Atlassian Confluence vs. SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Confluence
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Confluence is a collaboration and content sharing platform used primarily by customers who are already using Atlassian's Jira project tracking product. The product appeals particularly to IT users.
$10
per month
SolarWinds Service Desk
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
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
Pricing
Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Free for 10 Users
Standard
$5
Per User Per Month
Premium
$10
Per User Per Month
Server
$10
10 Users - Perpetual License
Server
$2,700
25 Users - Perpetual License
Server
$5,300
50 Users - Perpetual License
Server
10,200.00
100 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
15,000.00
500 Users - Annually
Server
19,800.00
250 Users - Perpetual License
Server
30,000.00
500 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
30,000.00
1,000 Users - Annually
Server
45,000.00
2,000 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
52,000.00
2,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
79,200.00
3,000 Users - Annually
Server
90,000.00
10,000 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
105,600.00
4,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
132,000.00
5,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
143,000.00
10,000 Users - Annually
Server
150,000.00
10,001+ Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
154,000.00
15,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
165,000.00
20,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
176,000.00
25,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
187,000.00
30,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
198,000.00
35,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
209,000.00
40,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
220,000.00
40,001+ Users - Annually
Enterprise
Contact Sales
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Considered Both Products
Confluence

No answer on this topic

SolarWinds Service Desk
Chose SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
We already use Jira Software, so we also evaluated Jira Service Desk, since it would have integrated quite easily and been a lower cost than Solarwinds Service Desk. We found that Jira Service Desk was mainly a "cookie cutter" product, where there was very little capability for …
Chose SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
We used to work with Kayako, and I find them very similar, from my POV as an end-user of the system.
In other words; as a user who just submit tickets, follows up on their statuses, and searches the knowledge base, the two products are similar.
Chose SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Samanage is much easier to maintain, to configure and to train users than either Kaseya or Remedy, and has much better features than some of the lower-end cloud-based or on-premise solutions.It's easy to navigate from a user's view and if properly configured by your IT staff, …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.2
109 Ratings
9% below category average
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
-
Ratings
Task Management7.087 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.912 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling7.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.058 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access6.882 Ratings00 Ratings
Search6.9107 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual planning tools7.586 Ratings00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.9
109 Ratings
1% below category average
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
-
Ratings
Chat6.415 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications8.2107 Ratings00 Ratings
Discussions7.9101 Ratings00 Ratings
Surveys7.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase8.5101 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts9.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.9
109 Ratings
3% below category average
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
-
Ratings
Versioning8.092 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files7.869 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files7.763 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration9.0104 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control8.7102 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced security features8.178 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive7.148 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync6.748 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
8.0
96 Ratings
2% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.395 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.956 Ratings
Service restoration00 Ratings7.357 Ratings
Self-service tools00 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.967 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.176 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards00 Ratings6.486 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
6.9
81 Ratings
17% below category average
Configuration mangement00 Ratings6.973 Ratings
Asset management dashboard00 Ratings6.980 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement00 Ratings6.963 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
8.0
79 Ratings
4% below category average
Change requests repository00 Ratings8.663 Ratings
Change calendar00 Ratings7.743 Ratings
Service-level management00 Ratings7.871 Ratings
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Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
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User Ratings
Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(126 ratings)
7.9
(118 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(19 ratings)
6.5
(8 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(12 ratings)
8.9
(7 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(3 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
8.9
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
5.4
(25 ratings)
8.0
(92 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(4 ratings)
8.9
(3 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(4 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.9
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Atlassian ConfluenceSolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)
Likelihood to Recommend
Atlassian
It has a comment option on the page, where you can tag other teammates tagging them. it sends the mail notification. Comment at the page end is pretty good for referring to other stakeholders and future references of the topic on the page. Creating the highlights of the discussions, and meeting held points with highlighted tagging. Easy shortcuts such as to add a date just type "//". The interface is cool and has easy shortcuts for quick page making.
Read full review
SolarWinds
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.
Read full review
Pros
Atlassian
  • QUICK How-to Guides that can be generated and share instantly
  • One can subscribe to the pages and spaces and receive updates in the feed on their home page
  • Automatic Email notifications of new updates in the Confluence area
  • The platform integrates easily with other Atlassian platforms including third-party apps thus improving its reliability
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Atlassian
  • Navigation. Similar to other Atlassian products, users have complained that aspects of Confluence are difficult to learn right away[.]
  • An issue that users can face when using Confluence is attempting to edit a document while someone else is editing. Although users can access the document and save it, they are unable to see the changes happening in [real-time] that other users are implementing until they refresh their page. Some users have also noted that this can result in loss of edits.
  • Another drawback of using Confluence is its specific organizational structure. All information is stored within one page or project, although the page is able to be broken up into sections, some users do not prefer this style. Users can use the ‘page tree’ on each page to organize the different elements of each project.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • There is potential to greatly improve the capacity for cascading attributes. Currently, categories are limited to a top-level category and one subcategory. This leaves a fairly shallow decision tree.
  • Greater flexibility to modify the layout of incident request forms.
  • More integration options for cloud file-sharing platforms. Solarwinds Service Desk has tie-ins to Dropbox but not other vendors.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Atlassian
I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.
Read full review
SolarWinds
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.
Read full review
Usability
Atlassian
Confluence can - and in my personal opinion, it will - be a bit hard to use in the first moment. Atlassian is a great company and is eager to help you with any question you have, though. The interface seems to be a bit clumsy at first but the customization options are enough to make it easier and simpler. In general, Confluence is easy to use when you understand what each section does, but this can take a while.
Read full review
SolarWinds
Solarwinds Service Desk has a very "user friendly" interface. Everything looks nice and neat. And, learning how to use the system is very easy. It provides multiple services that are easy for most people to grasp, and allows for great organization of incidents and assets. Support for Solarwinds Service Desk has a good response and resolution time and are easy to work with.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Atlassian
I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.
Read full review
SolarWinds
Because the data is stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) there are very rarely any outages. There have been some times when the product has been slow to load, but because the interface is web based it could be anything between my computer and AWS that was causing the issue. But also, because the application is web based it can be access from anywhere which makes it very convenient
Read full review
Performance
Atlassian
Pages load very quickly, which makes it useful for quickly obtaining information. The search functionality is also very quick and is able to parse through all of the documents to provide the most relevant results for the query. Other information based software gets bogged down, but so far Atlassian Confluence maintains its performance.
Read full review
SolarWinds
When the system is working, the pages load very quickly. We run reports all the time in the system. The reporting can be extremely complex or very simple. Either way, we have not had any issues with the reports. We do not currently integrate Solarwinds Service Desk with any other software.
Read full review
Support Rating
Atlassian
This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.
Read full review
SolarWinds
SolarWinds support department will respond to you quickly from the time of purchase to after-purchase instructions & supporting, and the company is great in customers support. In buying a software, our organization always has a priority for the seller and support and accountability is very important to us, and the manufacturer or seller must be responsible and supportive.
Read full review
Online Training
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Atlassian
Overall, I am very satisfied with the initial implementation (and the subsequent upgrades and implementations made over the years).
This product has never rose to the level of being an major issue at an executive level. It has quietly and valiantly done it's job for our company!
Read full review
SolarWinds
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.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Atlassian
We used to use Google Drive to store all of our documentation, but it is disconnected from our every day working environment and it was easy to lose documents and become disorganized within the broad drive environment. [Atlassian] Confluence has kept us more organized and its tight coupling with Jira has made documents more accessible and more likely to be kept up to date.
Read full review
SolarWinds
We chose SolarWinds Service Desk for its user friendly platform compared to what we had. Its was easier for requestors to submit tickets, provide feedback, merge tickets, build a suitable approval process. Our organization had a hard time going back and forth with the end user on providing a status on their request or issue, where most users just didn't follow through or lost interest in their issue. We would have to send multiple emails to get any type of feedback and that's something we did not want to keep on doing.
Read full review
Scalability
Atlassian
This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.
Read full review
SolarWinds
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Atlassian
  • We've gone from folders and folders of Word documents and PDFs into a single system with a search feature to bring all of our data together and trackable
  • While onboarding took a bit longer for the company (to switch from a Word document centric mindset - to a web-based one), overall the company has embraced the features and power of Confluence within the working stack
  • However, as costs continue to climb for the Atlassian product, we are forced to continue our evaluation of the product - with replacing it a remote possibility if it begins to outprice its usefulness to us.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • We are more easily able to quantify user satisfaction with support.
  • We are able to develop SLAs that quantify and define the obligation of our support teams.
  • The actual cost of Solarwinds Service Desk per agent user is high in our estimation. The more you implement this platform across your organization, the more tightly tethered you are to this solution.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Service Desk Screenshots

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