount of system resources, particularly on Windows systems. Additionally, some users have mentioned that they encounter occasional hangs or freezes while using the software, although a system reboot usually resolves this problem.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-21 of 21)Spiceworks, the T-Rex of Help Desks.
- Easy creation of tickets whether via email or input directly from staff.
- Multiple options including the ability to add-on or modify as needed.
- Easy end user experience in creating and updating tickets.
- User portal giving a landing page for end users accessible via browser.
- The cloud version has some limitations when it comes to how emails are sent to it via specially made applications.
- More roles and notifications options specific to each role.
Spiceworks Help Desk gets the job done!
- Easy creation of tickets
- It's easy to add custom fields
- Adoption is simple
- Metrics can be tracked
- There are ads present, it could be cleaner
- The search function is lacking
- There is some difficulty upgrading
Spiceworks ... Use it every day!!
- Ticketing
- Custom fields
- Management of tickets
- Reporting tool
- Mobile app
Spiceworks a good tool for smart business
- Inventory
- Asset details
- Helpdesk ticket routing
- Too many ads on UI
- Would like to see a local install
Spiceworks
- The help desk allows us to have a ticketing system without breaking the bank.
- Collaborations with a huge number of vendors.
- Syncing online help desk with on-site.
Free and Wonderful!
- Ticketing.
- Community.
- The search function is lacking.
Spiceworks: Need to know, Need to go
- Helps answer questions you may have a hard time finding.
- Helps with training and education.
- Has software that you can use to help in IT.
- I can't think of any.
Spiceworks for Spiceheads
- Free version works brilliantly
- Ease of customization for easy adoption
- Web interface makes it easy for multiple users to work concurrently
- Reports are easy to prepare/customize to gather KPI
- Agents can be intrusive
- Limited installation option is missing e.g. if we only want to use one feature, instead of all
- On-premise version constantly wants to go to the web for dashboard
- Changing a password is quite cumbersome
I found the agents to be limited and produce false positives and alerts for features that I have not enabled.
Overall, it works well and did I mention the cost is zero?
Hey Security Practitioners! Here is the perfect free tool to install for performing a risk analysis on your network!
- Identify workstations with running various operating systems on your network.
- Identify workstations running various anti-virus programs on your network.
- Identify workstations and servers running low on storage capacity.
- Provide dashboards to easily view the current state of your network.
- Spiceworks uses a lot of system resources and does need room for improvement in this area on Windows systems. Sometimes it can hang and a system reboot will clear up the issue.
- Spiceworks should be able to be installed on non-Windows systems such as Linux, Apple MAC OS, or other flavors of unix. So it should have a Linux install available for servers running this OS.
- Running Spiceworks on a workstation along with other programs is not recommended. I would advise installing it on a dedicated server.
Spiceworks works best for smaller MSPs.
- Creating a ticket and assigning a tech in Outlook was simple to use.
- Ticket management for each tech was easy to use.
- Inventory management was well paid out and easy to access.
- Upgrade the ticket search feature so it doesn't feel like tickets are so clustered together when doing a search.
- Improve upon features for the tech. Maybe an antivirus or online status of computers on the main page.
- A feature to record time would help improve tickets being worked on.
- Help desk trouble ticket system, which is great for tracking the status of issues within your organization. It allows users the ability to submit help requests themselves, and it allows teams to update and track the tickets.
- Inventory tracking of all your equipment with lots of details about each piece of equipment, like the patch level of computers and the location for equipment or the last time it was serviced or updated.
- Spiceworks is free!! You can't beat a free solution, and the community behind Spiceworks is huge. Their forums are filled with fellow IT pros willing to help each other out if you submit a question.
- Spiceworks is pretty flexible in the inventory tracking area but it would be nice to be able to create multiple custom fields because sometimes I need more than one customizable field.
- Spiceworks offers apps for managing things from your phone, but it's a very text-heavy app. It would be nice for it to be a little more graphical for some of the lower-end users out there.
- Spiceworks offers 2 different apps, one for their forums and accessing the Spiceworks community, and another for the help desk features. It would be nice to have them combined into one app.
Spiceworks: Low cost, versatile and easy to use
- Tracks issues
- Allows us to categorize tickets
- Provides some metrics for ticket resolution
- Slow response time when logging in
- Does a better job with windows assets that mac assets
Spiceworks is an Amazing Tool
- They provide excellent learning tools.
- The provide great webinars.
- They provide interaction with software and hardware vendors in addition to other IT professionals.
- I only use what's free since it is a redundant inventory program - no complaints though.
- I typically use their website which can be tricky to navigate until you get used to it.
- Nothing else to add.
Spiceworks- free but worth so much more
- It gives accurate alerts for down systems and eliminates a lot of false positives.
- I like that it has never crashed or given me a single problem in the 7 plus years I have been using it.
- The full-featured suite gives 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.
- Creates too many tickets for one task.
- The only downside is that it’s heavily IT based, so using it for other team types is not adoptable.
- There’s no source code so you are stuck with its look.
- PROS
It's free. Extensible with other (not free) products. Good basic monitoring. Easy to use and understand. Spiceworks is also big on training. For example, you can attend Spiceworks University regional events to get hands-on training from certified trainers, watch the free training videos on Spiceworks TV, and participate in the free IT Webinars.
- CONS
Currently only supports Windows servers. I would like so see it be available for the Linux operating system.
Spicetabulous
- Allows my team to quantify their daily workload and predict heightened workload based on trends.
- Allows me to provide my employer with solid tangible data when it comes to proposals, or requests for additional budget/head count.
- Provides a simpler means to inventory our hardware.
- Better ticketing views. I would like to see nested ticket attributes and categories.
- SpiceWorks as a non web-based app would be nice to have.
- More bandwidth, network, and hardware monitoring features would be a big plus.
Spiceworks Helpdesk & Inventory Review
Without the Spiceworks support portal, I would have people come into my office all the time for support or to ask simple questions about none critical issues. Not only is this time consuming for the end user, it interrupts the technicians if they are working on other projects or managing network resources at the time. Since we are a 911 Dispatch Center, the dispatchers don't have the time to leave their stations, so once again the help desk system helps a lot because they can visit the portal, leave a ticket and I can evaluate the severity of the request based on others in the queue, well worth the price of free.
I also want to mention the support forums and the in-house support that Spiceworks has. If you are having issues with Spiceworks, the install, updating or even having issues finding a resolution for a support ticket that was submitted, someone else has probably already encountered it and asked on the forums. The support forums are built into the ticketing system so it's easy for the administrator and the end user to research issues if they desire or require it. The in-house support is also great, they are there and answer very fast, they also participate in the forums a lot.
- Easy installation. You can pick any server that is on your network and Spiceworks will install and configure itself without much input from the admin.
- Support Forums. There is nothing better than having access to experienced users of the systems along with the developers of the software that you are using and Spiceworks provides just that.
- Company support. If you can't find the issue on the forums, the Spiceworks team is ready, fast and affective in resolving issues with their software, giving you ideas on how to improve the system and customize it to your needs.
- Last thing I have found using the system is that along with Desktop Support the Spiceworks package also helps you get a handle on your entire networks needs, inventory and asset management. It's all included in the package and perfect for year end asset management.
- One of the issues I found with the Spiceworks software is the network management. A lot of the time it is discovering items that you have no interest in managing remotely and yet it keeps finding stuff and bringing it to your attention.
- Too much of a good thing? Some would say that because of the nature of the product, being free, the marketing and the software might be considered feature rich, too rich, I think the best thing they could do would be to make it easy to remove features you don't want to use a little easier.
Spiceworks is great for small to medium and even large organizations that don't mind ad placement or other advertisement within their ticketing systems. As a governmental agency, this was the perfect help desk portal for us to use, saving tax payers money that would be used for other projects.
With that said, Spiceworks might not be appropriate for companies that are looking for an in-house solution that isn't driven by ad placement. So in those cases it might not be a good fit, but for smaller companies that cannot afford to invest in a Tech Support Portal like Synergy or Trackit it's a great start. Not only do you get the ticketing system, help-desk portal you get network management tools and asset management. You also are able to build up an in-house support database that customizes itself to past support ticket information.
Overall I like the system. I have had excellent luck with it, our users love the easy of use and I like the asset management and warranty monitoring within the software, it's reminded me a few times or warranties that are getting close to expiring that were not documented by previous staff.
Spiceworks - A Simple Review
- Spiceworks does an excellent job of keeping track of our tickets, and provides a great search tool to help you search through your old tickets for existing solutions to problems.
- Spiceworks is very customizable in the type of fields that can be filled out for both tickets and purchases
- Provide better way of deleting multiple tickets from the HelpDesk menu
SpiceWorks Keeps My Work Spicy!
- The price for sure, who doesn't like free?
- Great community of users who are constantly improving the product.
- Once you get used to the customization in Spiceworks, it's really easy to make the program do what you want it to do.
- Searching could be improved, where there are a lot of work orders in the system, it can be hard to distinguish between open and closed items.
- The ability to prompt for "Are you sure you want to change screens without saving first?" Sometimes I do a lot of documenting in a Work Order then have to look at something else, and I lost everything I've written. The beauty of Spiceworks though, is that someone might fix this soon.
Simple to understand with countless options!
- Gives our company the ability to track the progress on all outstanding and resolved issues.
- We are able to monitor any unwanted programs on all computers.
- Allows our company to communicate with other IT professionals on software or hardware.
- A way to categorize submitted tickets with the ability to search closed issues.
Supremely useful AND it's free? Yes, please!
- The inventory scanning feature has been extremely useful. Because our PC naming convention is based on the serial number, figuring out who a particular PC belongs to can be a challenge. However, the inventory within Spiceworks automatically detects the PC and documents a ton of useful information - serial number, PC name, last logged in user, software installed, hardware configuration and IP address.
- The help desk function is our most frequently used area of Spiceworks. Users can simply send a message to a specific email address and Spiceworks automatically generates a ticket. Each IT staff member is notified and based on who is available or has particular expertise in the user's issue, they can assign the ticket to themselves or admins can assign the ticket to a particular technician. Each ticket includes areas to track time spent on the issue, purchases made (including item, vendor, price), make notes that are visible only by IT staff for documentation purposes, and respond directly to the user. Ticket information is searchable which is especially helpful when researching a problem that has come up in the past.
- We don't use the reporting feature very frequently, but when we do we are always pleased. The canned reports cover a lot of common needs, but if you need a custom report, it is easy to create your own from scratch.
- The help desk does not allow you to add time spent to tickets after they've been closed. The Spiceworks app does, however.
- The Tickets Anywhere hashtag (#) commands either work very slowly or only sometimes.
- The inventory view will randomly switch between icon and browse views instead of keeping the last setting.
Ideal helpdesk tool for SMB
- Spiceworks is great for tracking helpdesk requests from start to finish.
- Inventory (tracking networked and other assets) suffices for SMB / SME but gets unwieldy in larger environments.
- SMB / SME provider community is very helpful.
- The search function does not support boolean logic and is a bit lacking.
- Knowledge base needs work in search and sharing.