Freshdesk vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Freshworks Logo
3,291 views|1,982 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
934 views|461 comparisons
83% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Freshdesk and SolarWinds Web Help Desk based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Help Desk Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Freshdesk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk Report (Updated: May 2024).
770,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy.""Omnichannel is one of the most valuable features of the solution.""It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them.""We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources.""The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well.""Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.""The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier.""There is the option to create different roles for specific users. We make use of groups for each customer service team which has been very effective. We are able to apply different sets of rules for each group which determines how they interact with customers and escalate issues."

More Freshdesk Pros →

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module.""It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for.""It is easy to use.""SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers.""Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."

More SolarWinds Web Help Desk Pros →

Cons
"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities.""Asset management and branding are two areas in the solution that have scope for improvement.""Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming.""Freshdesk could improve its capabilities. It's missing the article formatting, and the overall look and feel make it not easy to use. The administration instructions on how to manage the automation, capability, and integration with third parties, such as chat or bots, are very important in these types of solutions.""It would be helpful to pull reports or schedule them based on agents, users, ticket numbers, or responses.""I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM.""We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice.""The dashboards are useful but could be so much better. As a product manager, and data scientist, we couldn't use the dashboard for analytics and had to move the data in Power BI."

More Freshdesk Cons →

"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk.""The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds.""A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection.""This solution needs to have mobile application support added.""We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."

More SolarWinds Web Help Desk Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
  • "The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
  • "The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
  • "We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
  • "Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
  • "We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
  • "It is costly."
  • "The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
  • More Freshdesk Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
  • "They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
  • More SolarWinds Web Help Desk Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Help Desk Software solutions are best for your needs.
    770,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
    Top Answer:I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets. Additionally, more flexibility in… more »
    Top Answer:I use Freshdesk to manage IT support tickets for our team of 15 IT professionals across multiple countries. It has been effective in ticket management, and we find the price-to-functionality ratio… more »
    Top Answer:Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash.
    Top Answer:It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk. There are videos on the website, but it would be handy if they were on the Web Help Desk.
    Ranking
    9th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    3,291
    Comparisons
    1,982
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    667
    Rating
    8.1
    18th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    934
    Comparisons
    461
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    254
    Rating
    10.0
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that provides organizations with the features necessary to effectively streamline their support processes. This includes powerful multichannel capability, integrated game mechanics, smart automations, and more.

    The solution is designed to automate agent workflows and resolve routine questions using AI and bots. Freshdesk allows managers to prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets to their agents, making it easy for them to collaborate and quickly respond to customers. 

    Freshdesk Features and Benefits

    Some of the solution's top features and benefits include:

    • Simplified ticketing: With Freshdesk, you can easily prioritize, manage, and assign trackable tickets. The management system ensures that multiple agents don’t work on the same ticket by accident. You can easily set deadlines for ticket resolution based on specific categories and create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.
    • Automation: Automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords and requests and set up automated repeated actions and provide quick, consistent responses to common questions using pre-formatted replies. In addition, you can choose to prevent the reopening of tickets when customers reply with a thank you.
    • Improved collaboration: Share tickets with other teams while retaining full visibility into the progress being made on the issue. Related tickets can be linked together to better keep track of the big picture. Tickets can also be split into smaller child tickets and assigned to multiple agents to help resolve complex, multi-stage issues.
    • Build up your knowledge base: Create effective support documentation by enabling agents to convert their ticket replies into knowledge base articles, while they reply.
    • Metrics and reporting: See how different agents and groups are performing by viewing various help desk metrics and improve performance by identifying problems based on insights.

      With Freshdesk’s reporting tools, you can schedule the periodic delivery of out-of-the-box and custom reports to your inbox. The solution’s customer satisfaction reports provide you with feedback on how your customers rate your support.
    • Forum moderation: Set up moderation workflows to ensure that forum posts that violate your guidelines are not immediately published. Critical issues raised in the community are automatically converted into tickets to ensure they get the required response.

    • Integration: Freshdesk’s open API can be used to integrate the solution with multiple  third-party systems. 
    • Comprehensive security: Freshdesk’s security features allow you to:

      • Set custom access permissions for agents.
      • Perform comprehensive audits of networks and systems.
      • Secure your own support domain or vanity URL with custom SSL certificates.
      • Whitelist IP ranges and restrict login access outside of work, or link IP whitelisting to a VPN.
      • Set up SSO scripts for credential authentication.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Freshdesk stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its effective ticketing system and its intuitive interface.

    Deepak B., an application manager, writes, “Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings.”

    SolarWinds Web Help Desk simplifies service management with unified ticketing, asset, knowledge, and change management. Key features include:

    1. Maintain asset inventory by managing the use, availability, and health of IT assets, and tracking this over time.
    2. Control change management, It regulates and manages change requests through automated approval workflows and panel voting options.
    3. Employs robust reporting and monitoring using a built-in reports and dashboards to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
    4. Automate ticketing management that Automate service request management through ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
    5. Centralize your knowledge management, Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
    6. Meet your SLAs, it has "SLA breach approaching" notifications and date-specific SLA reminder alerts that help customize escalation and de-escalation workflows.
    Sample Customers
    Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
    Instacart
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Retailer21%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Media Company6%
    Educational Organization6%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization73%
    Computer Software Company4%
    Manufacturing Company3%
    Government2%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business59%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise28%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business57%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise29%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise74%
    Large Enterprise17%
    Buyer's Guide
    Freshdesk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Freshdesk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    770,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Freshdesk is ranked 9th in Help Desk Software with 27 reviews while SolarWinds Web Help Desk is ranked 18th in Help Desk Software with 6 reviews. Freshdesk is rated 8.4, while SolarWinds Web Help Desk is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Freshdesk writes "Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Web Help Desk writes "Has good search functionalities but the interface feels clunky". Freshdesk is most compared with JIRA Service Management, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Spiceworks and TOPdesk, whereas SolarWinds Web Help Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. See our Freshdesk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk report.

    See our list of best Help Desk Software vendors.

    We monitor all Help Desk Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.