Spiceworks Room for Improvement

Hassan Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Desk Manager (Global Delivery) at MLOGICA, INC.

One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows. For example, in another solution called ServiceDesk by ManageEngine, you can have levels of approval in the event that there is a request for new software, or when someone requests a VPN or WiFi connection. This kind of multi-stage approval feature provided by ServiceDesk does not appear to exist in Spiceworks, and it is one of their main shortcomings for me. There are also several other automation features in ServiceDesk that are not present in Spiceworks.

Another feature that I have always wanted in Spiceworks is categorization. Let's suppose that I select a certain piece of software within Spiceworks, and I want to see the subcategories, Spiceworks should be able to auto-populate those subcategories. This is unfortunately not possible within Spiceworks at the moment.

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Saifallah Chakroun - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at MTF Industriel

There's a bit of a learning curve. the first time you interact with it, you may find it difficult. For example, it's hard to manage a switch from a page. 

Sometimes, it can be difficult to integrate what you need. 

The initial setup can be difficult. 

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Fernando Cezario - PeerSpot reviewer
Level 2 Support at Tigs

One area of improvement is the user-friendly interface for the website. 

With Spiceworks, like, when I open the websites, I have to Zoom in. I need to zoom in on those websites sometimes because it makes it horrible to use.

Previously, Spiceworks required server installation for enterprise use. Now, Spiceworks promotes its own cloud solution through the RCM, which is both good and bad. 

While I preferred the old, on-premise version, the current cloud option requires less technical expertise for deployment. 

However, I'm unsure if everyone is comfortable with this transition, and it's a significant factor in our continued use.

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Buyer's Guide
Spiceworks
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Spiceworks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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Jeetendar Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Analyst at The Aga Khan University Hospital (Pakistan)

The GUI must be improved. The GUI looks old-fashioned. The vendor must do some web development for it.

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JV
IT Director at Dondlinger Construction

In terms of visibility features, there was one thing I didn't like about Spiceworks. Once a device was recognized on the network, Spiceworks never got rid of it even after you took it off the network. You had to go in and manually remove it. That's the case on the version that I'm running anyway. If a computer gets connected to the network and then you replace it with something else, it still hangs out in there. This makes it difficult when you're looking for stuff or wanting to check on something. You've got all these old stuff out there that you have to filter through, and I just don't have the time to manually maintain that.

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Michael Ojieh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging. When I click a note or a device, I should be able to see more details about the router and modem. For example, I want to see the version, downtime, availability, latency, etc. I should have easy access to everything about our assets at a glance. 

The feature currently works like this: You click a note, and it gives you information about the device, including the model, interface, resource usage, etc. Having all those things at a glance for each of those devices would make the reporting more robust and user-friendly.

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LA
Senior IT Support at ProCook

Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good. If I have taken a device off of the network then it would be nice to have it included in the same system, and not somewhere separately. That is the only thing that I have to look for outside of this solution.

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NM
Interim Director of Information Technology at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

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. 

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WaelQenawy - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Customer Relations Manager at Qootco

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.

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it_user265281 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Manager / Senior Network Engineer at Warnock, Tanner & Associates

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.

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MA
IT Project Team Leader at OCI fertiizers

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.

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it_user372372 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technal Support Specialist Contractor at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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it_user381603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Technology at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

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

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it_user273492 - PeerSpot reviewer
Spiceworks Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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it_user371481 - PeerSpot reviewer
Help Desk Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

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it_user273753 - PeerSpot reviewer
ICT Technician at The Godolphin School

Scanning of the network, being able to remove some of the default actions that are in the drop down menu of the tickets. I think they should create a light version just for tickets as this can be used by many different trades not just IT.

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it_user273747 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

I was never able to properly get the product to monitor our Exchange server or SQL server.

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it_user373110 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Support and Development at a local government with 51-200 employees

The only issue encountered was setting up the email server information. It took a little testing, but got it working in a couple of days.

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it_user362487 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT freelancer/consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The main issue we had with the Spiceworks was always performance related. A dedicated server would sometimes become unresponsive, and would need to be restarted.

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it_user278463 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator/Technology Coordinator at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees

Mac networking needs improving, as everything has to be manually entered in a Mac environment.

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KC
Senior Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees

Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable. 

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it_user381549 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a non-profit with 51-200 employees

The folks at Spiceworks are constantly expanding the capabilities of their product by partnering and integrating with other vendors. I would love for this trend to continue until Spiceworks has ability to act as an IDS/IPS system all in one. Alienvault alerts have recently been added that bring this vision closer to reality. I would also love to see performance monitoring (think Zabbix) capabilities as well.

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it_user372003 - PeerSpot reviewer
System and Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see an easier means to customize the user interface, and would gladly pay a reasonable licensing fee if this were available as an additional feature. Attachment handling within a ticket could be improved; only one item can be attached at a time unless email is used. Finally, a way to strip selected blocks of text/images from emails would be huge; graphic attachments in email signatures create a mess in the UI.

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it_user374160 - PeerSpot reviewer
Interim IT Manager at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The only real gripe I have would be the stability. See below.

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it_user286839 - PeerSpot reviewer
Group IT Director at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The social and collaborative tools, such as integration to LYNC, Yammer, or equivalents.

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it_user375372 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees

I’d like to see a more formalized classification system for tickets that would allow me to analyze where (on what functions) our team is spending most of the time and resources.

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it_user2754 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a construction company with 51-200 employees
The help desk ticketing system is functional but fairly basic. You can close tickets but there is no way to indicate whether the issue was actually resolve or not. The hardware and software inventory is decent and doesn't require an agent but it's easy to have some applications counted several times from an inventory perspective because of versions, service packs, and updates. I would like more control over linking updates and service packs back to their parent application. View full review »
it_user1379664 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Account Manager at On_Serve

There are a lot of disadvantages to Spiceworks because it's not an agent-based solution. So you don't get near the quality of discovery versus something that's got an agent on it. It's not really multi-tenant, in the sense that you couldn't use Spiceworks to manage multiple clients from the same console. I think if they had a paid subscription for the support it would be nice. I'd rather pay so much per asset per month to be able to pick up the phone and call them.

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it_user371781 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The area I have always struggled with is the network scanning and asset management parts of the program.

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it_user350622 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator - Backup & Storage Specialist at METRO SYSTEMS Romania

Personally, I haven't used it in over an year, I haven't got to see the latest updates or major releases but if there's something I'd improve about version 5.x is its scalability.

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it_user292623 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Support Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The devices keep showing offline in the dashboard, but when we check it, it's already online. This is a problem they need to fix.

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it_user369366 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Desktop Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

I think troubleshooting errors became the most frustrating part since it is free; you can’t complain. But luckily the Spiceworks Community is very helpful in diagnosing issues when bagging your head against the wall doesn't help.

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it_user369390 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Administrator & Infomation Security Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

For now this suits our needs, although a Linux version would also be a great improvement.

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it_user369525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterpise Business Systems Engineer (Lead Network Systems and Security Engineer) at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would love to see change control added to the product with automated approvals, and the hanging and slowness bugs fixed. Also a better search would be nice.

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it_user134526 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Provider at a university with 51-200 employees
The network inventory feature. View full review »
it_user362919 - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced Service Desk Agent at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

In our environment, no real improvement. This product is probably very good for a small structure.

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it_user381501 - PeerSpot reviewer
Starlan Consulting Services at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

It's got great potential, but too many security and resource issues. It needs lower resource consumption at the workstation level, reduced network traffic, better device discovery and identification.

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it_user381480 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I don't really use anything besides the free stuff so I can't say. It does, however, require help-desk and minor server/firewall config XP experience to set up.

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it_user381519 - PeerSpot reviewer
Research Associate at a media company with 51-200 employees

The issue that we had, that caused us to stop using Spiceworks, was that it didn’t seem designed for a help desk of our scale, and we're a company with over 2500 employees.

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it_user269979 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

It would be great to see them improve on the ticketing aspect. It still lacks some basic features that other systems have such as limiting the view of queues to certain techs. It could also use a better end-user interface.

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it_user369345 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Engineer at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees

I would not recommend running Spiceworks on a desktop machine for long, I have had to reboot the services more often than I would like. The inventory information could be more frequently updated. The modules available to incorporate tasks to an asset would could also stand to grow, they could also make it easier to incorporate them into the interface; examples (Dameware, Wake on Lan needs work, etc).

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it_user369534 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would like to see the help desk product be more stable.

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it_user277038 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Analyst at a real estate/law firm with 501-1,000 employees

The ticketing system could be more robust, more like a service desk.

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it_user370191 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems and Messaging Administrator at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Can’t think of any off the top of my head. Product works well as is.

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it_user1929 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Security Professional at a tech company with 51-200 employees
I think its monitoring tools could use some improvement. Clearly it wasn't designed as a monitoring application from the start and it still seems a bit weak compared to other, more fully featured, monitoring products. View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Spiceworks
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Spiceworks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.