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.
$29
per month per agent
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds
Web Help Desk is ticketing and IT asset management software. It is designed to
simplify help desk management. This solution includes built-in ticketing
management, asset management, change management, and knowledge base
capabilities.
$533
per year per user
Pricing
Freshservice
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Editions & Modules
Starter
$29.00
per month per agent
Growth
$59.00
per month per agent
Pro
$119.00
per month per agent
Enterprise
Custom
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Freshservice
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Discount available for annual billing.
SolarWinds also offers Perpetual licensing starting at $1129 per technician.
Web Help Desk did not include the features that Freshservice has to offer, and the cost was more. It had limited system integration compared to Freshservice.
The constant level of improvement is well suited for organizations that are on a similar path. There is great support from account managers, technical resources, documentation and other programs. The UI is intuitive, the system is easy to learn and navigate.
SolarWinds WHD is well suited if you have a limited budget, as it costs less than many help desk software packages that are more full featured and modern in their design. It is not well suited to an environment where you want to manage inventory, users, purchases and tickets all in one package. It has an asset feature that we don't use but that looks quite limited. We track our assets and users separately from this.
Asset Management Module: The features I like most in this module are the discovery agent software, which allows us to collect device information without manual intervention, and the simplicity and robustness of the module itself.
Service Catalog: This feature allows us to create forms tailored to specific service requests based on group requirements. The ability to customize forms greatly helps both us and our end-users provide the necessary information to fulfill their requests.
Workflow Automator and Business Rules: These two allow us to have some automation in place, eliminating some of the manual steps and decreasing the number of human errors that may happen due to manual changes.
Customized reporting allows us to track our service and support better, and find where we need improvements. This allows us to constantly upgrade our service levels and keep the customers happy.
Detailed tracking and response to the end users have led to quicker remediation of tickets. We are able to see where we need a better response or where to add additional resources for support.
Overall metrics allow us to staff properly for our tickets by location and remote users.
Because of AD integration, users sometimes try logging in with their email address and not AD credentials. The user then calls stating they can't put a ticket in, it would be nice if there was a method of matching the AD Email field with a login.
Setting up new techs with the building they are responsible for can be a little messy
I would like to see the UI updated. It looks old, even in the latest releases.
We are pretty invested in Freshservice right now and have integrated it pretty heavily into our environment, so it would be hard to move away from it. For the most part, we are happy with Freshservice and the ease of use it gives us in managing tickets through the system. The only complaint we've had is customer service.
We are definitely going to be sticking with Web Help Desk for the foreseeable future since the product is very inexpensive for the features that it provides, the integration that it has with our existing systems, and the ease for managing users, assets, locations, and tickets. Web Help Desk is a great product that is backed by even better support, which is well worth looking into if you are considering moving to a new ticketing system.
Easy to navigate and use GUI. We have many infrastructure team members from various departments using Freshservice and their on-boarding and training was very straightforward and we have not received much, if any negative feedback from non-technology users in regards to overall usability, interface or functionality.
It's not cloud based so users have to be on the network to submit a ticket. It doesn't plug into Google or Microsoft Azure so all inventory has to be manually entered. It seems like solar winds is allowing the product to slow fall into obsolescence
Most reports are quick, however, it can take some time for emailed exports to come via email. It would be helpful to have the exports live in the system rather than having to wait on emails.
The support experience has been a bit hit and miss. While it's always quick to get in touch with someone, when it comes to more complex issues, like one we encountered, Freshservice was unable to provide a solution despite the extensive troubleshooting we did on our end. Additionally, the AI chatbot has occasionally provided incorrect answers. However, for simpler queries, the support has been excellent and responsive.
SolarWinds is a great customizable and affordable ticketing system. We use SolarWinds Web Help Desk for IT and Software Development trouble ticket tracking and resolution. The reporting that SolarWinds provides is great since it helps us discover problem areas and fix those areas so they don't keep reoccurring
Their documentation is pretty good, but only available in English. This makes it difficult for some of our users to understand. There are also some basic video courses available.
Use case and requirements have to be very specific. Each business is different so it's very important to be as clear as possible with your initial requirements when communicating with the on-boarding/implementation team.
Take the time to roll out a test VM to configure and make changes to before doing a live deployment, this way you don't end up with a VM that has been tweaked and re-tweaked until it's perfect and instead end up with a final, polished product. I would also recommend taking the time to read through the support forums for figuring out minor issues that may pop up, chances are that you aren't going to be the first one to encounter them. When all is said and done, SolarWinds Support is VERY responsive and you shouldn't hesitate to contact them.
Customization of FreshService was so much easier than ChangeGear. Creating forms for end-users was difficult and didn't always work the way we wanted. The nail in the coffin was when we had a support call set up, and the IT Director was on the phone waiting, but no one joined the call. I can't speak on what the product is today, but it was JAVA-heavy, and everything was manually updated.
Web Help Desk is definitely lacking in the UI/UX department compared to most other ticketing systems I have used int he past. It's very utilitarian; however, what it lacks in UI it makes up for in extensibility and customization. The main issue that the developers need to address is the use of a Web Objects back-end.
