Cherwell Service Management (discontinued) vs. Microsoft System Center Service Manager

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
Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft System Center Service Manager is an integrated platform that is designed for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices to an organization’s requirements. The platform includes built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control and asset lifecycle management.N/A
Pricing
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
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)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Considered Both Products
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

No answer on this topic

Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Chose Microsoft System Center Service Manager
It has its similarities between the two from a ticketing standpoint but as a primarily Microsoft shop it is nice to have a product that was created to play along with other tools that we are using such as SCCM. We like Jira for the project management tools and Cherwell for …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
9.9
53 Ratings
19% above category average
Microsoft System Center Service Manager
7.8
7 Ratings
5% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets10.052 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Expert directory9.941 Ratings7.03 Ratings
Service restoration10.035 Ratings7.04 Ratings
Self-service tools10.051 Ratings8.75 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications9.938 Ratings7.04 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation9.948 Ratings9.76 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards9.951 Ratings7.16 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
Microsoft System Center Service Manager
8.2
7 Ratings
0% below category average
Configuration mangement10.042 Ratings9.86 Ratings
Asset management dashboard10.041 Ratings8.77 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement10.031 Ratings6.05 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
Microsoft System Center Service Manager
6.7
6 Ratings
22% below category average
Change requests repository10.048 Ratings6.16 Ratings
Change calendar10.044 Ratings6.05 Ratings
Service-level management10.045 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
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
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.5 out of 10
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(57 ratings)
8.8
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(16 ratings)
8.9
(2 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)Microsoft System Center Service Manager
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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Microsoft
I think any organization that runs windows on their computers that is size over 50 workstations and looking for a complete package to manage their windows machines must have Microsoft System Center Service Manager, especially if they have Windows servers and VMs. The capability of managing multiple devices at ones can save a lot of time for the IT jobs.
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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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Microsoft
  • This tool is used to track support requests among our IT staff.
  • We use this tool to automate some more routine tasks.
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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.
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Microsoft
  • Kind of clunky.
  • Takes a lot a lot a lot of configuration.
  • There is a lot of jargon to learn to be able to use it to its full ability.
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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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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
The customer support service is excellent. They help from start/deployment through to any time later on. They responded quickly and resolved our issues professionally and in no time.
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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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
We selected MCSM because it is a solid product that we could use very quickly, compared to other tools there is a lot more effort for integration into the infrastructure, costing time and money. We implemented the tool very quickly and since it integrates with other Microsoft products, it was very easy to get up and running.
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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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
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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Microsoft
  • Save a world of time when imaging
  • Save a world of time with patch management
  • Provides decent reports to get a snapshot quickly
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ScreenShots