Cherwell Service Management
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Top Rated
97 Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
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Top Rated
808 Ratings

Cherwell Service Management

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Top Rated
97 Ratings
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Score 7.9 out of 100

Based on 97 reviews and ratings

Zendesk Support Suite

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Top Rated
808 Ratings
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Score 7.9 out of 100

Based on 808 reviews and ratings

Feature Set Ratings

  • Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 1 feature set: Incident and problem management

Incident and problem management

8.7

Cherwell Service Management

87%
7.1

Zendesk Support Suite

71%
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 7/9 features
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 7/9 features

Organize and prioritize service tickets

9.8
98%
46 Ratings
7.3
73%
87 Ratings

Expert directory

8.2
82%
36 Ratings
6.2
62%
55 Ratings

Service restoration

8.1
81%
29 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Self-service tools

9.0
90%
45 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Subscription-based notifications

8.3
83%
33 Ratings
6.1
61%
62 Ratings

ITSM collaboration and documentation

8.4
84%
42 Ratings
6.8
68%
58 Ratings

ITSM reports and dashboards

9.3
93%
45 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Ticket creation and submission

N/A
0 Ratings
8.1
81%
88 Ratings

Ticket response

N/A
0 Ratings
7.9
79%
87 Ratings

ITSM asset management

9.0

Cherwell Service Management

90%

Zendesk Support Suite

Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 3/3 features
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 3/3 features

Configuration mangement

9.2
92%
36 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Asset management dashboard

9.2
92%
35 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Policy and contract enforcement

8.7
87%
26 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Change management

9.5

Cherwell Service Management

95%

Zendesk Support Suite

Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 3/3 features
Cherwell Service Management ranks higher in 3/3 features

Change requests repository

9.2
92%
42 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Change calendar

9.7
97%
38 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Service-level management

9.6
96%
39 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings

Self Help Community

Cherwell Service Management

Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
6.9

Zendesk Support Suite

69%
Zendesk Support Suite ranks higher in 2/2 features
Zendesk Support Suite ranks higher in 2/2 features

External knowledge base

N/A
0 Ratings
7.0
70%
75 Ratings

Internal knowledge base

N/A
0 Ratings
6.8
68%
70 Ratings

Multi-Channel Help

Cherwell Service Management

Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
6.7

Zendesk Support Suite

67%
Zendesk Support Suite ranks higher in 5/5 features
Zendesk Support Suite ranks higher in 5/5 features

Customer portal

N/A
0 Ratings
7.0
70%
69 Ratings

IVR

N/A
0 Ratings
5.3
53%
29 Ratings

Social integration

N/A
0 Ratings
6.6
66%
53 Ratings

Email support

N/A
0 Ratings
7.6
76%
84 Ratings

Help Desk CRM integration

N/A
0 Ratings
7.0
70%
63 Ratings

Attribute Ratings

  • Cherwell Service Management is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Availability, Support Rating
  • Zendesk Support Suite is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Renew, Usability, Implementation Rating

Likelihood to Recommend

8.4

Cherwell Service Management

84%
51 Ratings
7.2

Zendesk Support Suite

72%
126 Ratings

Likelihood to Renew

8.3

Cherwell Service Management

83%
10 Ratings
10.0

Zendesk Support Suite

100%
38 Ratings

Usability

7.2

Cherwell Service Management

72%
3 Ratings
9.5

Zendesk Support Suite

95%
18 Ratings

Availability

9.0

Cherwell Service Management

90%
4 Ratings
8.6

Zendesk Support Suite

86%
26 Ratings

Performance

Cherwell Service Management

N/A
0 Ratings
8.0

Zendesk Support Suite

80%
20 Ratings

Support Rating

8.8

Cherwell Service Management

88%
27 Ratings
6.9

Zendesk Support Suite

69%
49 Ratings

In-Person Training

Cherwell Service Management

N/A
0 Ratings
10.0

Zendesk Support Suite

100%
1 Rating

Online Training

Cherwell Service Management

N/A
0 Ratings
7.9

Zendesk Support Suite

79%
9 Ratings

Implementation Rating

7.7

Cherwell Service Management

77%
2 Ratings
9.0

Zendesk Support Suite

90%
35 Ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell is a well-rounded product that can really be utilized as far as one's imagination can stretch. I've used the product in both a corporate and medical environment, where the tool was used for vastly different reasons (i.e., ITSM, business & retail functions, vs hospital orderlies & medical equipment tracking in a CMDB, etc.). Cherwell is so versatile that you can really use it to develop any workflow or process that is unique to your line of business - there are more than enough functions and tools available within Cherwell to effectively manage any enterprise solution your organization needs. The major drawback of flexibility is supportability. Given that you can essentially develop anything you want (content-wise) in Cherwell, it can quickly become highly complex and difficult to support by anyone other than the original developer. Documentation is key (F-spec & T-spec especially!) when developing larger solutions in Cherwell.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite implementation means an industry-class help desk with a dynamic interface that brings together all customer interactions from almost any channel allowing agents to respond faster to customer queries and with the right context. It is more than just a help desk since it also acts as a CRM by allowing us to organize workflows, processes and track customer engagement.

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Emily Mok | TrustRadius Reviewer
Emily Mok
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Pros

Cherwell Service Management

  • 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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Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jane Updegraff
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Zendesk Support Suite

  • Zendesk makes it easy to see if a question/ticket has already been answered/updated (and to see who answered it).
  • Zendesk makes it easy for users to indicate if they are available to respond or not.
  • Zendesk also makes it easy to respond as you can respond within the software/system. A one-stop process!

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Cons

Cherwell Service Management

  • 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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Megan Hartz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Megan Hartz
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Zendesk Support Suite

  • Allow each user to customize the look of their Dash, rather than being hemmed in by company selections
  • Provide a way for Suspended tickets (created by emails from non-users) to be better managed
  • Set a timer for tickets to reopen on a more individual ticket basis.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Pricing Details

Cherwell Service Management

General

Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No

Starting Price

—

Cherwell Service Management Editions & Modules

—
Additional Pricing Details
—

Zendesk Support Suite

General

Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
Optional

Starting Price

$19 per agent/month billed annually

Zendesk Support Suite Editions & Modules

Edition
Suite Team$49.001
Suite Growth$79.001
Suite Professional$99.001
Suite Enterprise$150.001
Additional Enterprise-Ready Plans, starting at...$215.001
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)$19.001
  1. per agent/month billed annually
Additional Pricing Details
—

Likelihood to Renew

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management 8.3
Based on 10 answers
So far we've been really happy with Cherwell Service Management. We are aware that there are cheaper solutions out there and cost is always a factor. As we continue to dial it in and make improvements one thing we'd like to see is a better way to classify and categorize the work. For first time users it can be quite confusing to get your tickets assigned to the correct group with an organization as large as ours.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
View all 10 answers on this topic

Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 10.0
Based on 38 answers
There has not been a reason to consider anything else as the core functions work perfectly for ticketing. Also Zendesk continues to focus on new functionality, growth of the API and Apps framework and add more partner application to the list. Not only will be renew but it is likely we will add seats as we grow and expand our customer focused teams.

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Lou Gallo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Lou Gallo
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Usability

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management 7.2
Based on 3 answers
It is a product that can be heavily customised. We have many dashboards to suit different user roles that you can drill down to extract the information you require. Within our organisation there are a lot of expert end-users who produce these dashboards and short-cuts. An in-house development team to review requests and roll them out into the live environment should also be considered. The development role does not need to be a full-time just needs somebody with suitable expertise.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
View all 3 answers on this topic

Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 9.5
Based on 18 answers
As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Reliability and Availability

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management 9.0
Based on 4 answers
No answer on this topic is available.

Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 8.6
Based on 26 answers
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.

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Chase Sheaffer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chase Sheaffer
View all 26 answers on this topic

Performance

Cherwell Service Management

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 8.0
Based on 20 answers
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.

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Taylor Wielage | TrustRadius Reviewer
Taylor Wielage
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Support Rating

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management 8.8
Based on 27 answers
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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Zachary Louis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Zachary Louis
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Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 6.9
Based on 49 answers
Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.

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Kevin Pearce | TrustRadius Reviewer
Kevin Pearce
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Online Training

Cherwell Service Management

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 7.9
Based on 9 answers
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.

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Chase Sheaffer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chase Sheaffer
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Implementation Rating

Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management 7.7
Based on 2 answers
We had access to the old system that Cherwell replaced. Some things were difficult to find in the beginning but it was a learning curve that got easier after a few days.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite 9.0
Based on 35 answers
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Alternatives Considered

Cherwell Service Management

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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Aidan Wick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Aidan Wick
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Zendesk Support Suite

I have not used any other support software, but also evaluated FreshDesk. For our needs at the time, Zendesk was more polished and had the ability to support multiple websites in a single instance, while allowing customization for each brand separately. That was crucial to us, and is why we went with Enterprise.

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Adam McCracken | TrustRadius Reviewer
Adam McCracken
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Return on Investment

Cherwell Service Management

  • 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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David Crawford | TrustRadius Reviewer
David Crawford
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Zendesk Support Suite

  • The main part of the IT department is able to quickly prioritize and delegate tickets as they come in.
  • Tickets can be linked to each other and support articles, creating opportunities for more efficient responses.
  • Central location for users to ask for tech help when they don't need to know which staff member is the appropriate person to ask.

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Alicia Barevich, bCRE, bCEE | TrustRadius Reviewer
Alicia Barevich, bCRE, bCEE
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