Freshservice vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshservice
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Freshservice is a cloud-based service desk and IT service management (ITSM) solution that currently serves more than 10,000 SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers worldwide.
$19
Per Month Per User
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM…N/A
Pricing
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Editions & Modules
Starter
$19.00
Per Month Per User
Growth
$49.00
Per Month Per User
Pro
$95.00
Per Month Per User
Enterprise
$119
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Considered Both Products
Freshservice
Chose Freshservice
We've used a few products. KACE was the system we used prior to getting FreshService, however, KACE did not have a user-friendly UI, and required someone that knew what they were doing to setup. SharePoint is a good option for small departments, we setup a ticketing system …
KACE Systems Management Appliance

No answer on this topic

Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
8.2
112 Ratings
1% above category average
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.0112 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory7.578 Ratings00 Ratings
Service restoration7.063 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-service tools8.4102 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.581 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.693 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards8.397 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
7.7
90 Ratings
6% below category average
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Configuration mangement8.483 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset management dashboard7.988 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement6.762 Ratings00 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
8.2
84 Ratings
2% below category average
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Change requests repository8.478 Ratings00 Ratings
Change calendar7.964 Ratings00 Ratings
Service-level management8.278 Ratings00 Ratings
IT Asset Management
Comparison of IT Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
-
Ratings
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
8.6
12 Ratings
12% above category average
Software and hardware inventory tracking00 Ratings10.012 Ratings
License management00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
Asset lifecycle monitoring00 Ratings8.010 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings6.06 Ratings
Asset relationship management00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
ConnectWise RMM
ConnectWise RMM
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.1 out of 10
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(113 ratings)
8.0
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(6 ratings)
8.6
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(77 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshserviceKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Freshservice is a complete ITSM solution. I have used some others over the years and moved away from them to Freshservice. I have implemented Freshservice in 2 new roles over the years, and everyone has loved it. The functionality that it incorporates, enabling IT teams to become ITIL compliant is truly useful. Compared to 5 other ITSM tools that I have used over the last 10 years, Freshservice is far better.
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Quest
I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help
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Pros
Freshworks Inc
  • Workflow automation
  • Knowledge base articles for users and agents
  • easy to add categories & sub category and make them compulsory so that ticket cannot be closed without filling the information
  • it works with email address very simple to create different department and queues
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Quest
  • Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
  • Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
  • Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.
Read full review
Cons
Freshworks Inc
  • Change Management - Current system is geared towards full software or system change management. It would be great to have a simple Yes/No approval without having to utilize their workflow tools.
  • Data selection filters - Overall, their data filters are very good, but it would be useful to have "Last Week" and "Last Month" in the date selectors.
Read full review
Quest
  • The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.
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Likelihood to Renew
Freshworks Inc
It's overall value in our organization is extremely high and it has become an essential part of our business.
Read full review
Quest
No answers on this topic
Usability
Freshworks Inc
On the I.T. side, the time to ramp up and understand how FreshService operates only took a few hours. After that, it was off to the races with configuration and customization. From the start, with minimal assistance, our end users found FreshService to be incredibly intuitive. At launch, we expected most to submit tickets via email, however, our analytics has shown that end-users actually prefer the portal for managing their I.T. tickets.
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Quest
Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.
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Support Rating
Freshworks Inc
I contacted support once and the person handling the request was very helpful. The staff is very competent. In my opinion communication could be improved as the level of spoken English is very high. I was unable to understand some words, in fact two people participated in the second meeting.
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Quest
KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.
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Implementation Rating
Freshworks Inc
think of what you want to do with FreshService : a clean start or a migration. Migration can be done with csv files, it's easy to do but you need to test it first.
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Quest
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Freshworks Inc
I've used monday.com for ticketing, but Freshservice is made for it and the asset management feature adds value. NinjaOne's ticketing is not built out so we only use it for its RMM features. Atera has a nice ticketing platform and looks similar to Freshservice but they do not have an onboarding feature and other integrations that Freshservice has
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Quest
We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.
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Return on Investment
Freshworks Inc
  • Freshservice has allowed our organization to better track the amount of tickets that come in for a particular individual. This allows us to better support a user that is having multiple of the same issue over an extended period.
  • The communication to the user has greatly increased due to the automated messages that Freshservice has built in.
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Quest
  • KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
  • KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically
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ScreenShots

Freshservice Screenshots

Screenshot of Android App SupportScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Project ManagementScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Change ManagementScreenshot of Project Management