Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) vs. IFS Assyst

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Cherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.N/A
IFS Assyst
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
IFS Assyst (formerly Axios Assyst, acquired by IFS March, 2021) is an ITSM product in both SaaS and on-premise configurations - the SaaS version is called assystSaaS. This product competes with BMC Remedy, IBM SmartCloud, Cherwell Service Management, and FrontRange ITSM (now Heat Service Management).N/A
Pricing
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Considered Both Products
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Chose Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
I have found that Cherwell is much easier to configure and customize. It is also cloud-based so you only need an internet connection to get going. There are no servers to maintain and there are no backup systems required to safeguard your data. We are now working in a much …
IFS Assyst

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
53 Ratings
20% above category average
IFS Assyst
8.9
1 Ratings
9% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets10.052 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Expert directory9.941 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Service restoration10.035 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Self-service tools10.051 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications9.938 Ratings9.01 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation9.948 Ratings9.01 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards9.951 Ratings7.01 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
44 Ratings
20% above category average
IFS Assyst
9.0
1 Ratings
9% above category average
Configuration mangement10.042 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Asset management dashboard10.041 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement10.031 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
50 Ratings
18% above category average
IFS Assyst
8.7
1 Ratings
4% above category average
Change requests repository10.048 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Change calendar10.044 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Service-level management10.045 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
BMC Helix ITSM
BMC Helix ITSM
Score 8.9 out of 10
BMC Helix ITSM
BMC Helix ITSM
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(57 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(13 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)IFS Assyst
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
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IFS
I would suggest that in this product class, you get what you pay for. Although it is was sold as SAAS with a nearly 'plug and play' implementation, at least one full time highly trained admin is needed for ongoing support. I would advise a team implementation strategy.
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
  • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
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IFS
  • IT Asset Management and IT Service Management in one product
  • ITIL framework
  • Highly customisable service catalogue and processes
  • Mature mobility product
Read full review
Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
  • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
  • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
Read full review
IFS
  • Service requests, incident, problem, and change management
  • Knowledge mgmt is not-existent - the product uses a WIKI for it's own knowledge base.
  • Axios help desk does is not knowledgable and does not follow up on reported incidents
  • Training is incomplete - no real resources available except billable by the hour.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
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IFS
At this point, we are stuck with it. We can't afford a change at this point.
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Usability
Discontinued Products
I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Performance
Discontinued Products
The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Discontinued Products
We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
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IFS
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
Discontinued Products
I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Discontinued Products
The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
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IFS
Axios assyst outperforms JIRA in every aspect, JIRA is a good job system but when it comes to complex processes and configuration management then JIRA is simply not the right system.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Discontinued Products
We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Discontinued Products
We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Discontinued Products
As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
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IFS
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
  • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
  • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
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IFS
  • Replacement of 3 systems with Axios assyst
  • Integration with other enterprise systems
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ScreenShots