Spiceworks Help Desk Review
April 26, 2021

Spiceworks Help Desk Review

Joe Foran | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Spiceworks Help Desk

Spiceworks Help Desk is used to manage our entire IT helpdesk operation. Users across the entire company access it to submit helpdesk tickets, make purchase requests, and check status. The IT department I oversee works the individual ticket items.
  • Workflow
  • Customization
  • Inventory
  • Response Management
  • Escalation
  • The desktop version has been supplanted by the online version (and a local version of that online version), losing a lot of core functionality
  • Ticket collision
  • Ticketing
  • Reporting
  • Inventory
  • System Alerts
  • The Community
  • Spiceworks Live Events
  • At the low price of free, it has had instant ROI over previous helpdesk tracking, even when including the value of labor spent on ticket management
  • The live events are always educational and worth the time.
  • The community is top notch
  • The product reviews are unbiased and fair, as well as coming from real-world users
  • Jira Service Management (Jira Service Desk), SysAid and Dragon RMM (ITarian / Comodo ONE)
[Its] simplicity, [the] easy user interface for both technicians and end-users, and stability, plus the ability to locally control data access (we're highly regulated regarding privacy and records rights), puts it in its own class. While it may not do everything larger systems do, it does all of the things our company needs. It performs well even after five years and two migrations in server operating systems, and the reporting tools are available in both simple and complex (SQL-based) formats for deep capabilities.

The community is top-tier, and their use of gamification principles goes beyond other communities to being an honestly fun system. The live events are worth every second spent watching them, and their annual conference is, in my opinion, the best conference of the year.

Do you think Spiceworks Help Desk delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Spiceworks Help Desk's feature set?

Yes

Did Spiceworks Help Desk live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Spiceworks Help Desk go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Spiceworks Help Desk again?

Yes

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.

Spiceworks Help Desk Feature Ratings

Organize and prioritize service tickets
9
Expert directory
7
Subscription-based notifications
9
ITSM collaboration and documentation
10
Ticket creation and submission
10
Ticket response
10
Internal knowledge base
9
Customer portal
7
Social integration
5
Email support
10
Help Desk CRM integration
7

Using Spiceworks Help Desk

900 - All business functions. The IT Department are the heaviest users, but the helpdesk is accessible to all staff in order to help them process technology support, project, and purchase questions.
5 - We have four technical staff and me (the director). Three are helpdesk support specialists, one is a healthcare informatics specialist.
  • IT Support
  • IT Projects
  • IT Purchases
  • We track project timelines in it
  • Other service departments - HR, Finance, etc. that are service oriented.
We have been using it for five years. I myself have used it for sixteen years (since 1.0), and I find it to be the ideal helpdesk in terms of simplicity and directness of the work entered versus the reports and data that you can extract. It is easy for the end-users to email or use[s] the web interface, and my techs are able to quickly assess, prioritize, and take action based on the simple interfaces. The knowledge base lets our staff self-solve their most common issues, and the integration with rules allows us to provide self-service recommendations based on keywords that a user may type (such as the world password, the word forgot, or the word log-in triggering account reset article access).+

Evaluating Spiceworks Help Desk and Competitors

Yes - It replaced an old Excel tracking sheet my predecessor used.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
Product usability is key - free is great, but if the users can't make use of the helpdesk easily then free has no value.
I would not change my decision at all.

Spiceworks Help Desk Implementation

It's a simple, single-server implementation. Communication, like in most projects, remains the most important piece.
Yes - First phase was IT-use only, replacing the tracking system.
Second phase was taking that data, reviewing it, and setting items like categories and SLAs
Third phase was implementing those items into Spiceworks
Fourth phase was setting up email integration to our helpdesk email
Fifth phase was opening up the web interface
Sixth was launch
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - We had been using a dedicated helpdesk email since before my hire, so staff [was] used to using the email. We added website support, which required notification but not much change management.
  • No major issues were encountered.

Spiceworks Help Desk Support

I have never not had a good experience with their support team - they are professional AND personable, and they go above and beyond in trying to help customers.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No, we did not. We had not need of it, and I'm not even sure its available.
We had a log and temp file issue crash our database, the team (even though the product is free!) worked incredibly diligently to get us back up and running in a single evening.

Using Spiceworks Help Desk

It is logically organized, flows well from one task to the next, and enables users to get up and running in no time. I have trained five people in my career, and never took more than an hour each.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Task and follow-up entry
  • Reporting
  • Inventory
  • Add-ons and plugins (like every system)
Yes - The community and helpdesk are separated, which is smart - we can handle tickets on the go easily, and my team updates in the field frequently.