Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.
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SysAid
Score 8.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
SysAid is presented as comprehensive ITSM platform with generative AI baked into every element of service management. With a fully conversational experience wrapped into the UI, SysAid aims to empower organizations to unleash their full potential for productivity.
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Pricing
Cherwell Service Management
SysAid
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cherwell Service Management
SysAid
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
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SysAid Copilot is available as an add-on for any plan. It bakes generative AI into every aspect of service management.
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.
SysAid has been great in our management of handling tickets within our Helpdesk but has also allowed us to include other departments. Having work flows has helped us with onboarding and setting up approval process for phones and computers, along with auto prompting end user with additional required info for requests and incidents minimizing the back and forth communication for basic info.
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.
Email integration. End-users can interact with the ticketing system exclusively through email, and admins can message exclusively within a ticket. All communications are linked directly to user accounts including SysAid admin accounts.
Ticket management is very customizable. You can add categories, statuses, action and communication automation, ticket sorting, and much more.
knowledge base links directly to tickets, so repeat issues are easy to solve.
There are still issues with how well the cloud version of SysAid performs. It can be slow at times. It can be offline every so often (very rarely).
There is a lot to learn with this solution so reaching out to their Support is crucial.
Cost. This is not the cheapest solution and cost is not an issue for us, but it might be for some companies. I think it is very reasonably priced and you get what you pay for.
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)
Having personally used SysAid for the past 10 years or so, when it was still in its infancy, the trajectory of its improvement and the pricing, there is no doubt that it will be soon an overall market leader, because whilst there other services with options that SysAid doesn't have or haven't mastered, they come at [an] eye-watering price, and in my comparison, for up to 300% more.
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.
SysAid is easy to use and configure. There are some technical components to the configuration, but their implementation of the SysAid system allows for easy self-service. There was only one time that SysAid could not provide a solution to my direct need. We quickly found a workaround. The issue was integration with Microsoft Office 365 when it was first released. The connection between SysAid and Outlook was problematic. It was not long before SysAid had resolved the issue and provided that integration.
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
No, In my company it is integrated with the Control-M and when ever we receive any incident of the control M console, we receive a ticket at the same time on SysAid
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.
I have had nothing but positive experiences working with the SysAid support team. There are multiple pathways to request and receive support, which are all connected with each other. I get an efficient and effective response most of the time and when there is not immediately a good answer, they create a support request to follow up for resolution.
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.
My team was greatly assisted and trained well. Despite the time zone difference the trainer made every effort to be available during times that were suitable for us and the assistance and help offered was extremely appreciated by my team. A wonderful experience by the team.
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.
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
In the initial stage we implement separate SysAid servers for head and branch offices. When we managed to link up our offices via point to point VPN, we manage to console them into one server. All the assets and devices on branch office were divert back to the server in head office
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.
SysAid, compared to other helpdesk software, was reasonably cost-effective; they provided seamless integrations and were willing to redesign the software to meet our needs. One of their current features that is winning with my organization is the SysAid bot. This is a great idea, and we hope that in the future, we will be able to customize this to our organization's needs.
When we purchase it, the plans were different and mainly we acquired lifetime licenses. in the past year, we migrated to the cloud version. In both cases, the pricing structure was accurate, although they could provide some extra flexibility to pay for exactly what we need in the business.
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
Le doy esta calificación porque los módulos que contiene se pueden usar para casi cualquier departamento, tanto gestión de tickets como inventarios de equipos, hemos utilizado una versión gratuita en Ingeniería para gestionar sus tiempos en las tareas asignadas, es lo único que utilizan pero podrían usar fácilmente el módulo de inventario para su herramienta y el módulo de proyectos también
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
Professional services is just that professional, i have had the opportunity to use this service on several occasions, a technical issue comes up, i made an appointment for one hour and i am contacted at the required time, the representative that hold of my system and goes through the problem while i look on so its also a learning process
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.
How easy it is to configure the app to our existing ITIL process. The ability to pick what services we would like to have as well as the ability to integrate using API as well as the marketplace.
Intuitive interface. Integration to Outlook. Easy reporting.
It has a very user-friendly interface and effective management capabilities.
