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.
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SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
SysAid is an ITSM platform that enhances service delivery with AI Agents, chatbots, workflow automation, and asset management. AI Copilot categorizes tickets, provides case summaries, and offers sentiment analysis. The AI chatbot, available via chat, email, and Teams, speeds support.
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Pricing
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
SysAid
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
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.
SysAid is a decent ITSM based product for the money if you want an application that for the most part can be setup and administered without a dedicated resource assigned to SysAid maintenance.
In my experience, it does not have the full functionality of either Cherwell or …
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.
In our case, SysAid helps us manage all company incidents, as well as automatically handle onboarding and offboarding processes through rules. It also keeps us up-to-date on asset monitoring and software and operating system updates. Furthermore, thanks to its integration with Azure, it helps us effectively manage our Active Directory in the cloud. Currently, we are working extensively on feeding data to our internal chatbot and the environment's data pool to further facilitate incident resolution. These recurring processes allow the IT team to focus solely on the most critical incidents, freeing up more time for new tasks and projects. Ultimately, SysAid greatly simplifies the daily work of both end users and IT administrators. En nuestro caso SysAid nos ayuda a llevar toda la gestión de incidentes de la empresa además de gestionar automáticamente mediante reglas procesos de onboarding y offbording, llevar al día la monitorización de los activos y de las actualizaciones tanto de software como de sistema operativo, también nos ayuda a tener una buena gestión de nuestro directorio activo en la nube gracias a la integración con Azure, actualmente estamos trabajando mucho con la alimentación al chatbot interno y el datapool de datos del entorno para facilitar aún más la resolución de incidentes. recurrentes estos procesos ayudan a que el equipo de TI se centre unicamente en los incidentes mas relevantes teniendo mas tiempo para tareas y proyectos nuevos. En definitiva SysAid nos facilita mucho el trabajo diario tanto a los usuarios finales como a los administradores de TI. This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
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.
Help Desk Ticketing works well and integrates easily with e-mail. IT staff is immediately notified when a new ticket is created.
Device management and inventory is easily tracked within SysAid. A full report is easily generated for a device detailing hardware and software specifics.
SysAid Copilot AI is phenomenal. It has been designed with the end user in mind. The user can speak to the prompt in natural language and expect a custom response according to their incident or service needs.
The Help tool could use some refining. Particularly indicating the order in which steps must be done. A clear example is the creation of customized fields or lists.
Formatting of the ticket. There is no possibility to create dynamic tables, use more than one column. I would want to have more flexibility without having to pay for Professional Services
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)
This rating reflects our overall satisfaction with the platform’s performance, reliability, and flexibility in meeting our IT service management needs. SysAid has streamlined our ticketing processes, enhanced asset management, and improved operational efficiency through automation and reporting. The system’s adaptability across multiple departments has added significant value beyond IT. An excellent service tool.
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.
Whilst it delivers on most of the features it comes with, I feel Change Management needs a complete re-do as it is really complicated, and think it should be made to be straightforward. For the free services of their Market Place, they should develop a platform where one can just browse for the script (downloaded) and apply the patch, without having to go into various places in code to activate the service. or at least, build the integrations into the system and have [a] section under settings, or even straight from the Market Place, where one can just enable the service, and if required, be prompted to input additional information, including credentials.
Another of the benefits of sysaid is that it is highly available when working in on-premise environments.The only times the system is down is when a restart of the services is required to add a new feature. Apart from that, we have not had any problems.In the case of the cloud, the only condition I have seen where sysaid is not available is because the internet link is down or damaged.
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
In the case of system performance, I have seen that no matter the number of assets and users, Sysaid responds in the same way and at the same speed. The reports that are scheduled do not have any details because they arrive directly to your email. In the same way, when it is integrated with other systems, for example through the API or by email, we have not seen any failure due to the integration. It works very well with or without integrations.
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.
SysAid support is fast and effective. They support their own product, so they know it well. I can expect a response to my request in less than 24 hours and often in less than an hour. Their sales, customer support, and technical support staff are experts in the area of the support request ticket, so we seldom are transferred to another support agent. Their system is well designed and one of the best of all the applications we use.
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.
The training I received was very good, they gave me tasks to carry out and then they checked what I had done.It was gratifying that the instructor noticed that I had made very fast progress because I had done the implementation myself and it was very fast. At least I remember that after 5 days I had already finished almost 90% of all the implementation tasks.
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
It is recommended that it be synchronized with the active directory for a better experience, also using the network scanning tools are very useful both to maintain your hardware and software inventory. See all the documentation found on the portal where they suggest good practices for the use of SysAid and exploit it from the first time
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.
There are many items offered on the other platforms that SysAid does not have. However, for a smaller or medium-sized business that needs a simple and easy way to get tickets flowing and allow users to help themselves, this is an excellent way to start.
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
We have used SysAid since 2008. Through out these years, we find that SysAid support is very helpful and professional. The respond that we get is very fast and they will help us until we have solved our problem that we reported to them. So far, we are very happy with SysAid support.
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.
