ServiceNow IT Service Management vs. Spiceworks Help Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ServiceNow IT Service Management
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
ServiceNow is a fast-growing service management provider that went public in 2012. Built on the ServiceNow Now Platform, the IT Service Management bundle provides an agent workspace with knowledge management, and modules supporting issue tracking and problem resolution, change, release and configuration management, and (on the higher tier ITSM Professional plan) ITAM and software asset management.
$10,000
per year
Spiceworks Help Desk
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management. The Spiceworks Network Monitor provides information on observed IT for problem tracking and server performance monitoring. And finally, the Spiceworks Help Desk Software lets IT personnel stay on top of issues across the network with a ticketing system. Help desk roles with role-based…N/A
Pricing
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$10,000.00
per year
All Tiers
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Considered Both Products
ServiceNow IT Service Management
Chose ServiceNow IT Service Management
Integrations with other products are very easy in ServiceNow IT as compared to other tools. Support is amazing comparatively. Transparency and flow of work are clearly visible. It has Multiple features and we can customize them as well. The search feature can be improved a …
Chose ServiceNow IT Service Management
Easier to a user, easier to setup, cover all aspects of ITIL, better than other options. TraceGP needed to be customized for our environment to "learn" ITIL. And CA option was a huge elephant, slow to set up. Not that ServiceNow is THAAAT fast, but certainly is faster to deploy …
Spiceworks Help Desk
Chose Spiceworks Help Desk
A lot of the competition starts with some free options, but bare minimum or "paid only modules" etc. And their support is often either non existent or convoluted while Spiceworks Help Desk is both great and responsive as well as having an open community and forums. You can …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.3
67 Ratings
2% above category average
Spiceworks Help Desk
7.4
54 Ratings
6% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.966 Ratings7.453 Ratings
Expert directory7.650 Ratings5.646 Ratings
Service restoration7.655 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-service tools9.064 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.662 Ratings7.241 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.359 Ratings6.444 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards8.861 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.153 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.752 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.5
60 Ratings
4% above category average
Spiceworks Help Desk
-
Ratings
Configuration mangement8.259 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset management dashboard8.658 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement8.752 Ratings00 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.1
61 Ratings
3% below category average
Spiceworks Help Desk
-
Ratings
Change requests repository7.661 Ratings00 Ratings
Change calendar7.455 Ratings00 Ratings
Service-level management9.157 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow IT Service Management
-
Ratings
Spiceworks Help Desk
7.3
51 Ratings
6% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.847 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings5.947 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow IT Service Management
-
Ratings
Spiceworks Help Desk
5.3
51 Ratings
37% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings6.145 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings4.010 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings3.126 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.045 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings5.027 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.1 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(78 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(13 ratings)
10.0
(29 ratings)
Usability
6.3
(11 ratings)
8.6
(8 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(22 ratings)
8.7
(26 ratings)
Online Training
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ServiceNow IT Service ManagementSpiceworks Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
ServiceNow
In our organization, we are using ServiceNow extensively. Change Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Time tracking are few modules which we use extensively. This sort of model will work for any product or service based companies as the product is built on ITIL framework. So this product will be suited for small or large scale companies to better organize and add controls and track SLA's for technology or business process.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
It's a great helpdesk solution - we currently have five years of data within it, roughly 25,000 tickets. The older edition is a great inventory and software license tracking tool. It is easy for users to use the interface and submit tickets and requests on the web, and its email integration is solid. The new version is a below-average system monitoring tool, only giving up/down status and a few other metrics.
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Pros
ServiceNow
  • When I have a number of requests to make, for example a request to add a dozen or so user accounts to more than one group account in Active Directory , I can put all the needed information into the initial form, add it to my "shopping cart" and all of that information remains on the screen for the next item for which I only need to edit a few items (like the AD group name in this example), and keep adding them to the shopping cart until I have them all. When I "Check Out" each of those items is generated as a separate task under the one request. It simplifies and expedites the creation and tracking of these kinds of requests.
  • I can easily and quickly see what tickets are currently assigned to me in order to prioritize them and remain aware of my workload.
  • Numerous fields for CIs can be used when trying to find the entry for a particular item. For example, IP Address, server name, raw text, classification, and so on.
  • To help with making sense out of related tasks, when a task is assigned to me and I need to open another task for a different team to work in order to complete my task, I can open a sub-task from my ticket so that the relationship between the two can be pulled up later into reports. For example, I may have a task to build a new vm, and need to open tasks for networking, security accounts, software installation and so on. By opening sub-tasks from my assignment, the time spent by all parties concerned is tied together for more meaningful cost accounting.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
  • We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
  • Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
  • Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.
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Cons
ServiceNow
  • It is hard to find areas for improvement, the tool is very powerful. That said, building the CMDB still involves some manual interaction which was not how it was presented in demos.
  • The CMDB data is almost too deep and detailed. When you build the relationship map it can be so large that it is overwhelming. You can limit this, but the default maps are massive if you are discovering lots of device classes.
  • The product is expensive. Since they are the leader in the industry and the product has tons of features, they definitely charge for it!
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
  • It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
  • Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.
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Likelihood to Renew
ServiceNow
To be completely honest setting up a new ticketing system can be a pain in the ass. Once you have it setup and customized the way you want it, you don't want to switch unless you're unhappy with the product. Unless future releases and updates really muck the system up, I wouldn't change.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is a free tool, so there would be no hesitation if we are required to upgrade it. We have installed Spiceworks on a dedicated server with more than enough resources to get the most from this tool, so we will have this running in our department for years to come.
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Usability
ServiceNow
The dashboard is so confusing, [there are] many clicks to open a task and search by a ticket. The Enterprise customisation [we did] has finished to kill the software and creates a really bad experience on a daily basis. [It is] So slow, and so many clicks to process a ticket. Works only on IE so, that [should] make you realize that [it] is a bad idea.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is user friendly and easy to set up. It can be customized to suit your needs. If there are any problems, you can go to the community forums for support and be in contact with many IT Pros, as well as the Spiceworks support staff and development teams who are always happy to help users out
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Reliability and Availability
ServiceNow
We have never had any issues with ServiceNow's availability that I am aware of in the two years I have been using it.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.
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Performance
ServiceNow
For a massive system, page loads are reasonably quick, including searches.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
ServiceNow
I would give it this rating because we have had no major issues with the support for ServiceNow after we implemented it at our organization. They seem to respond promptly and efficiently if we ever do need to open a support case with them about an issue we are having.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.
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Online Training
ServiceNow
To type in what should be a text box, you have to click an empty cell, a tiny text box pop up opens with a check box and an X. You the. Type in the text box and have to click the check mark. If you have a bunch of fields to fill out, doing this is very annoying. Absolutely know thought went in to this. I'm sure somebody in marketing thought it was a good idea. It wasn't.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
ServiceNow
Without exception, every client I have worked with has been very happy with their resulting product. While this is partly due to my work, I must point out that the platform is the winning decision, not the implementer.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth
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Alternatives Considered
ServiceNow
We used to use Jira to handle service tickets but it's way too robust for something this straightforward. Due to the nature of Jira, you needed to already have a lot of documentation and knowledge about who should be assigned the ticket, so the lift of creating a ticket was time consuming.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.
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Scalability
ServiceNow
ServiceNow works as an enterprise solution.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
ServiceNow
  • Overall ServiceNow has a positive impact on getting the SLA of tickets down in supporting our customers.
  • One negative impact has been the amount of time to get the product to produce an ROI, it's almost too big to fail and too big to replace. You almost become committed to the product. Good or bad.
  • Another negative impact would be if you track metrics of employees and time tracking, there is a lot of scenarios where engineers will track time on tickets but not get credit for closing them as the assignee function of tickets can only be tied to one user and credits only the engineer who closes the ticket.
  • Another positive impact would be the level of security for permissions and scaling the workloads is robust and you will get out of the system what your team is willing to put in.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
  • Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
  • Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
  • Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.
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