What users are saying about
22 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8 out of 100
Based on 22 reviews and ratings
156 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.3 out of 100
Based on 156 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
IT Asset Management
8.1
KACE Systems Management Appliance
81%
SolarWinds Service Desk
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) ranks higher in 5/5 features
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) ranks higher in 5/5 features
Software and hardware inventory tracking
8.7
87%
11 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
License management
7.4
74%
10 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Asset lifecycle monitoring
8.1
81%
9 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Contract management
7.7
77%
5 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Asset relationship management
8.7
87%
7 Ratings
N/A
0 Ratings
Incident and problem management
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
8.0
SolarWinds Service Desk
80%
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 7/7 features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 7/7 features
Organize and prioritize service tickets
N/A
0 Ratings
9.3
93%
96 Ratings
Expert directory
N/A
0 Ratings
7.9
79%
57 Ratings
Service restoration
N/A
0 Ratings
7.3
73%
58 Ratings
Self-service tools
N/A
0 Ratings
8.0
80%
86 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications
N/A
0 Ratings
8.9
89%
68 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation
N/A
0 Ratings
8.1
81%
76 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards
N/A
0 Ratings
6.4
64%
87 Ratings
ITSM asset management
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
6.9
SolarWinds Service Desk
69%
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 3/3 features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 3/3 features
Configuration mangement
N/A
0 Ratings
6.9
69%
74 Ratings
Asset management dashboard
N/A
0 Ratings
6.9
69%
81 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement
N/A
0 Ratings
6.9
69%
63 Ratings
Change management
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
8.0
SolarWinds Service Desk
80%
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 3/3 features
SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) ranks higher in 3/3 features
Change requests repository
N/A
0 Ratings
8.6
86%
64 Ratings
Change calendar
N/A
0 Ratings
7.7
77%
44 Ratings
Service-level management
N/A
0 Ratings
7.8
78%
72 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
- SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) is rated higher in 1 area: Usability
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
KACE Systems Management Appliance
84%
11 Ratings
8.2
SolarWinds Service Desk
82%
118 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
6.8
SolarWinds Service Desk
68%
8 Ratings
Usability
8.6
KACE Systems Management Appliance
86%
3 Ratings
8.8
SolarWinds Service Desk
88%
7 Ratings
Availability
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
8.3
SolarWinds Service Desk
83%
13 Ratings
Performance
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
8.6
SolarWinds Service Desk
86%
7 Ratings
Support Rating
9.4
KACE Systems Management Appliance
94%
6 Ratings
8.4
SolarWinds Service Desk
84%
93 Ratings
In-Person Training
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
9.1
SolarWinds Service Desk
91%
1 Rating
Online Training
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
8.2
SolarWinds Service Desk
82%
2 Ratings
Implementation Rating
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
8.6
SolarWinds Service Desk
86%
5 Ratings
Product Scalability
KACE Systems Management Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
8.8
SolarWinds Service Desk
88%
4 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
KACE Systems Management Appliance
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
Director, IMIT
Calgary Foothills Primary Care NetworkHospital & Health Care, 51-200 employees
SolarWinds Service Desk
If you are looking for a way to support a company and bill based on the outcome this software works really well. If it's a quick password change there was no charge, but if it's troubleshooting things you click the box to charge. It works really well for this. Also bringing all your assets into this and associating them to a client works well. I can't think of anything that this software would not be less appropriate for. It works well for what we use it for.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Hospitality Company, 1001-5000 employeesPros
KACE Systems Management Appliance
- 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.
Vice President, Information Technology
INSURICAInsurance, 501-1000 employees
SolarWinds Service Desk
- Approval flows: You can have multiple layers of approval required for the tickets and service requests you design. This helps us show auditors that access to privileged systems and data was formerly reviewed and approved by the appropriate managers.
- Easy to design forms: You don't need to spend hours reading the documentation to figure out how to create forms. It's simple enough that you can just jump right in and start creating them with minimal training.
- Lots of options and features are available for you to include in your forms.
- Integrates well with SAML-based SSO and has capabilities for MFA.
- Easy and useful search function. Need to find that ticket from last year that you worked for a particular user or issue? Just search by keyword or username, and it'll quickly find the ticket.

Verified User
Director in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employeesCons
KACE Systems Management Appliance
- 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.
Quality Assurance Analyst II
Ashland UniversityHigher Education, 201-500 employees
SolarWinds Service Desk
- There is potential to greatly improve the capacity for cascading attributes. Currently, categories are limited to a top-level category and one subcategory. This leaves a fairly shallow decision tree.
- Greater flexibility to modify the layout of incident request forms.
- More integration options for cloud file-sharing platforms. Solarwinds Service Desk has tie-ins to Dropbox but not other vendors.
Director of IT
EmpowerMarketing & Advertising, 201-500 employees
Pricing Details
KACE Systems Management Appliance
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—SolarWinds Service Desk
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Likelihood to Renew
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 6.8
Based on 8 answers
My renewal is soon coming up, it is fairly likely I will renew again for the 5th year. I may consider evaluating what else is out there, It was requested by my staff to not make a change. They feel that SSD fits our needs, is easy to use and should keep it.
Director Of Information Technology
Mercy Flight Inc.Health, Wellness and Fitness, 51-200 employees
Usability
KACE Systems Management Appliance
KACE Systems Management Appliance 8.6
Based on 3 answers
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.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Construction Company, 1001-5000 employeesSolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.8
Based on 7 answers
Solarwinds Service Desk has a very "user friendly" interface. Everything looks nice and neat. And, learning how to use the system is very easy. It provides multiple services that are easy for most people to grasp, and allows for great organization of incidents and assets. Support for Solarwinds Service Desk has a good response and resolution time and are easy to work with.
Network Administrator
Channel Control Merchants, LLC.Retail, 5001-10,000 employees
Reliability and Availability
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.3
Based on 13 answers
Because the data is stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) there are very rarely any outages. There have been some times when the product has been slow to load, but because the interface is web based it could be anything between my computer and AWS that was causing the issue. But also, because the application is web based it can be access from anywhere which makes it very convenient
Sr. IT Technologist
University of Tennessee LibrariesHigher Education, 201-500 employees
Performance
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.6
Based on 7 answers
When the system is working, the pages load very quickly. We run reports all the time in the system. The reporting can be extremely complex or very simple. Either way, we have not had any issues with the reports. We do not currently integrate Solarwinds Service Desk with any other software.
Network Administrator
Channel Control Merchants, LLC.Retail, 5001-10,000 employees
Support Rating
KACE Systems Management Appliance
KACE Systems Management Appliance 9.4
Based on 6 answers
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.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Construction Company, 1001-5000 employeesSolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.4
Based on 93 answers
SolarWinds support department will respond to you quickly from the time of purchase to after-purchase instructions & supporting, and the company is great in customers support. In buying a software, our organization always has a priority for the seller and support and accountability is very important to us, and the manufacturer or seller must be responsible and supportive.
Information Technology Adviser
AZEREXInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees
Online Training
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.2
Based on 2 answers
When we first purchased Samanage (now Solarwinds) they provided us with an informational training session to show us all of the basics on how the service works and showed us everything we were interested in using. There are still some areas of Solarwinds that we do not yet utilize but I know if we choose to use them in the future we would be able to schedule another session with our representative to have them show us what we need to know.
Sr. IT Technologist
University of Tennessee LibrariesHigher Education, 201-500 employees
Implementation Rating
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.6
Based on 5 answers
The implementation process for our organization was fairly simple. We set up an email address to receive the emails from the system (for incident creation), and we allowed the system to spoof our IT email to respond to requests. Solarwinds helped us with the rest of the implementation, and it took less than a week to get the system fully operational.
Network Administrator
Channel Control Merchants, LLC.Retail, 5001-10,000 employees
Alternatives Considered
KACE Systems Management Appliance
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.

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employeesSolarWinds Service Desk
We chose SolarWinds Service Desk for its user friendly platform compared to what we had. Its was easier for requestors to submit tickets, provide feedback, merge tickets, build a suitable approval process. Our organization had a hard time going back and forth with the end user on providing a status on their request or issue, where most users just didn't follow through or lost interest in their issue. We would have to send multiple emails to get any type of feedback and that's something we did not want to keep on doing.

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Utilities Company, 51-200 employeesScalability
KACE Systems Management Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk 8.8
Based on 4 answers
We have over 500 computers and tablets across our organization and this has helped us greatly in keeping track of where computers are and who is currently using it. I can see this product being useful to groups both larger and smaller than us and I really appreciate this product.
Sr. IT Technologist
University of Tennessee LibrariesHigher Education, 201-500 employees
Return on Investment
KACE Systems Management Appliance
- 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

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Industrial Automation Company, 51-200 employeesSolarWinds Service Desk
- We are more easily able to quantify user satisfaction with support.
- We are able to develop SLAs that quantify and define the obligation of our support teams.
- The actual cost of Solarwinds Service Desk per agent user is high in our estimation. The more you implement this platform across your organization, the more tightly tethered you are to this solution.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Law Practice Company, 201-500 employees