Spiceworks Reviews

My primary use is for documentation and monitoring the vital services.

My biggest need for using a network monitoring system was to track activity and find out what I've actually got out in the universe. When I came here, I had absolutely no documentation on this network whatsoever, and that's an 875 node network.

I have found a couple of features to be valuable. One, it shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know upfront. It's something you have to craft a script for and it's kind of a pain to have to do it every time. If I just want to quickly look and see who's logged on to their machine Spiceworks will tell me that. That's a very accurate and easy way to find software inventory of every machine that's out there. I do have a Microsoft Configuration Manager Server here and that will work okay. But Spiceworks definitely gives a much broader overview. The SCCN machine on the South Room Inventory and Compliance might tell me some of the other software that's on. For example, I've already caught several world-class operators here in our work environment putting the software on their machines that should not have and it was documented and they were disciplined because of it. I would say policy enforcement is definitely one of the bigger features overall that this solution gives.

The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual, bonafide network map would be really nice. I've been messing around with their Google Map snap-in that they've got and that's great if I've got a massively corporate Enterprise Scale Network with branch locations in 50 different cities around the U.S., but I don't. I have an 875 square-mile Indian reservation that I have to keep an eye on. And the mapping that they've got there doesn't even come close to being usable to me. 

So if they could implement a little bit better GIS-based mapping, I could take a Google Earth image and zoom right down here on my 875 square miles. And I could show the links, I could show the nodes, I could show the switches, routers, et cetera. And everything else in between. But I don't have any tool that is capable of mapping the way that I need to map this network.

It doesn't have some of the integrations I'd like to see, some of the ticket generation alerts, things of that nature. It does alerts, but it tells us when stuff is down and when it comes back.

I would also say that a faster network search engine would be good. When it does device discovery, that really takes a long time. It took me two weeks to get everything that I imagine is in the network onto that. Because, like I said, I have no documentation into this network and what I've been able to find is I've got 1,375 DHCP leases out there. Half of those are desktop phones, another 200 or so are probably cellular phones or WiFi devices that connect up. And then I have about 575 actual devices out on the network and those are things that Spiceworks has all been able to tell me. But the time it took to do that discovery was quite lengthy. 

I have been using Spiceworks for about a year and a half.

Overall, the stability is fairly decent. It's pretty good. I've got some reservations about how any resource you click on goes out to the Cloud. I could also do with the UI advertising being a little less. I've inadvertently clicked on several of the ads thinking it was going to show me some value-added feature within Spiceworks and I get bounced off to some other place, but that's not what I want. And I am a bit emotionally triggered and pissed off because of it because it's wasting my time and it's not what I want.

As the Interim Director of Information Technology, I am the only one using it.

I've got an IT Department of 10 technicians and I've had a couple of folks look at it, but I think I'm probably its biggest user.

I've never used support.

The initial setup was a bit time consuming, but it was fairly straightforward. It was about 90 minutes to run through the setup on just that product alone. That's not including the time it took to stand up the server, load the OS, get the drivers and updates and all that done. It took 90 minutes to load just Spiceworks.

It's a pretty good product. I like it. It's given me some fairly valuable information that I've needed on a couple of occasions that no other product would present to me.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd probably give it a seven, based on the fact that it does give me some information that nothing else has. But the pain points like the length of duration for the discovery, the GIS mapping, the ability to map is kind of lackluster takes the three points away.

We're primarily using the solution so that we have all of the information about our IT assets, and network management. Spiceworks has good tools for that.

The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful.

It would be nice to connect multi Spiceworks servers together to get all of the information across different sites. Currently, Spiceworks works only on a local site, not multiple sites.

It would be nice to have remote access to the solution via a tablet. They also need remote control from a PC. Right now, to complete the technical support process, you have to have a tool to access the PC, and check the problems.

The solution is very stable.

Technical support is very good. I'd say we're 95% satisfied with it.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We're using the community edition of the solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Help Desk, Inventory, Purchases, Reports

We are a IT consulting firm for several companies and implemented SpiceWorks for a centralized help desk solution. Now each customer can submit a help desk ticket, it then is routed to a technician who then contacts the customer. We copy the customer, lead technician, and the account manager to not only close the communication gaps but to hold everyone responsible.

Reporting has been a huge success for our account managers on open tickets, for our IT manager on inventory, time spent on tickets and purchases for our invoicing, and etc.

Purchasing has also been very helpful keeping track of our many purchases. Both real time understanding what the status is on our purchase and to recall past purchases for price comparison or when you need to make the exact same purchase again.

Reporting for any application is a must. Where the reporting is very useful in SpiceWorks, I would like a more powerful reporting tool to better filter what I want and do not want. There are some built in filters, but a simple if-then ability would be incredibly helpful to narrow down my reports.

5 years

Deployment is easy but getting the full details on every networked component can be a challenge. The product has gotten better over the years but there are still some complexities you will more then likely struggle with. There is a client that can be installed to correct this however the client was designed for mobile devices and will categorize them as such by default.

Stability has been solid for all the years I have used this product.

We have taken this from a central location and expanded our reach over 8 different companies with around 1000 devices all reporting to one location. I have had no issues and dont foresee any as we continue to expand and install SpiceWorks at our remaining customers.

I have only used customer service twice and both times they were exceptional.

The initial setup is very easy.

The investment with SpiceWorks is your employee time. The product is free. Our ROI is based on the ability to provide our customers with not only better response times to issues but proactively. Using a product like SpiceWorks helps reveal needs or issues before they become critical. When there are needs for improvement we can bill for that time and look better because our customer networks run more stable.

This product is free.

This is not a true managed service product as many might think at first glance. This product is awesome for help desk, inventory, purchasing and some monitoring. If you are looking for a full managed service product you will need to keep moving to a different solution such as LabTech.

We primarily use the solution for asset management of our asset collection.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the asset inventory.

I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves.

It would be ideal if they could add contract management features into the solution in a future release.

Regarding Contract management, I'd like to register all my support/renewal contracts and reminders for renewal.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable and efficient.

The scalability is okay, but it could be improved. We have about 800 users currently. We don't plan to increase usage at this time.

We've never reached out to technical support, so I don't have any experience with them.

Previously, we used Manage Engine. It was a bit slow, and a little bit old, which is why we switched.

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment typically takes an hour or less. You only need one person to deploy the solution and two people for maintenance.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

The solution is free. We're not paying for any licensing or other costs.

I didn't evaluate other options before choosing Spiceworks.

We use the on-premises deployment solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

I like how all the work notes are all trackable from the main page. It is very easy to manage what has been done on a specific ticket.

Because this is the proper channel for technical troubleshooting, we reduced the possibility of missed communication that is related to tickets.

The navigation is a little heavy and not as smooth as some ticket management software; this must be because it’s web based and has a lot. The GUI can be a little hard to find my way through. I have also used Service Now and it’s very orderly compared to Spiceworks in terms of ticket categorization and management.

The company I worked for have used it for a lot longer but I've only used it for about two to three months.

We didn't have any issues during deployment.

We haven't had any issues with the stability.

We had no issues with the scalability, but I haven't had a chance to use the software version.

I haven’t had a chance to use the customer service for Spiceworks.

I haven’t had a chance to use the technical support for Spiceworks.

I wasn't involved in the set-up.

I wasn't involved in the purchasing of the license.

I was not the one managing the system, I didn't have the chance to see the software version. If you want an all in one solution for your IT to support your company, Spiceworks has a nice built in integrated system. And since it’s web based, it will work on any platform, even mobile.

Tickets by e-mail, with actions by hastag.

We are able to escalate tickets, or shuffle tickets via e-mail, instead of having to login at a location to route things. Clients know immediately what is going on with a ticket.

The SNMP sniffer requires a lot of work to get right.

I've been using Spiceworks personally for over seven years, five in my current environment.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues encountered with the stability.

There were no issues encountered with the scalability.

It's great.

It's great.

I've used and evaluated others - Spiceworks is the best bang for the buck.

Straightforward, aside from the SNMP config.

In-house. I installed and set up.

As a free solution, it has provided us a huge benefit, with the only expense being a virtual machine off of an existing cluster.

It's free.

Take the time to set up the SNMP agents to match up with the hardware you know you have on your network. It is a really great tool when it comes time to inventory or track equipment uptime/age.

Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product.

I don't have a specific organization at this time. I was a SpiceTrainer, and I helped other organizations deploy and manage their Spiceworks installations. When I began using the product, I was working for a company that had no helpdesk, and it was chaos. I was supposed to support 250 end users, and about 500 endpoints across four states. On my first day, a rainy one, I hadn't even removed my coat before a user was begging for help with a fax application. In less than six months, I had everyone in my division sending tickets and we were handling, on average, about 180 tickets per month. This was a drastic change from “just send an email” type of support and everyone was happier for it.

Recently, they deployed a login process that links to their online community. While I understand that change, I don't agree with it. They've also tried to integrate it with social logins, like Twitter and LinkedIn, and that type of login authentication has no place in a corporate application. Resources spent on this social aspect could have been used to fix the existing login to sync with AD for the IT users (it already syncs to AD for end users) and everyone would have been happier. This would have been especially good since Spiceworks has become more and more predominant for enterprise level IT instead of the SMB market that they started with. Taking that in to consideration, I also believe that their new CEO needs to take the application in a new direction and make it enterprise ready with performance and capabilities that can meet that environment. Right now, if you have >2000 endpoints in Spiceworks, you will probably hate using it just because it's so bogged down. I've done installations for clients that were in excess of 5,000 nodes and it's just dreadful. They may be edge cases for Spiceworks, but I see them becoming more prevalent as time wears on, especially if Spiceworks continues to dominate the IT landscape with their community.

I started using it in August 2008 when it was v3.1. New versions are released approximately every six months.

As a consultant doing installations professionally, I am almost exclusively hired to handle difficult installations. I work to train the IT group as I'm performing the install(s), and show them how to maintain it so that I'm not just “that Spiceworks guy.” I also do this because I hated it when a contractor would come in, set something up in my environment and then I was expected to maintain it without that contractor having communicated anything to me at all.

The stability of the program is remarkably good, with some exceptions. As I've noted, any installation in excess of 2500 nodes is going to be slow and it requires some extra work to maintain and configure. If you don't do it right, the application will perform poorly and crash. Similarly, there are plug-ins that you can add (written by IT pros) which may decrease reliability. Overall, however, I think it's very good. I wouldn't say perfect; my test install fails about twice a week and requires a service restart.

Spiceworks support is only surpassed by the baristas at Starbucks. If the support guys were allowed to do call outs, I'm sure they would, and I know they do on certain occasions. Their support is free, just like the application(s), and all email based. They really know the product and when they have a problem they can't fix, it gets logged and you can see the bugs in the community.

They are very technical, with many of their team having converted from being SysAdmins to doing support. They have to be on the ball; their clients are all IT pros!

I've used SCCM and it sucks. A lot. It took three months to configure/setup, and it didn't provide a good helpdesk solution. SCCM also doesn't manage non-Microsoft endpoints, so switches and routers were not tracked, and it was impossible to get a feel for how big the environment really was. The worst part was deploying an agent from SCCM to all MS endpoints; Spiceworks is agentless.

When I first set Spiceworks up, I did it on my laptop and ran through the wizard, getting the Inventory information done. It took a while to scan so I set it aside. It wasn't until a week later that I came back to it and realized what it had done with the couple of credentials I had supplied. I thought it was just a simple toy because of all the colors and icons, and here it had gathered my warranty information, models, serial numbers and more. That was when I really started digging in to it and began using it. Before the end of that month, users were submitting tickets and I was a happy, organized IT person.

When I deployed, the application was very basic. There were no consultants like me available. The community was small and Spiceworks had one person as their support group. The devs and founders would often respond to threads in the community. I didn't need any help. Now, the application has grown so much that I would highly recommend that any IT department with more than 3 people, or more than 2000 nodes to manage, contact someone like me (there's one other guy in Atlanta that does the same thing I do for Spiceworks consulting) before doing your installation. The training James and I can provide is invaluable and we'll make sure your database doesn't get horked up!

The product is free so the ROI is outstanding. The real concern on ROI isn't purchasing the application, or the server(s) it needs to live on. It's the time spent configuring and learning it, especially with some of the new quirks. The man-hours spent on configuration and solving scan errors can be very disheartening to management. To that end, I would say that a modern installation would have a good ROI, about 5/10, though it's possible to raise your ROI if management sends the IT team to a place like Spiceworld (the annual convention in Austin) or contact a SpiceTrainer. There are free “classes” online at www.SpiceworksUniversity.com, and they're great if you can focus on them.

The product is free! Get it now.

In addition to SCCM, we [former job] also checked TrackIT and Heat. Their price-point was too high.

If you're a one-man IT shop, or the accidental IT pro (the CEO's cousin that hooked up an Xbox that one time and now you're in charge of 45 users), get some training on the product. Use the free stuff online at the very least. The same goes for the large IT shops with over people in the team. If you're in the latter position, get your company to hire someone to help with the install, especially for those larger environments. You'll be glad you did!

Spiceworks managed all tasks of the company on a daily routine.

• Helping track, priorities, knowledge base and manage the incoming tickets from customers and inside projects.
• Giving the employees one place to observe the correct state of the company productivity.

Spiceworks also has a smartphone app that helps you keep in touch from anywhere.

Most problems are the system bugs and slowness, also because the product has a web interface that makes a lot of problems like refreshing and information loss. I think that Spiceworks need to make a program for PCs and keep the web interface.

I used the Help Desk version on a local server for three months.

I encountered with stability problems, but I suspect that it was a local server issue.

Spiceworks is a free solution and I have never contacted theircustomer service.

I didn’t install spiceworks so I do not know.

I have used Commit CRM for 3 years, that solution isn't free and has a nice customer service, a PC program and a web interface. As I wrote earlier that solution costs and my employer didn't want to pay.

I didn’t install Spiceworks so I do not know.

Spiceworks help desk solution is free.

I would advise you to install the program on the company cloud server and keep a daily backup.