Overview
What is Cherwell Service Management?
Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.
Save money and use Cherwell!!
Good Product - Cherwell CSM
Cherwell Service Management: Service Management Done Right!
Very Good Software For All Our Processes - With A Focus On ITSM
Cherwell - a true enterprise service management solution!
Best business automation solution
Cherwell Service Management can be customized to do nearly anything
Service Management System for easy maintainability
Cherwell , one stop ITSM tool.
Cherwell - by far the best tool for managing Incidents, support tickets, changes for deployment!!
Cherwell Service Management - It can meet your organizations needs!
Cherwell is an underrated powerhouse that solves your business problems
Cherwell: Service Management as Good as How You Implement It
Customizable and no code!
Cherwell Service Management Review
Awards
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Popular Features
- Organize and prioritize service tickets (52)10.0100%
- Self-service tools (51)9.898%
- ITSM reports and dashboards (51)9.797%
- ITSM collaboration and documentation (48)9.696%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Cherwell Service Management?
Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
Cherwell 8 Overview
Cherwell Service Management 10.0 Demo
Features
Incident and problem management
Streamlining ticketing and service restoration processes
- 10Organize and prioritize service tickets(52) Ratings
Prioritize tickets to ensure most urgent are tackled first
- 9.7Expert directory(41) Ratings
Directory of IT and businesses services available to customers to help route tickets to appropriate subject matter experts
- 9.9Service restoration(35) Ratings
Impact assessment and automated fixes for common problems
- 9.8Self-service tools(51) Ratings
Repository of information documenting common issues and known resolutions which can be accessed directly by users
- 9.6Subscription-based notifications(38) Ratings
Users subscribe to notifications for ticket updates
- 9.6ITSM collaboration and documentation(48) Ratings
Issue resolution through collaboration mechanisms like discussion threads, social tools; agents can attach notes, files, etc. to tickets in order to maintain a record of all interactions related to the case.
- 9.7ITSM reports and dashboards(51) Ratings
Reports and dashboards are used to optimize service desk operations by supplying key performance and capacity data
ITSM asset management
Managing all IT assets and enforcing policy rules
- 9.8Configuration mangement(42) Ratings
Database for tracking and reporting all business assets
- 9.8Asset management dashboard(41) Ratings
Dashboard showing organization's software portfolio
- 9.8Policy and contract enforcement(31) Ratings
Ensuring that requesters have eligibility before fullfullment
Change management
Ensuring standardized processes for making changes to IT infrastructure
- 9.8Change requests repository(48) Ratings
Single repository of all planned changes and releases
- 9.9Change calendar(44) Ratings
Calendar showing change schedule to stakeholders
- 9.9Service-level management(45) Ratings
Process for negotiating agreements regarding service level expectations, and ensuring these are met
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Cherwell Service Management?
Cherwell Service Management Competitors
Cherwell Service Management Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(107)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Cherwell is a versatile IT service management tool that has been widely adopted by various organizations across industries. Users have reported positive experiences with the software, citing its customizable GUI and flexible reporting capabilities. One of the key use cases of Cherwell is in the realm of ITSM and ITIL initiatives. It is utilized for incident management, problem management, change management, configuration item management, and knowledge management. The software helps organizations streamline their IT processes and improve service delivery by providing a centralized platform for managing tickets, tracking incidents and problems, and facilitating knowledge sharing among team members.
Additionally, Cherwell extends beyond ITSM to address other organizational needs. It is used as a ticketing system for various departments such as HR, facilities, and IT support. Users leverage Cherwell to handle service requests, facilities management tasks, new hire requests, and even training participation tracking. The software's highly customizable nature allows it to be adapted to different workflows and business processes, making it a valuable tool in areas beyond traditional IT functions.
Another notable use case of Cherwell is its role in improving communication and collaboration within organizations. Users have highlighted how Cherwell serves as a central tracking system for IT issues, replacing inefficient methods like email-based work assignment. By providing real-time tracking and metrics, Cherwell enhances accountability and promotes institutional collaboration among different departments.
Overall, Cherwell's ease of use and wide range of applications have made it an essential tool for organizations seeking effective IT service management, streamlined workflows, improved communication, and high-quality customer service across various departments.
Extensive Customization Options: Many users have praised Cherwell's extensive customization options, allowing them to personalize dashboards and move touch points according to their preferences. This flexibility has been appreciated by several reviewers who value the ability to tailor the system to their specific needs.
Efficient Automation Capabilities: Several users have highlighted Cherwell's automation capabilities, mentioning that it has allowed them to automate various tasks in their support department. From ticket creation and classification to responding with specific attachments, this automation feature has helped eliminate wasted time and improve overall efficiency.
Easy Configuration Process: Numerous users have mentioned that Cherwell's configuration process is easy to navigate without requiring expensive consultants for every adjustment. They appreciate being able to make minor as well as major enhancements on their own, giving them more control over the system's configuration.
Web and Mobile App Issues: Users have reported various issues with the web client and mobile app, including frequent locking up and clunkiness. These problems significantly hinder their workflow and productivity.
Lack of Apple Client: In environments that use a mix of Windows and Apple devices, some users have experienced difficulties due to the lack of an Apple client. This absence creates compatibility challenges and limits their ability to effectively utilize the software.
Issues with Active Directory Integration: The built-in remote control capabilities on tickets do not work well with active directory, causing problems for users. This issue disrupts their ability to efficiently manage tickets and collaborate with other team members.
Users commonly recommend the following when using Cherwell:
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Utilize all the available features, such as workflows and customizations, to increase productivity and resolve IT and system-related issues effectively.
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Take time for proper implementation and customization by conducting a hands-on proof of concept (POC) to understand customization needs, considering the implementation process and ease of system configuration, and allowing enough time for implementation and user acceptance testing (UAT).
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Seek support from the Cherwell community by attending user groups and seeking guidance during the implementation process.
Overall, users recommend fully utilizing Cherwell's features, dedicating sufficient time for implementation, customization, and training, and seeking advice from the Cherwell community for successful use of the software.
Attribute Ratings
- 9.9Likelihood to Renew13 ratings
- 8.2Availability3 ratings
- 6.4Performance1 rating
- 8.7Usability5 ratings
- 6.7Support Rating16 ratings
- 9.1Online Training1 rating
- 8.7In-Person Training2 ratings
- 9.1Implementation Rating3 ratings
- 9.1Configurability2 ratings
- 8.2Product Scalability1 rating
- 9.1Ease of integration1 rating
- 6.4Vendor post-sale1 rating
- 7.3Professional Services1 rating
- 9.1Contract Terms and Pricing Model1 rating
Reviews
(1-23 of 23)Save money and use Cherwell!!
- Highly customizable
- Easy to use
- Easy to obtain stats and metrics
- Quicker turnaround on upgrades and bug fixes
- Needs a better web version
- Performance on hosted versions
Very Good Software For All Our Processes - With A Focus On ITSM
- Allows us to implement our workflows with low-code approach, so that you do not need true developers (writing code) but only tech-savvy process designers
- Excellent flexibility in the plattform to implement whatever topic we require
- Very good licensing model (easy to comprehend + manage)
- Bad web components: web portal and browser client are not up-to-date with modern web technologies
- Large “codebases” become very hard to refactor after growing to a certain size
- The promise of zero-hassle upgrades has not worked once for us over the years (it’s still okay, though)
Cherwell - a true enterprise service management solution!
- Workflow Management
- Automation
- Integrations
- No-code/low-code content development
- Flexibility to use on multiple operating systems
- Updated web UI/UX
- Standardized form creation
- Improved machine learning
- Built-in AI chat bot
Best business automation solution
- Automation of Business Processes
- Dashboard
- ITSM
- Business Intelligence (Reporting)
- Web interface
- UI / UX
- Automation
- API Integrations
- Customization
- Customer Service
- Modern UI
- Adaptive Forms
Service Management System for easy maintainability
Implemented Cherwell to begin tracking and managing Incidents for our retail support team and 130 mid-west grocery stores. Have since expanded to managing assets (endpoints, mobile devices, network hardware, servers). CMDB's are configured for all teams with some automation.
Worked with a third party to implement a contract/license management system to track all IT based service contracts, Microsoft licenses, etc.
Converted our old change management system to Cherwell in summer of 2022 and streamlined the process with automated approvals and calendar entries. Service Management metrics have helped identify problematic areas where training can be applied to end users.
The only real negative is the current administrative console is client based not web. When Ivanti rolls out the converged platform with Neurons, I will be glad as the interface will be HTML5 and easier to use.
- Incident and Problem Management
- CMDB endpoint tracking
- Change Mangement
- Automation with one-steps
- Administration Console is legacy
- Self Service Portal hard to set up without outside assistance
- Integrations with external applications like SCCM, VMware, AD
Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent.
Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents.
Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff.
Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders.
Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
Cherwell , one stop ITSM tool.
- Logging Tickets.
- Creating Dashboards.
- Knowledge Database.
- Analytical Reports.
- Reporting Charts can be better.
- Web portal has issues in seeing journals which is better in Cherwell client.
- Web portal and Client should have same features.
- Low code solution development for business processes
- Fantastic customer support and customer community
- Exceptional value for the price
- Highly usable out of the box for traditional ITIL processes
- Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
- Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
- No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
Cherwell Review
It is able to direct requests that are made to the correct team and manage massive inventories of stock with most of this being done without the need for any programming skills.
- Service requests.
- Incident management.
- Process scheduling is fiddly.
- Word wrapping during text entry sometimes does not happen properly. You need to pop out the text box to see it properly.
Cherwell - ITSM
- Automated workflows are done very well. There is a broad and configurable set of automations available, which allow for effective incident routing.
- Reporting is very flexible with all the options available, dashboards and graphing in an automated manner can be an effective delivery or ITIL reports.
- Web based clients allow for some good basic functionality, which are good for customers, or end users.
- Within our deployment model of Cherwell, there are core functional pieces that have to be configured at the top level, rather than the sub levels, which make some areas difficult to manage. For example, if one agency wants to use feature x in one way, but another agency wants to configure the same feature in a different way, then consensus has to be gained first. Its not as fully flexible in the base configuration space as would be ideal.
- Automated email processes, especially in the volumes that the State of Wisconsin goes through require some tweaking to allow them to fire in an effective way. We sometimes see problems with backlogs of these.
- Licensing based on concurrency and usage is a very modern approach, however, it leads to challenges in how customers use it. For example, we have automated log-off's in place for the local clients in order to manage our own usage, to maintain reasonable costs.
Cherwell Is OK If You Have a Babysitter
Cherwell addressed the void we had of not having a central tracking system for IT issues. We used to only use emails for work assignment and tracking for all faculty and student IT problems. This was meant to replace that entirely.
- After proper training on setting up the views and servers, Cherwell did a good job separating various department ownership of tickets. Our work views weren't cluttered with irrelevant information.
- There is a lot of information that can be embedded into tickets. Such as sub-task assignments that could contain almost the same information as a ticket itself. Lot of customization options.
- Custom personal dashboards were nice, once I figured out how to do it. Not everyone wants to see things the same way as other people, and being able to move touch points where you want is always a plus.
- While I understand that a lot of customization can be up to an organization, the platform was always a huge pain when going beyond the installed client. The web client and mobile app were very problematic and clunky, locked up frequently.
- My university was 50% Windows/50% Apple, and there's no Apple client.
- The built in remote control capabilities on tickets for client machines didn't play well with our active directory. We always just used a different program.
- Error handling could have been much better. Accidentally assigning ticket items to "non-existent" resources could crash the client. Such as if the resource was removed before a worker's view was refreshed.
- Tickets can go into limbo very easily, and seemed to require more development than it should to protect us from doing that. This is because there's a lot of different ways to do the same thing. Too many touch points all over the place in the UI.
- Too many ticket priority options. Clients could be assigned personal higher priorities through VIP status, tickets could be given their own priorities that conflict with client status, and SLA deadlines could assign other conflicting priorities. There were more but these were the most problematic if you're using Cherwell in a situation where you have limited developer time to nail down all the inconsistencies every day.
- There was an arbitrary time tracking feature on tickets that attempted to gather data on how long certain resources took, but because the UI was very cumbersome this was more of a pain to do and was very inaccurate of the actual work it takes to do certain things.
Cherwell is the best value for your investment
- Incident Management.
- Change Management.
- Integrating with other systems.
- Web front end.
- Unified client.
- Support for web technologies.
Cherwell is a powerful and highly customizable ITSM solution
- Customization: Cherwell allows us to create custom solutions that address the specific challenges we face. From a very simple "feedback" form with a single text field to a more complex process with approvals allowing users to update information about their Configuration Items.
- Integration: We pull data into the Cherwell system through various sources and different methods. We might use API calls to a web application to retrieve data, or directly connect to a database.
- Cherwell currently has a sort of split system with an "Application" on one side and "Content" on the other. This is one of the greatest strengths because it enables deep customization to the "Content" while allowing new features and upgrades to the "Application" without causing disruption. Over the years, Cherwell has added great improvements to the Out-of-the-Box "Content" and the "Application" and while you can easily upgrade the "Application" side to gain the new features it provides, upgrading the "Content" is a much bigger challenge. Cherwell is very aware of this challenge, and is working to solve it, but the more you customize your "Content" the more difficult it is to pull in new features.
Cherwell a powerful and scalable ITSM solution
- Capturing all of the activities involved in managing incidents in an easy to navigate way.
- The ability to link incidents, problem and change requests to configuration items in the CMDB.
- On steps to automate various business processes to eliminate manual processes.
- Ease of upgrades and content.
- Report writing.
- Dashboard creation.
Cherwell Rocks!
Our management accesses it here and there for KPI and other important metrics. We also create customized customer dashboards for use on the self-service portal. Beyond that, we also generate ticket reports for our SDMs and other customer relations employees.
- Incident Management
- Change Management
- Problem Management
- The Web UI
- Overall UIX
- CMDB
To provide solid incident management between your service desk and customers.
To provide Change management to assist executives and overall business up-time. Help detect change collision while looking at scheduled change times and CIs upstream/downstream.
Less appropriate:
The overall reporting features are very non-user-friendly and it can be a bit of a pain to actually get the data out that you're looking for.
Cherwell: Powerful, but slow and clunky.
- Customization: Cherwell is a platform, so it can be built to do anything you can think of. However, you will require significant development resources.
- Automation: there are vast capabilities for automation and integration with other platforms. Of course, significant DevOps capabilities are required.
- Unlike some other ITSM tools, it has everything, such as knowledgebase, project management, CMDB, and integrations.
- Cherwell is slow. Very very slow. This is somewhat understandable because it is a very complex tool and a lot of things are happening in the tool, but it still needs to be a lot faster. It takes over 7 seconds to load an incident. The web client is faster, but it doesn't have all the features of the rich client (installs locally).
- Absolutely terrible UI: there's a left search pane, a right search pane, and a whole bunch of tabs at the bottom. What you get in the end is a screen that is divided into many small sections, and each section has large contents inside them so that you have to scroll left/right and up/down for many of them. It's the worst UI I have ever seen. Now add this to the slow speed mentioned earlier, and all your users hate it.
Great Process Builder
- Offers a great ITIL framework out of the box
- Allows for a lot of customization and hooks into other software
- Sets up an out-of-the-box process for a ticket lifecycle if you don't have a process already set
- Creating and running reports is ridiculously, impossibly complex and complicated
- The product is so open-ended it's almost too broad. We have ended up creating a lot of in-house customizations to the product that would have been nice to have out of the box.
- Dashboards are great to have but they are awful in implementation. They are not dynamic and act more like a Bitmap file made in Windows 95 Microsoft Paint than a dynamic webpage. It would be nice if Dashboards were dynamic and were more like HTML or a web-based platform. It doesn't make sense why web design products like WIX exist yet the dashboards are needlessly complicated and have static image borders, sizes, etc.
A no-frills ticketing system
- Ticket Handling and routing. Being a larger organization getting tickets routed to the proper internal groups to resolve is key.
- Maintaining level of service. Without any ticketing system we would be hard pressed to keep track independently of issues/calls/emails received.
- Asset management. Utilizing a web link to inventory new equipment assignments aids in troubleshooting with users as the equipment is bound to their userid. So when a ticket is generated for their ID a snapshot of what equipment they have and possibly are calling about is presented.
- The interface is somewhat clunky to navigate and at times finding where things are located takes some time.
- If you are idle too long in the application it will constantly pop up a message that you have been logged out due to inactivity but you cannot then close the application without having to end the task from the task manager in Windows.
Cherwell in our service desk.
- Incident management is clear and easy to use. The business specific changes that were made, were easy to complete.
- A great web portal.
- Updates push out upon logging into the client.
- Problem management text messaging reports are not great.
- I wish Cherwell had more Mapps.
Cherwell's product innovation is unmatched.
- Blueprints and One-Steps all for maximum flexibility and endless possibilities. Password resets, account onboarding/offboarding automation, self-service portal, and many many more.
- Form building allows virtually endless possibilities for capturing data from end users or technicians alike. Publish them in the client, the web client, or the portal and help gather requirements from the beginning to ensure efficient use of resources.
- Report building is very easy and configurable. Build customer variables, charts, graphs, matrices, and more without having to know any coding languages.
- The performance of the system seems process heavy. Often takes a while to load specific screens.
- Out of the box features on upgrades seem inconsistent on when and where they are applied for fear of overwriting previous custom work done in the system.
- Organization of one-steps could use some work. Certain folders can only be accessed from particular regions of the orange or blue pills.
Complete solution tha's easy to deploy and manage
- Single platform that is easily managed.
- Customer service and support is outstanding.
- Continuous improvement of the product - new features (which are frequently customer driven) are added regularly at no additional cost.
- Very easy to learn for users, administrators and developers.
- Licensing model is simple and flexible - can implement perpetual and subscription in one instance. Migrate from SaaS to on premises or third party cloud with little effort and at low to no cost.
- Database is not overly normalized. Very easy to understand and query.
- Documentation is improving but is still incomplete.
- "Codeless" architecture is great and easy to learn but it would be nice to have the a "power user" interface option to allow writing of things like expressions rather than click through drop downs.
- Web UI is a bit slow and still not on par with the features of the client application.
Cherwell is a great choice for all organizations looking for an IT Service Management solution. It can scale to any size organization and training and support is great for those just getting started with ITIL-focused support.
For organizations seeking a platform that provides extensive capabilities beyond IT Service Management there may be better choices.
Cherwell - Codeless reality
- The codeless configuration of Cherwell has been able to meet all of our demanding business needs. From data integration to complex process workflows we can respond and deliver the added value our business needs.
- Cherwell does offer a great customer experience. There has not been one occasion when I have not been impressed with their commitment to the customers experience.
- The development tools are robust and the time to develop had drastically been reduced from previous tools sets, this allows us to focus on gathering solid requirements for iterative changes rather than lengthy development cycles.
- Our solution can be managed and grow with limited number of resources available. We continue to expand and grow as out business requires while maintaining 2 FTE.
- Cherwell is in the process of balancing the speed to market of functionality and robust testing of those releases. We have come across a couple of issues in a particular release that have caused us issues that required configuration of workarounds or us having to skip the release until the function is resolved.
- The web client for technician use still is not in par with the rich client. Cherwell has made the commitment to develop web first but the client parity of the rich and web clients is still not there.
- The ability to be able to Select multiple rows from a result list and then run an action (one step) on them would be a huge win for my environment. Right now you can run a query and run an action against all returned results but it is dependent on the query results, which can be difficult to narrow enough for the general user.
Cherwell Changed my Life
The business problem being addressed by using Incident/Request Management is to provide tracking, metrics/reporting, and accountability. Teams within the organization have been transitioning from using a team mailbox in Outlook to using Cherwell to manage requests which provides real time tracking and metrics at a glance.
Cherwell is able to provide a customized "dashboard" view that provides teams and business leaders with an easy to read, high level overview of key items which are definable on a team by team basis.
Problem Management is being utilized by the Information Technology team.
Change Management is currently under configuration and is anticipated to be implemented within the next few months.
- Metrics/Tracking
- Providing a real time, high level overview via the Dashboard
- Friendly User Interface
- Customer Service response time
- Bugs - simple functionality that worked prior to a new release sometimes don't work after the release
Key questions to ask during the selection process are:
- What is the issue being solved for?
- What is the current process?
- What is the desired outcome?