Streamlined IT Support Excellence
Spiceworks ticketing tool has great advantage to track day to day issues related or service request related tickets, User interface was …
Overview
What is Spiceworks Help Desk?
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…
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Popular Features
- Ticket creation and submission (53)9.393%
- Ticket response (52)8.989%
- External knowledge base (47)8.888%
- Organize and prioritize service tickets (53)7.575%
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- No setup fee
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- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is Spiceworks Help Desk?
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 permissions and notifications allow tasks to be allocated across team members. If the user wishes to host Spiceworks apps and tools locally, then they are free. For cloud-based service, Spiceworks bills $12 per IT user per month, or $10 monthly per user if paid annually.
Spiceworks was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, also with a European headquarters in London (since 2012), and was backed by multiple investors, notably Goldman Sachs. In 2019 Spiceworks was acquired by Ziff Davis, a division of J2 Global. It is now a J2 Global company, operating under the name Spiceworks Ziff Davis.
Spiceworks Help Desk Video
Spiceworks Help Desk Overview
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Spiceworks Help Desk Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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 permissions and notifications allow tasks to be allocated across team members. If the user wishes to host Spiceworks apps and tools locally, then they are free. For cloud-based service, Spiceworks bills $12 per IT user per month, or $10 monthly per user if paid annually.
Spiceworks was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, also with a European headquarters in London (since 2012), and is generously backed by multiple investors, most notably Goldman Sachs.
BMC FootPrints, BMC Helix Remedyforce, and Pulseway are common alternatives for Spiceworks Help Desk.
Reviewers rate Ticket creation and submission highest, with a score of 9.3.
The most common users of Spiceworks Help Desk are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Spiceworks Help Desk has proven to be a versatile and valuable tool for various organizations. Users have utilized this software to efficiently manage their IT support requests, providing a solid interface and quick communication with both users and the IT team. The built-in help desk facilitates smooth communication with vendors and resellers for quotes on hardware, software, and services, making it a convenient one-stop solution. Additionally, Spiceworks Help Desk serves as an asset management discovery tool for networking and computing equipment, offering a primary inventory for desktops, mobile PCs, tablets, and software licenses. With its scanning capabilities, it can even identify security vulnerabilities in the network infrastructure.
The community forums within Spiceworks Help Desk provide a valuable resource for IT professionals to share advice, support, reviews of software and hardware, and user-generated scripts and plugins. Users have reported solving computer problems from start to finish by utilizing features such as inventory comparison, advice from the community forums, and vendor quotes within the platform. The software also allows for analytics on types of requests, time to resolution, and request volume, enabling users to track trends and optimize their support processes.
Spiceworks Inventory is another essential component of the Spiceworks suite that enables users to discover and inventory network-connected devices like iLO, Windows, Linux, Macs, printers, routers, switches, etc. It provides detailed device information such as make, model, warranty info, RAM, CPU, disk space, hardware components, and applications. This feature allows for effective system management within the organization.
Overall, Spiceworks Help Desk has been praised for its ease of use during setup and its clean interface. It offers incredible monitoring features along with a variety of customization options that cater to individual needs. With its wide range of functionalities encompassing help desk management, inventory tracking, security monitoring, and knowledge base centricity - all backed by excellent customer support - it has become a go-to solution for IT professionals across industries.
Intuitive and User-Friendly Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and user-friendly interface of Spiceworks Help Desk. Many reviewers have stated that the clean and efficient design of the ticketing system makes it easy to navigate and manage support requests. This user-friendly interface contributes to a smooth and seamless task completion, enhancing the overall user experience.
Convenient User Portal: The user portal in Spiceworks Help Desk provides a convenient landing page for end users to create and update tickets. Numerous users have expressed appreciation for the accessibility factor, as the user portal can be accessed via a browser without requiring specialized software. This accessibility adds to the usability and convenience of Spiceworks Help Desk, allowing anyone to submit help requests easily.
Customization Options: The ability to customize workflows, inventory management, and response management in Spiceworks Help Desk has been highly valued by users. Many reviewers have mentioned how they appreciate the flexibility provided by this software, as it allows them to tailor it according to their specific business needs. The customizable aspects contribute to its adaptability and usefulness for different organizations.
Loss of desktop functionality: Several users have reported that the replacement of the desktop version of Spiceworks with the online version has resulted in a loss of core functionality.
Limitations in cloud email integration: Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the cloud version of Spiceworks, specifically regarding its limitations when receiving emails from specially made applications. This limitation negatively impacts the overall user experience.
Resource-intensive and occasional hanging: Users have experienced issues with Spiceworks using a significant amount of system resources, particularly on Windows systems. Additionally, some users have mentioned that they encounter occasional hangs or freezes while using the software, although a system reboot usually resolves this problem.
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April 26, 2021
Spiceworks Help Desk Makes My Job Simple
Spiceworks Help Desk is a great tool used by our large non-profit organization. We primarily use the tool to organize our technology needs. After submitting a request, our technology department is able to complete the request in an efficient, quick manner.
- Easy to use platform
- Inventory mangement
- Efficient alerts
- Confusing mobile app
- Outdated interface
- Attachment feature needs work
April 26, 2021
Great Free Help Desk
We use Spiceworks Help Desk for internal tickets. Most of our users submit support requests through email and Spiceworks picks them up and turns them into tickets. Having a central location for tickets makes sure that requests don't get lost in our individual inboxes.
- Easy for users to submit tickets
- Informative ticket update email notifications
- Smartphone app makes it easy to track tickets on the go
- Ticket updates are at the bottom of the page and require you to click the "More" link to see them. Sometimes our techs miss the latest notes [on] tickets
- Not many customization options in the help desk view for techs
- Searching for old tickets is a little clumsy
End users send in [a] support request to an email address, which is then forwarded to the Spiceworks Help Desk and creates a ticket in the system. Our software support team all receives a notification that a ticket is created and we are able to assign the ticket to ourselves, If a ticket is left unassigned after a chosen time period, we have created a notification so that the manager can go and assign the ticket to the appropriate staff.
- 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.
- Email templates to clients can be a little hard to manage.
- [The] free version has quite a few [advertisements].
Spiceworks Help Desk was used in my organization and in other organizations I help maintain as a turnkey ticketing solution for remote tech support of both the primary locations and branch offices.
- The dashboard is very helpful for a heads up view of the current status of tickets
- It is very easy to deploy and configure
- It has a wide user base with online help when you run into configuration issues
- Easier integration into other platforms
- The ability to easily backup help desk
- Better mobile support
[Spiceworks Help Desk] is used as the primary way for employees to submit requests for IT support, even if they're off site (we went with the cloud solution).
- Cloud environment requiring nothing more than an email with the right domain is great (no new passwords needed)
- Excellent knowledge base capabilities
- Integration with remote administration tools like VNC
- User portal to act as a kind of IT intranet is VERY flexible
- When cloud hosted, AD integration isn't the best, it forces users to log in and stops working entirely when on premise services are unavailable and passwords aren't known
- Additional support for direct deployment of things would be nice, a lot leans on manual GPOs and other things to leverage the additional information made visible by the Spiceworks Agent, for example
- More workflows available, stuff seen in SolarWinds (tho perhaps this is available now)
April 20, 2021
Spiceworks ... Use it every day!!
We needed a way to centralize tickets as former team only used email. I had used other Spiceworks tools prior so decided to test this out and never looked back after implementing it for all in house issues.
- Ticketing
- Custom fields
- Management of tickets
- Reporting tool
- Mobile app
April 08, 2021
Spiceworks a good tool for smart business
Spiceworks is used by IT for Asset information, inventory, and we have tested the helpdesk functions. It performs well and has decent features which will assist in your daily functions. A full-featured ITSM it is not, but it is a wonderful helpdesk offering. It's offered at a great price.
- Inventory
- Asset details
- Helpdesk ticket routing
- Too many ads on UI
- Would like to see a local install
January 15, 2020
Great Free Product
We are mostly using Spiceworks to complete auditing and reporting across our network. IT automatically inventories all of our devices and lets us see at a glance the key metrics and measurements that we need to know. We can also put specific notes regarding each device to help us to keep track of things such as hardware faults/fixes/upgrades. We have over 250 devices and counting so it is critical we keep track of these types of things in a central location.
- Inventory.
- Reporting.
- Application deployment.
- Windows updates.
June 21, 2019
Spiceworks Help Desk -- a basic ticketing system
We use Spiceworks (on premises, not the cloud version) as a ticketing system across our entire organization. One of our locations is also using Spiceworks Inventory to keep track of workstations, printers, and other devices. We have more than 10+ IT support techs, 1000+ users submitting tickets, and 10000+ supported devices (1 for 1 school district). Users submit tickets via email. IT support mostly uses the web interface; the mobile app is used less often. Management tracks time spent on tickets via reports. Nothing groundbreaking --a normal ticketing system in a mid-size organization.
- Price: it is free.
- Ease of installation: all components (web server, database) are included in a single package. The entire ticketing system can be configured in 5 minutes.
- Email integration: we can submit tickets, add time, comments, and close over the email.
- Performance issues. With tens of thousands of tickets and thousands of devices in the Spiceworks database, reports can be very sluggish. Throwing more hardware resources does not help.
- Customization is limited. We use a custom script to control our ticket assignment, as rules inside Spiceworks are not adequate. Spiceworks implementation of Apache does not work well with configuration changes. The database server used is SQLite, which is quite limited -- working with the database directly is not advisable.
- Support and documentation are what can be expected from the ad-supported product. Most of the time forums are the best place to find answers.
We use Spiceworks for two purposes: for its inventory tracking capabilities to keep track of all our our IT infrastructure, and also we heavily use the help desk feature across our whole organization, which allows us to manage and track support issues and their solutions all within one central place, and to easily recall past issues and their solutions.
- Help desk trouble ticket system, which is great for tracking the status of issues within your organization. It allows users the ability to submit help requests themselves, and it allows teams to update and track the tickets.
- Inventory tracking of all your equipment with lots of details about each piece of equipment, like the patch level of computers and the location for equipment or the last time it was serviced or updated.
- Spiceworks is free!! You can't beat a free solution, and the community behind Spiceworks is huge. Their forums are filled with fellow IT pros willing to help each other out if you submit a question.
- Spiceworks is pretty flexible in the inventory tracking area but it would be nice to be able to create multiple custom fields because sometimes I need more than one customizable field.
- Spiceworks offers apps for managing things from your phone, but it's a very text-heavy app. It would be nice for it to be a little more graphical for some of the lower-end users out there.
- Spiceworks offers 2 different apps, one for their forums and accessing the Spiceworks community, and another for the help desk features. It would be nice to have them combined into one app.
December 11, 2018
Spiceworks is worth it!
We are using Spiceworks across our entire organization to manage IT support requests. It provides us with a solid interface, quick communications with users and the team, and a mobile app to manage requests in a more timely and efficient manner. The ability to have an archive or request allows us to perform analytics on types of requests, time to resolution, and who is requesting the most.
- Support request management
- End-user/ requester communication
- analytics
- web page refresh rate
- ads are annoying but I get it
- more customization
February 15, 2018
Spicework the hot chilli to help give you a kick.
I use Spiceworks to perform an inventory of my network and devices. I also monitor security and track issues and apply patches within the different apps it uses. it lets me control IP addresses check on tickets that clients generate using the client portal. The appearance can be changed to show what tools are being used to monitor issues.
Overall a good application to use.
Overall a good application to use.
- Monitor devices. it collect all devices using ip address.
- Monitor application licenses.
- It shows everything at a glance.
- Have a larger knowledge base
- Have a better list of security applications on the market.
August 19, 2015
Spicetabulous
Within our organization, Spiceworks is being implemented as a ticketing and inventory solution for the helpdesk team. It has been instrumental in providing my team with the tools required to quantify our achievements, simplify our job, and give us a level of transparency that our branch managers appreciate. The ability to generate monthly and quarterly reports and show our productivity levels is definitely a tremendous asset, in addition to having the ability to quantify our daily/weekly workload.
- Allows my team to quantify their daily workload and predict heightened workload based on trends.
- Allows me to provide my employer with solid tangible data when it comes to proposals, or requests for additional budget/head count.
- Provides a simpler means to inventory our hardware.
- Better ticketing views. I would like to see nested ticket attributes and categories.
- SpiceWorks as a non web-based app would be nice to have.
- More bandwidth, network, and hardware monitoring features would be a big plus.
February 25, 2015
Why Spiceworks works: Your personal help desk minion
Spiceworks is currently being used company-wide in many ways. For us, it's our means of inventory and monitoring. For our users, we use the help-desk ticketing system to track problems and respond in a timely fashion. It allows us to document and keep a history of issues, which is invaluable in IT.
- Free, aka not a penny!
- Easy to update and maintain
- Customizable reports
- Email notifications
- Deletion of tickets could be easier
- Customizing GUI
- Ability to manually add inventory items
February 04, 2015
Simple to understand with countless options!
As Medical Management Company we support multiple hospitals and assisted living facilities. We use Spiceworks to track inventory, security settings, ink and toner, as well as track and log tickets. Spiceworks helps us stay organized and gives us the ability to handle multiple issues at once.
- Gives our company the ability to track the progress on all outstanding and resolved issues.
- We are able to monitor any unwanted programs on all computers.
- Allows our company to communicate with other IT professionals on software or hardware.
- A way to categorize submitted tickets with the ability to search closed issues.
June 16, 2014
Supremely useful AND it's free? Yes, please!
Spiceworks is currently used by the IT department to track help desk tickets and manage PC/server/printer inventory. Users submit trouble tickets via email which generates a ticket within Spiceworks and notifies all IT staff. This process helps prioritize IT tasks based on existing issues and IT staff availability, track trending issues, as well as improve user satisfaction. The scanning/inventory function allows IT staff to view information about a user's PC (software installed, serial number, IP address, etc.) without being physically present. The built-in remote control (RDP) feature is especially helpful.
- The inventory scanning feature has been extremely useful. Because our PC naming convention is based on the serial number, figuring out who a particular PC belongs to can be a challenge. However, the inventory within Spiceworks automatically detects the PC and documents a ton of useful information - serial number, PC name, last logged in user, software installed, hardware configuration and IP address.
- The help desk function is our most frequently used area of Spiceworks. Users can simply send a message to a specific email address and Spiceworks automatically generates a ticket. Each IT staff member is notified and based on who is available or has particular expertise in the user's issue, they can assign the ticket to themselves or admins can assign the ticket to a particular technician. Each ticket includes areas to track time spent on the issue, purchases made (including item, vendor, price), make notes that are visible only by IT staff for documentation purposes, and respond directly to the user. Ticket information is searchable which is especially helpful when researching a problem that has come up in the past.
- We don't use the reporting feature very frequently, but when we do we are always pleased. The canned reports cover a lot of common needs, but if you need a custom report, it is easy to create your own from scratch.
- The help desk does not allow you to add time spent to tickets after they've been closed. The Spiceworks app does, however.
- The Tickets Anywhere hashtag (#) commands either work very slowly or only sometimes.
- The inventory view will randomly switch between icon and browse views instead of keeping the last setting.
June 06, 2014
Spiceworks, Where IT goes to work
The IT department uses Spiceworks as our ticketing software for internal support. We were looking for somthing to replace the very bulky ticketing software we had been using.
- But it's created and supported as if it was a very expensive program.
- Web-based. Got a browser? You can get your tickets.
- MUCH. INFORMATION. If you know a little SQL, you can get it to tell you just about anything about your network.
- Community. Adjacent to the program is a flourishing community of, I think at this point, over 5 million users. Reviews, how-tos, vendors, anything you could need in a forum, plus a plate of bacon.
- Access to devs. Not only is their support great, but through the community, you can get some access to the developers. I'm currently bugging them over some feature requests. :)
- Plug-ins. There are a few features, like nesting sub categories when creating a ticket that you would expect to be standard, but are only supported by plugins. It's not fun when you depend on a feature you get from a plugin, and the creator stops working on it.
- SQLite isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it's what I have to fight to write custom reports.
We use Spiceworks within the company as an asset management/discovery tool for all of our networking and computing equipment. It's the primary inventory for our desktop and mobile PCs and tablets and software licenses. It automatically discovers and inventories anything attached to your network, and you can also add in other devices to the database as well. It has a very robust help desk built in, and it has tools to put its users directly in touch with vendors and re-sellers for quotes on hardware, software, and services. The community forums are an invaluable resource because it puts IT professionals in touch with each other to share advice, support, software and hardware reviews, and user generated scripts and plugins, etc. The software itself is invaluable, and the community is second to none when it comes to getting real answers from real IT professionals.
With Spiceworks, I can solve computer problems from start to finish. For example, a user submits a ticket to Spiceworks Help Desk, then I use Spiceworks Inventory to compare his computer to similar machines and to see what software is installed that could be causing problems, I can go to the Spiceworks Community forums to get advice on how to solve the problem or to read product reviews, and then I can even get quotes from vendors for the replacement parts or new software, all without having to leave Spiceworks.
With Spiceworks, I can solve computer problems from start to finish. For example, a user submits a ticket to Spiceworks Help Desk, then I use Spiceworks Inventory to compare his computer to similar machines and to see what software is installed that could be causing problems, I can go to the Spiceworks Community forums to get advice on how to solve the problem or to read product reviews, and then I can even get quotes from vendors for the replacement parts or new software, all without having to leave Spiceworks.
- Help desk software is easy to set up and manage and has a user portal with room for a FAQ or self-support as well as a robust ticketing system.
- Network inventory discovery in Spiceworks is better than many expensive solutions that I've used, and it's completely free.
- I get quick answers to complicated questions in the community forums. Many IT Superheroes are more than happy to help you out with technical problems or offer up advice.
- With Spiceworks, I can solve computer problems from start to finish. For example, a user submits a ticket to Spiceworks Help Desk, then I use Spiceworks Inventory to compare his computer to similar machines and to see what software is installed that could be causing problems, I can go to the Spiceworks Community forums to get advice on how to solve the problem or to read product reviews, and then I can even get quotes from vendors for the replacement parts or new software, all without having to leave Spiceworks.
- There has been talk of adding a Wiki feature to SpiceWorks, which I think would be a great addition.
- Only runs on Windows. It will automatically discover and inventory any OS, but the software itself must be hosted on Windows.
June 05, 2014
Use Spiceworks, you won't regret it.
Before I started using it, I read carefully what it offered. But, I was really surprised by its features later on. I was amazed by the fact the whole internal LAN of the department was displayed in details. I could also see all the apps and programs installed on each computer, when the licences were expiring, and so on. Overall, very powerful and useful tool to manage your network and have the status updated.
- General and detailed overview of LAN
- Currently installed apps and programs
- Breakdown of LAN elements by models, serial numbers, its usage.
- Different administration credentials
June 03, 2014
Spicy Review!
We use Spiceworks mainly for the help desk feature. It is used to help us support about 200 users across two 2 states. For a free product, this is amazing. It works so well we decided to pay for the 'ad-free' version so we could support them. The help desk has all the features you could want from a ticketing system. Everything integrates with AD and email seamlessly. Quick and easy to setup. Our users love it as well. Spiceworks has helped us improve our customer service immensely. The reporting feature is great. It helps us easily identify problem areas or problem users so we can address them quickly. I would recommend Spiceworks to anyone in need of a help desk system.
- The ticketing system works great. It includes a user portal so people can keep track of their tickets but also allows tickets creation/update via email which makes things so simple for the end user.
- Spiceworks is extremely customizable . Your can change the look of the portal to your liking, set custom categories that are relevant to your organization, and even completely customize the email notifications that are sent to team members.
- We have just started using the inventory feature which is really robust. You can set networks scans and Spiceworks will give you very detailed information about everything on your network.
- Reporting. Spiceworks is SQL based so unless you know how to write SQL queries, it may be hard to get the exact information you need.
- I think the mobile app can use some more work. Though it does come in handy when running around a large building as we have here.
- Spiceworks was designed for small to medium sized businesses. Though I have not experienced this myself, I have heard from others that performance takes a hit when being used in a large organization. I worry that we may have to move away from Spiceworks as we grow.