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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) vs. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a tool for monitoring, performance management, capacity planning and optimization for on-premises or cloud-based virtual environments. It also integrates with other SolarWinds products.N/A

    Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/ASpiceworks 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.

    $0

    (free for 1-5 Seats)

    Pricing
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Core Plan
    $0
    Premium
    $6
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Spiceworks Ziff Davis
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    97%
    Would buy again
    35 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    35 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    34 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    27 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    31 Answers
    Features
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) and Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Feature
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    -
    Ratings
    Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    8.1
    56 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.855 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings5.548 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings4.843 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings9.346 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings10.055 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings10.054 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) and Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Feature
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    -
    Ratings
    Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    9.5
    53 Ratings
    17% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings9.549 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings9.549 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) and Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Feature
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
    -
    Ratings
    Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    8.7
    53 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings9.847 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings4.512 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings10.047 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings10.029 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
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    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter
    Score7.6 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
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    Score7.6 out of 10
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    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (66 ratings)
    10.0
    (84 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (29 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.8
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    8.7
    (26 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    On the whole, Solarwinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is an excellent product which gives us a single point to monitor our virtual environment. After our initial trial I was sold on the product and what it had to offer. Immediately after implementing VMAN, we were able to spot virtual machines with old snapshots which were never deleted and no longer needed, we could spot virtual machines which either had over allocated resources or under allocated resources meaning we could make changes and fine tune them for best performance. We could also monitor virtual machine latency, IOPS, and show us where our bottlenecks were.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • I created custom dashboards, to view the different elements of the virtual environment. For example, you can view the number of online VMs and those off, or disconnected. You can also choose to see the status of every virtual cluster, the storage disk usage on every VM, the RAM usage, CPU usage.
    • I used this application to see the growth of virtual memory in each cluster and accordingly do forecasting for future growth. A capacity planner included in this application would help in doing accurate estimations and setting a future upgrade budget.
    • Another powerful tool was the customized reports, where i could generate reports on any element of the VM or cluster. Reports can be exported to Excel or PDF and are very useful for sharing information with colleagues and management.
    • Alerts can be customized. For example, you can set a rule to get an email alert if any virtual server RAM usage exceeds 85% and send a text message if RAM usage exceeds 90% for more than 10 minutes.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • We did have issues during the setup, with successfully connecting to some of our hosts and vCenters and we found support were just sending us back to articles we had already read, it was also taking long periods before getting a response. The issue is still ongoing, in fact.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    SolarWinds
    Currently, there is no other tool that gives us what we need to monitor a geographically disperse environment with multiple non-related instances of VM clusters. In addition, the level of reporting, historical data trending, and alerting that VMAN provides is essential for our business process. Lastly, the effort to customize and set up any monitoring system is not trivial. This makes switching to any other product very difficult without being able to clearly demonstrate a ROI.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds VMAN is easy to use for everyone. When I say everyone which literally means anyone e.g. Virtualization Environment SME, Consultant, Support Team, Management Officers etc. Anyone who have worked on IT technologies could easily deploy SolarWinds by reading videos, Thwack posts or Virtual Classrooms (Custom Success Centers) - this makes this application easy to operation and for maintenance support is always there.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    SolarWinds
    We have yet to enconter any issues in terms of availability. We have a highly available SQL cluster running Orion.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    SolarWinds
    We find page load times to be quite slow at times. Flipping between tabs can also be very slow.
    Incentivized
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    Spiceworks Ziff Davis
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds gives good support. I have never had a time when i was working through a support case where I did not get the support I needed for the required issues to be resolved. I have always had resolutions from SolarWinds support. They are top notch. Issues once had are no more.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    Its really the best product on the market for someone looking to have total control over their VM environment. anyone interested should download a demo and try it, I know you will buy it after you do. It changing the way you have to manage on a daily basis
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    The operation began using Nagios XI, after a year of use, and based on the results obtained, we realized that what our client wanted was not fully met. Our client asked us to use WhatsUp, however, SolarWinds covered in a more efficient way what was required by our client (IT) and even more.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    SolarWinds
    Purchasing the correct license allows the platform to scale with your environment.
    Incentivized
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    Spiceworks Ziff Davis
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • VMAN has been used for reports provided to executive-level meetings. These reports showed our growth patterns, allowing for easier decisions on purchasing additional hardware.
    • VMAN has provided a positive impact on allowing for near real-time monitoring of resources, able to pinpoint when services are using more memory than expected, not running at all, or other options as defined.
    • VMAN was purchased to help monitor our VMware platform, the added abilities for AWS allowed us to migrate clients from on-prem to cloud-based with the same views.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN) Screenshots

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