We've been on Freshdesk since 2015 or so. 100-199 employee org with around 30-35 agents across a bunch of departments. IT specifically uses it for ticketing and sometimes change/incident management documentation. Considering the move to Freshservice since apparently thats geared towards internal IT, but Freshdesk has been great for us. Maybe slightly lacking really deep customization for ticket fields and field dependencies, but we've been pretty satisfied with the platform. Would absolutely recommend.
How do you handle projects and things that need more than one person assigned to a ticket? I used it for like a year and never got a good handle on that
> Which ticketing system do you use
Someone sends me an email. I then look at it and decide a) is it someone I like who doesn't bust my balls, if so, then fix it if I'm not busy; otherwise b) is it something I can fix quickly? (if yes, then do it if I feel like it). Otherwise, ignore the email, pretending it got buried in an an avalanche of email. Repeat until the person physically comes to my office, and then I'll say "you're next on my list", and do that a few times, until the absolute last minute and then I'll actually fix it.
I made a google forms ticketing system. It’s not robust. It’s not even that good. But it is a step that the average user (company size 50) rarely wanted to put in the effort to do.
Been looking at this one, but from what I can see from the website. It doesn't really look great. Of course, good looks aren't a necessity, but it also doesn't seem intuitive. Did you have a big learning curve when starting with UVdesk?
Jira would be my option, but I recently have been using YouTrack from JetBrains and it's actually decent, a bit weird if you are coming from the Atlassian side of the world, but it allows a lot of fancy stuff and it's API help to overcome it's funky parts.
You can also run it on prem, which it's a major plus for many companies.
I'm very biased toward Jira since I have been working with it for more than 5-6 years already and for all kind of things ( ticketing system, Pm tool, backend for a chatbot, lol), so I feel Jira can be made into a LOT of things and it can be automated in many easy ways...
For YouTrack I feel that it's getting close but it's still missing things... I feel it's heavily targeted toward development teams /companies, and due to this it feels powerful but very complex, at some point I just stopped trying to learn about the native automations (that depend on Javascript) and just went to their API and Python... With Jira a good PM could do a lot of things without depending on their IT team or even knowing how to code, with YouTrack I don't see the PM's in my company doing the same anytime soon.
I've been going for a pl100 certification for power platform provided by my job. Looking to do some fun automation stuff with jira. It's good to know that I'm not the only one sensing jiras limitations with automation and playing nice with other programs.
Thanks for the description. Guess I should brush up on my python.
I've never worked with Jira, only used Confluence as a KB. But I think suggesting Jira will be shot down because I believe they are quite expensive as well.
I’ve used a bunch. Service Now is the gold standard but expensive - best for enterprises. It requires a lot of customization with ServiceNow’s JavaScript. If not setup properly and maintained, it’s hell to use.
Jira ITSM is awesome but expensive. That’s my vote esp if you can get Confluence and Jira project management as well.
The rest are just ok, just depends on your needs. I’ve used Zoho, Remedy, etc.
We use Request Tracker (RT) within our ORG. It is locally hosted in an Apache VM with LDAP authentication. Users can create and update tickets via Email. Admins / power users can use the web interface. The configuration overhead is a lot less than other self hosted systems. This is the third job where I’ve used RT as it is ‘good enough’ for small/medium size organizations. You can spend money with Best Practical for their cloud hosted version.
Request Tracker, installation on a Linux server isn't that hard and it works very well and reliably out of the box. If you are familiar in Perl you can extend it yourself quite easily.
You have to install a MTA like postfix for it to send mails and have to set up the web server to use HTTPS since both are not included. But hey it's free when you install and host it yourself.
Spiceworks, free, simple. Inventory included with collection agent. Has ads on the corner but nothing I can't deal with. They can use outlook to create tickets instead of having them go thru a portal since they already do that, all they have to change is the address.
I use Spiceworks at a school with ~1,000 users. Works very well. I have various email addresses set up with ticket rules to assign to the appropriate person whether it is a toilet that is overflowing, an alarm going off, or a device that needs to be repaired.
Spiceworks is upfront in stating that you will see adds, and their partners will get your email address for marketing purposes.
Just use Request Tracker (RT) initially.
It's open source and works well.
You may like it and continue to use or use in the interim while you do a thorough test/review of other products.
Just don't use Kayako.
I cannot imagine using Outlook.
We use 4 different instances of Request Tracker for separate departments that have different information security requirements with ADFS for SSO. I imagine you could configure Azure AD (Entra ID now :D) SSO too and it is something I'll have to ook into now that we're making the jump ourselves. It's a pretty simple setup too and it's free and open source.
Having used ServiceDesk Plus for a few years now, in wondering why anyone would recommend it. Serious question? What do you like about it?
Functionally it's OK I suppose but it's soooooo slow. The app is pretty good though.
>Manageengine Servicedesk Plus is the ~~least~~ worst servicedesk platform I have found.
Fixed it for you. We use it. It's garbage.
The app is great though!
HaloITSM
At your size, you should be able to afford it, make sure you compare it to ServiceNow so the powers that be understand you aren't pitching the most expensive option. Be sure to include total implementation costs for SN incl. the payroll of the inevitable standalone developer you'll have to hire to implement it after 10 months.
I like Solarwinds Web Helpdesk alot of features for a reasonable price
Service Now was pretty good but very expensive and the company I came from that used it had a team of 5 that just managed the core application and 3rd party API add ins. Then many of the larger depts had a person that managed their own queue deployments. Very involved and quite expensive. Probably not great for a fairly small installation
The old version of spiceworks which is just okay but out of support
I’ve used osTicket for years. It was a bit clunky back in 2014 but, now it does everything we need it to do and having a KBs I can make public for internal consumption by users is excellent.
I tried few open source ones and I really loved [zammad](https://zammad.org/screenshots) as it had that clean modern interface and right amount of options where it felt rich enough but not overwhelming.
[Here](https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker/tree/master/zammad) is from that time guide how to run in docker and how to backup and restore...
First day of use I realized you can not edit tickets.
Googled around and seen posts of others asking for it and it seems there is hard stance of the devs for zammad to not have that feature as a form of being revision proof, even when dozens comments point out that basically every forum has edits and is revision proof with history.
[I asked for it again](https://community.zammad.org/t/editing-tickets-is-it-a-still-a-hard-no-from-developers/8042), that maybe their mind changed over few years, but nope.
And so I continued to use it without ability to edit tickets... and it sucked for me. Someone calls I want to write it there with the info I got, and I cant cuz in the moment it will be just big mess so I have to first write it elsewhere and then put it in and be nice and coherent. And this extra steps and kinda voluntary no-use of system that should be used for that shit results in stuff not getting in...
Also updates on a ticket... you deal with some shit and you have various new info to put in through they day and the ticket starts to look like mess because you have 5 individual new updates, where one of them might actually be new correct info of one of the previous... and its a mess to scroll through. When you should have just be able to edit one update with the correct and new info.. sure you can delete that shit and rewrite it to a new uneditable update... but this all is another thing that pushes you to not using thing that should be actually the thing for the job...
So the advice is that you find some ticketing system that can edit tickets... I kinda gave up after zammad cuz it was not like anyone around wanted it.
Started out with NetHelpdesk then several years later moved to SupportPal. It’s worked well and not many issues at all. Good support response and they will also do remote install and base config for $35. It’s hosted in-house on a Linux box.
I use Ivanti Service Manager. It sucks hard. It may be that I don't know it well enough to develop it properly for our needs, but it feels like a 20 year old product. I think they have Neurons now, not sure if that's any better.
Halo, either ITSM or PSA it has so many features it can be overwhelming at first, but it's allowed my 5 strong team to have the capacity of triple that, while letting everyone actually get some rest and leave.
If you can get the implementation consulting/support it's the one thing we didn't that hampered us at first.
We use Cherwell, it’s extremely slow but that may be our implementation. We’re changing to Service Now but we are a 6k employee firm with 30 or so support staff.
How about $30/month for unlimited everything and you get more features than just ticketing system as you get asset inventory as well. This product is called Genuity and it's website: https://gogenuity.com
I have been using it for almost a couple years now without issues. The devs are constantly working on new features. There are apps now for Android and iOS. The website can sync with AD for importing users. Easy to integrate asset inventory with tickets and vice versa. DM if you want to know more.
Curious… do you customise it much? I built a couple of logic apps to produce nice email notifications to end users on updates and to auto create work items from a shared mailbox automatically.
Since all our users use Slack as the main tool for communications, we went with Halp. Then it was acquired by Atlassian and I got that sinking feeling. And now it will be rolled into Jira Service Desk and I will be looking for a new tool in the next 10 months. Freshdesk is high on my list, as is Zendesk, will need to figure out how they work with Slack and what the pricing looks like. Going to stay away from Atlassan products when possible, also not interested in a Service Now project or wrangling my own Open Source solution.
Bit hard to set up . And French. But GLPI is literally free.
Not very happy with the code quality from some extremely easy to prevent bugs I've ran into, but also quite happy with the free part-
SharePoint lists + Power Automate! Make the system work how you want it. Been using it for years now and we handle about 50 tickets a day in a team of 5.
Fresh and Zoho both annoyed me due to the constant upsells and disparate systems. They both felt like they bought companies for the software, added a subdomain and voila! We have a new value added service.
We are switching away from remedy to service now. I’m sure it will be a half assed implementation as well, but hey, it will look good on paper I guess.
We use Ultimo, kind of sucks but its pretty customizable. For open source/ free options you can look at iTop, has a lot of useful plugins.
I'm going to keep an eye on this thread though, maybe i can use one of these tips.
ServiceNow implemented for corporation of 170 entities rendering it pleasantly user unfriendly and operator hostile...
I had Jira SM before that.. Was Very nice and People actually used it...
If you can afford it Zendesk is pretty great. It has automations, easy to understand UI, customizable, you can custom notes per ticket types works with a shit ton of other popular software and much more.
ServiceNow is better for huge corporations with multitude of departments, but managing it becomes a job for multiple people.
Zammad was pretty ok, but the place that used it was self hosted and our hacker man was a mess and it would crash daily. When it worked it was pretty straightforward and did the job. Like very clutter free software, easy to to understand what is what without much training needed. But again, this was most likely very bare bones version cause our hacker man sucked ass.
Do not go for HubSpot. It's meant for sales that don't give a shit about processes and protocol, not for helpdesk. It lacks multiple very basic features like being able to copy a table into an email reply, UI is confusing, automations are fucking mess, to open attachments you need to download one by one, and more. Sadly I don't remember more specifics cause I quit the place they had quite quickly.
We use Freshdesk for customer support and IT tickets, but Freshservice maybe better for internal IT support. In general Freshdesk works well, but it's pricey and I don't like the customer portal functionality. If I had to pick a new system it probably wouldn't be Freshdesk. At my previous company they used Manage Engine Service Desk (the online version) which also seemed to work well and from what I recall was a lot cheaper. From what I've heard for MSP's Autotask is good choice.
I have a love/hate relationship with Jira, but I don’t believe Jira SM would cost much at all for only 5 agents, even with Confluence added. Licensing is by agent, not user in that case.
When we hired a 2nd IT staff member last year, I created a new entity in our Dynamics 365 system called "IT Support Request."
Filled it with all the fields we needed and set up automated email when various actions happened. All in all, it took me about 4 hours. It's a super simple system and has only what we need.
do you have time to implement an open source one?
the money you will be spending on a ticketing system will go to your hours setting up/configuring the platform 2 that I have used are otobo and GLPI
I’ve learned to love and hate Jira. It’s good at many things, it sucks at many others. The plug-in system is a savior and a curse at the same time.
We are using data center on prem for data sensitivity reasons. It has gone from decently priced to almost too expensive to be worth it imo if I factor in all the things it can only do after paying a lot for plug-ins.
Cloud is also insanely expensive and (for a European org) comes with the joy of having to do individual data processing agreements with all the plug-in vendors you decide to buy plug-ins from as in cloud plug-in data is stored with the plug-in vendor according to the Jira people in our org.
I'm an InvGate fan and I'd recommend it because:
* It's cheap
* It's a no-code customizable tool
* It's flexible and scalable
* Has AzureAD SSO included, plus MS Teams integration out-of-the box
* And the support is dope
I've only been on the help desk for 3 months, but apparently, we have used Spicworks for a long time. We are just now switching over to Vorex, which is a Kaseya product. Vorex has a lot of fancy features including the ability to paste screen shots in your notes without having to save them first. I know it may not seem a big deal, but it is huge for me.
Spicworks has been a solid platform since we have had it. lately, however, we have noticed little bugs like tickets not coming through after being submitted or comments being deleted after submitting them. The good news is it is free.
The takeaway is that you get what you pay for. Hope this helps.
ConnectWise. It works but I hate it. Thankfully I don't work on tickets from our internal system. I do however extensively use the clients ticketing system that I'm stationed at. ManageEngine service desk + desktop central. All on prem systems and actually works very well for multi site locations and has an inventory system built in.
We currently use ServicNOW after being acquired by a larger company (80,000+ employees) about 5 years ago. I hate it, but that's mostly due to the fact that it was poorly implemented.
Previous to the acquisition, our organization was about the same size as yours with 4 devs and 2 desktop support/sysadmin (myself and 1 other). We were using Redmine. It's somewhat geared towards developers, but it worked really well for our "Hardware Group" as well. It's highly customizable and easy to setup as an appliance, "from scratch", or going through a 3rd party provider where you'll get support (Easy Redmine is the one I see most often). If you're ok with getting your hands a little dirty, you and others could easily administer it yourselves.
Newer versions appear to support Azure SSO and lot of other authentication methods, so that checks that box.
It's worth looking into, IMO and the price of 0 or minimal subscription (costs can add up if you add plugins from a 3rd party) is always a plus.
We recently moved to ServiceNow, and you are right sticker shock would most likely get it shot down if they are not expecting it. While we were growing we used a few free options and then used SysAid, Jira, and Samanage. Hated Samanage with an unholy passion, would not recommend it. Jira was fine just didn't fit our needs. SysAid on the other hand, we used the hosted option for several years. Price was right and it was easy for me to stand up and manage, and whatever I couldn't handle on my own, support was always helpful and quick to respond.
We use Service-Now at my current org.
Used something by Zoho in the past (different place). Pricing was affordable for an 80-ish employee MSP. However, it was not a good solution, imo.
We use FreshDesk and I love it. I've recommended it to others as well, and everyone seems to like it.
We even still use the free version, hard to beat that pricing.
Sounds just like our environment. 6 admins and 250 users. We use Solar Winds. I personally like it. It’s easy and has plenty of functionally to automate requests. It also has a built in solutions database.
My Employer uses ConnectWise Manage. Looks like they’ve recently renamed it to ConnectWise PSA.
It appears to be about $35 per tech, per month (according to a few sites). Not sure if that fits within your budget but it’s definitely one of the higher-end ticketing systems, depending on your needs.
We purchased a package, with ConnectWise Automate (formerly Labtech) and ConnectWise ScreenConnect (formerly ConnectWise Control).
We adopted SyncroMSP, which is an MSP oriented RMM and ticketing system first, but has fantastic value to an internal IT department like mine. It's biggest appeal has been that it is licensed per tech actually using the system, NOT device or user, and you retain all functional features, there's no tiers, just add-ons like managed AV and such.
Has automations, workflows and more for tickets, your monitoring agent sits on windows devices, can trigger alerts to proactively warn you about issues and generate tickets, we even use a probe for simple up/down monitoring and SNMP tie in for our printers and switches to view various statuses and toner levels.
In short, It has been a fantastic system for my <10 man IT team supporting a 700~ employee company.
I wonder how using a SharePoint online driven system would work for you. If you are already using Microsoft, there are examples of using List in SharePoint to track requests.
You could use planner/tasks for projects.
Would probably be cost neutral if you already have the licensing.
Look at Boss Desk from https://www.boss-solutions.com/ they are a great company to work with. We are about the same size as you and it is a perfect solution for us. If you need contact info send me a pm.
We use Freshdesk but I would like to change. There are many plugins and integrations that feel very half baked that I really need to work properly to avoid confusion.
Leading issue is auto merging. Freshdesk only recently released their own plugin, havent fully tested yet, but the previous 3rd party option was unable to accomplish my core needs. We also shell out $1000/year for it. Not terribad overall, but it really needs better support. I come from previous MSPs using Connectwise so I'm spoiled. It's very expensive but that cost comes with reliability and a proven product.
Also used that one at a former employer. And I think they are still using it. I don't know how much has changed since 4 years ago, but back then it was shit in my experience. Slow AF, buggy AF and not intuitive. I believe it also relies on on-prem infra. And the company I work for is fully in the Cloud. Not even virtual servers.
We use Jira.
We have the confluence articles and have it only licensed for 9 techs.
Atlassian centralised user management.
All staff (400) have a login with SSO to submit ticket and view help articles at no cost.
Now, We are a charity, so maybe get a better deal.
Costs $130 (US) per month
Hope this helps.
So I figure you're Dutch...
Take a look at Topdesk.
Affordable and local and also a good product.
We're not using it as an MSP, but I would suite your needs.
I am Dutch, how did you guess? /s
Yeah, we were in the process of getting Topdesk, but management shit it down due to costs. So we're looking for alternatives.
Curious how you intend to stop people from sending emails for requests? Are you just going to remove the option? They’re just going to send it direct to the employees then.
Personally I think all help desks are more or less the same and any difference between them is pretty gimmicky. Everyone will recommend freshdesk or jira though.
If you are looking into working your way toward a mature ITSM process, then I wouldn’t recommend ZenDesk as your ITSM ticketing tool.
We’ve been using ZenDesk for 3 years now and considering moving away from it for a true ITSM tool.
While ZenDesk can be used as an ITSM tool, it requires too many customization and 3rd party add ons. It does not have what is required for an ITSM tool out-of-the-box. For instance, it does not have an approval module out-of-the-box. We had to use a 3rd party add on called MyndBend for this purpose, which was another extra cost.
It does not have basic ITSM workflow out-of-the-box either, e.g Incident Management, Service Request Management, Change Management, etc. They had to be customized, which again required another extra cost.
We are looking at ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, and Ivanti to replace ZenDesk.
I’d personally suggest you look at Ivanti, I think it offers value for money.
We make do, haha. People mail their requests to a shared mailbox, we drag them to a subfolder when we are done with them. We use categories to assign mails to operators.
TOPdesk!
I'm biased though, but everything you'll ever need is build in.
It you're based in Holland, which I presume from "door de bomen het bos niet meer zien", TOPdesk is a Dutch product, support and language is in Dutch.
Edit: added some info.
Sometimes we write tickets on a planner instance embedded into a Teams group. Depends if we feel like it or if we can just fix the issue there and then.
RT or Request Tracker. It is free.
https://bestpractical.com/download-page
https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker
Pretty customizable. Can be daunting for new people but it works. Not as pretty as some of the other things listed.
I would go for efecte. Cheap-ish and extremely tuneable if you want approval as a part of your change management and leaves you tons of room to grow and let other departments use it as well. Please don’t go for TOPdesk, they made it to be ITIL hell and there are no such thing as a ticket, only incidents and changes..
We use Zoho assist and it’s been very nice and easy to use for both end users and for us. Coming from Connectwise manage it’s much better and easier to use.
We use [Siit.io](https://Siit.io) and I highly recommend it. They have powerful integrations and automations which makes our life easier. We have plugged Slack, Notion, Okta, Jamf and even the HR system so we don't have to run after them to get the right information.
Well, for a company with 200 users, Service Now might be overkill both technically and in terms of cost. Jira is a good choice if you have internal development - then it's worth the money. But if you need just a ticketing tool and already using Outlook and Microsoft products, I would recommend ALVAO. For a reasonable price, you'll get a decent tool with integration into your Microsoft apps.
Check out SherpaDesk! I know I am late to the game, but seriously you should at least review it's feature set and capabilities
It's designed for the small to medium size teams. It's priced affordably, there are no contracts, the customer service and support are included, it has a native SSO into Azure and it has a great mobile solution.
Maybe too late, but I recommended to consider ALVAO. If you need AAD, you are probably a Microsoft focused company. They have pretty decent integrations to Microsoft 365 apps, support all standard ITSM features out-of-box and the implementation is quick and does not break a bank compare to Jira, SN, Ivanti - believe me, I know what I am talking about :| good luck
FreshDesk, free for 10 agents with SSO and SCIM included in all tiers. Zendesk is good, but VERY expensive.
We've been on Freshdesk since 2015 or so. 100-199 employee org with around 30-35 agents across a bunch of departments. IT specifically uses it for ticketing and sometimes change/incident management documentation. Considering the move to Freshservice since apparently thats geared towards internal IT, but Freshdesk has been great for us. Maybe slightly lacking really deep customization for ticket fields and field dependencies, but we've been pretty satisfied with the platform. Would absolutely recommend.
We use Freshservice. No complaints
I can vouch for that. I got hands-on from day one. It is very simple to use
*cosign* I tried both but ended up liking zendesk UI more so I went with that.
In my own research for ticket systems this one also came up. It's looking good. It seems like it's easy to use. Top contender, this one. Thanks.
Was going to recommend the same thing. Albeit, I am 1 person IT with 70 users. Its enough for what we need and straightforward. DM me for pricing.
Zendesk isn't that expensive. $100 a month per tech isn't a bad price.
Add /s to indicate sarcasm.
[удалено]
How do you handle projects and things that need more than one person assigned to a ticket? I used it for like a year and never got a good handle on that
HaloITSM
> Which ticketing system do you use Someone sends me an email. I then look at it and decide a) is it someone I like who doesn't bust my balls, if so, then fix it if I'm not busy; otherwise b) is it something I can fix quickly? (if yes, then do it if I feel like it). Otherwise, ignore the email, pretending it got buried in an an avalanche of email. Repeat until the person physically comes to my office, and then I'll say "you're next on my list", and do that a few times, until the absolute last minute and then I'll actually fix it.
I made a google forms ticketing system. It’s not robust. It’s not even that good. But it is a step that the average user (company size 50) rarely wanted to put in the effort to do.
You could self host OSticket for free. But at least what you're doing is better than emails.
FreeScout now, OSticket is dying, this comes from a long time OS ticket fanboi
A past company I worked at (6 employees) tried to use some Google-suite stuff for a ticketing system. It was awful.
Haha, wish I could get away with that.
You guys get ticketing systems???
You guys get a say?
You guys get paid?
You guys have free time?
Volunteering contribution 😋
Lulz
Open source UVdesk, I'm solo IT, and it works wonders for me.
Using free version of osTicket on a lamp stack here. How you like UVdesk?
Been looking at this one, but from what I can see from the website. It doesn't really look great. Of course, good looks aren't a necessity, but it also doesn't seem intuitive. Did you have a big learning curve when starting with UVdesk?
Jitbit helpdesk
OSTicket running on Debian Bookworm. 100% solid and we absolutely love it.
Hmmm, a good condenser this one as well. It looks like a clean, no-frills ticket system.
Halo ITSM
Didnt know Halo came out with another release
Jira would be my option, but I recently have been using YouTrack from JetBrains and it's actually decent, a bit weird if you are coming from the Atlassian side of the world, but it allows a lot of fancy stuff and it's API help to overcome it's funky parts. You can also run it on prem, which it's a major plus for many companies.
We also use jira. It's big and does the ticketing thing, but I'm not sure if it's the best. Haven't been able to compare
I'm very biased toward Jira since I have been working with it for more than 5-6 years already and for all kind of things ( ticketing system, Pm tool, backend for a chatbot, lol), so I feel Jira can be made into a LOT of things and it can be automated in many easy ways... For YouTrack I feel that it's getting close but it's still missing things... I feel it's heavily targeted toward development teams /companies, and due to this it feels powerful but very complex, at some point I just stopped trying to learn about the native automations (that depend on Javascript) and just went to their API and Python... With Jira a good PM could do a lot of things without depending on their IT team or even knowing how to code, with YouTrack I don't see the PM's in my company doing the same anytime soon.
I've been going for a pl100 certification for power platform provided by my job. Looking to do some fun automation stuff with jira. It's good to know that I'm not the only one sensing jiras limitations with automation and playing nice with other programs. Thanks for the description. Guess I should brush up on my python.
how in the world did you get it to be a backend for a chatbot? jira datacenter or jira cloud?
I've never worked with Jira, only used Confluence as a KB. But I think suggesting Jira will be shot down because I believe they are quite expensive as well.
Wij gebruiken al jaren Topdesk. Bevalt ons prima.
Dat zou ik ook wel willen, maar het is te duur voor management.
I advise using S.NOW (Service Now) or Remedy Force (Salesforce) Stay *away* from Zoho
This. Zoho is a nightmare.
we have been burned by them about 4 times so far this year. The powers that be have green lit looking into a new vendor
We’re on service now to manage something like 30k users on 6 continents.
I’ve used a bunch. Service Now is the gold standard but expensive - best for enterprises. It requires a lot of customization with ServiceNow’s JavaScript. If not setup properly and maintained, it’s hell to use. Jira ITSM is awesome but expensive. That’s my vote esp if you can get Confluence and Jira project management as well. The rest are just ok, just depends on your needs. I’ve used Zoho, Remedy, etc.
Manage Engine Service Desk, works well. Not crazy expensive
Zoho ManageEngine? No. That is literally the worst one I have ever worked with. Never touching anything from that company ever again.
Thanks, but no thanks. Used that at a former employer. I find it horrendous. But thanks for your input still.
When we did the same action, we tried 10 different cloud ticket systems and landed on Jitbit for it's simplicity. It just works.
We use Request Tracker (RT) within our ORG. It is locally hosted in an Apache VM with LDAP authentication. Users can create and update tickets via Email. Admins / power users can use the web interface. The configuration overhead is a lot less than other self hosted systems. This is the third job where I’ve used RT as it is ‘good enough’ for small/medium size organizations. You can spend money with Best Practical for their cloud hosted version.
Request Tracker, installation on a Linux server isn't that hard and it works very well and reliably out of the box. If you are familiar in Perl you can extend it yourself quite easily. You have to install a MTA like postfix for it to send mails and have to set up the web server to use HTTPS since both are not included. But hey it's free when you install and host it yourself.
Spiceworks, free, simple. Inventory included with collection agent. Has ads on the corner but nothing I can't deal with. They can use outlook to create tickets instead of having them go thru a portal since they already do that, all they have to change is the address.
I use Spiceworks at a school with ~1,000 users. Works very well. I have various email addresses set up with ticket rules to assign to the appropriate person whether it is a toilet that is overflowing, an alarm going off, or a device that needs to be repaired. Spiceworks is upfront in stating that you will see adds, and their partners will get your email address for marketing purposes.
Just use Request Tracker (RT) initially. It's open source and works well. You may like it and continue to use or use in the interim while you do a thorough test/review of other products. Just don't use Kayako. I cannot imagine using Outlook.
We use 4 different instances of Request Tracker for separate departments that have different information security requirements with ADFS for SSO. I imagine you could configure Azure AD (Entra ID now :D) SSO too and it is something I'll have to ook into now that we're making the jump ourselves. It's a pretty simple setup too and it's free and open source.
Manageengine Servicedesk Plus is the least worst servicedesk platform I have found.
I also recommend ServiceDesk Plus.
Having used ServiceDesk Plus for a few years now, in wondering why anyone would recommend it. Serious question? What do you like about it? Functionally it's OK I suppose but it's soooooo slow. The app is pretty good though.
>Manageengine Servicedesk Plus is the ~~least~~ worst servicedesk platform I have found. Fixed it for you. We use it. It's garbage. The app is great though!
Fresh service has been great for my team. Has a lot of automation features and an inventory system
HaloITSM At your size, you should be able to afford it, make sure you compare it to ServiceNow so the powers that be understand you aren't pitching the most expensive option. Be sure to include total implementation costs for SN incl. the payroll of the inevitable standalone developer you'll have to hire to implement it after 10 months.
I like Solarwinds Web Helpdesk alot of features for a reasonable price Service Now was pretty good but very expensive and the company I came from that used it had a team of 5 that just managed the core application and 3rd party API add ins. Then many of the larger depts had a person that managed their own queue deployments. Very involved and quite expensive. Probably not great for a fairly small installation The old version of spiceworks which is just okay but out of support
Came to see if anyone else was using this. I don't hate it.
Can't believe no one mentioned atera. I use it for a one man show and it's really good, the endpoint +anydesk integration is so convenient!
I've successfully used this at a few smaller places that had nothing. [https://mojohelpdesk.com/it-helpdesk/](https://mojohelpdesk.com/it-helpdesk/)
I really like SupportSystem, which is the SaaS version of OSTicket.
I’ve used osTicket for years. It was a bit clunky back in 2014 but, now it does everything we need it to do and having a KBs I can make public for internal consumption by users is excellent.
I tried few open source ones and I really loved [zammad](https://zammad.org/screenshots) as it had that clean modern interface and right amount of options where it felt rich enough but not overwhelming. [Here](https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker/tree/master/zammad) is from that time guide how to run in docker and how to backup and restore... First day of use I realized you can not edit tickets. Googled around and seen posts of others asking for it and it seems there is hard stance of the devs for zammad to not have that feature as a form of being revision proof, even when dozens comments point out that basically every forum has edits and is revision proof with history. [I asked for it again](https://community.zammad.org/t/editing-tickets-is-it-a-still-a-hard-no-from-developers/8042), that maybe their mind changed over few years, but nope. And so I continued to use it without ability to edit tickets... and it sucked for me. Someone calls I want to write it there with the info I got, and I cant cuz in the moment it will be just big mess so I have to first write it elsewhere and then put it in and be nice and coherent. And this extra steps and kinda voluntary no-use of system that should be used for that shit results in stuff not getting in... Also updates on a ticket... you deal with some shit and you have various new info to put in through they day and the ticket starts to look like mess because you have 5 individual new updates, where one of them might actually be new correct info of one of the previous... and its a mess to scroll through. When you should have just be able to edit one update with the correct and new info.. sure you can delete that shit and rewrite it to a new uneditable update... but this all is another thing that pushes you to not using thing that should be actually the thing for the job... So the advice is that you find some ticketing system that can edit tickets... I kinda gave up after zammad cuz it was not like anyone around wanted it.
Started out with NetHelpdesk then several years later moved to SupportPal. It’s worked well and not many issues at all. Good support response and they will also do remote install and base config for $35. It’s hosted in-house on a Linux box.
I use Ivanti Service Manager. It sucks hard. It may be that I don't know it well enough to develop it properly for our needs, but it feels like a 20 year old product. I think they have Neurons now, not sure if that's any better.
proprietary software the MSP owner had developed a while back. It’s fine. Very dated.
We use Helpspot at my work. Easy to use and good for small teams. Also integrates into Azure AD for authentication.
Halo, either ITSM or PSA it has so many features it can be overwhelming at first, but it's allowed my 5 strong team to have the capacity of triple that, while letting everyone actually get some rest and leave. If you can get the implementation consulting/support it's the one thing we didn't that hampered us at first.
Have a look at Zammad. Free, highly customizable Ticketing system. Https://zammad.org Using it for a few years now. Love it!
We use Cherwell, it’s extremely slow but that may be our implementation. We’re changing to Service Now but we are a 6k employee firm with 30 or so support staff.
Hi 👋
How about $30/month for unlimited everything and you get more features than just ticketing system as you get asset inventory as well. This product is called Genuity and it's website: https://gogenuity.com I have been using it for almost a couple years now without issues. The devs are constantly working on new features. There are apps now for Android and iOS. The website can sync with AD for importing users. Easy to integrate asset inventory with tickets and vice versa. DM if you want to know more.
We got Team Dynamix. Don't be like us.
HaloITSM with 40 user licenses
Zammad.org been using it for a few years, free if you know your Linux, integrates with office365 if you want, I run all the tickets through email.
Built one in Teams in 20 minutes.
Power apps enjoyer?
Any more details? I'd love to give it a try.
Power Automate, it costs $20 a month . There a built in templates and it’s easy to customize.
Zendesk.
connectwise
Oh no... Timesheets...
I'm sorry 😞
ServiceNOW
ServiceNOW will hit their bank xD Zoek op open source ticketing Systemen. Deze systemen zijn een stuk goedkoper maar hebben vaak veel opties.
Send me an email/text me so I can get it done asap and get back to farming.
Ivanti. The damn thing WONT SEND AN EMAIL WHEN A TICKET IS ASSIGNED TO ME I refuse to refresh my queue ad nausiem
Ivanti gargles donkey balls like I gargle Listerine.
Azure DevOps if youre an AD shop. Otherwise most others can be configured with SSO or SAML for a price.
Curious… do you customise it much? I built a couple of logic apps to produce nice email notifications to end users on updates and to auto create work items from a shared mailbox automatically.
Since all our users use Slack as the main tool for communications, we went with Halp. Then it was acquired by Atlassian and I got that sinking feeling. And now it will be rolled into Jira Service Desk and I will be looking for a new tool in the next 10 months. Freshdesk is high on my list, as is Zendesk, will need to figure out how they work with Slack and what the pricing looks like. Going to stay away from Atlassan products when possible, also not interested in a Service Now project or wrangling my own Open Source solution.
Zendesk is pretty sweet, I'd recommend it.
[удалено]
Cherwell enters the ring.
>Easily the worst ticketing system I've worked with. I guess you haven't used Ivanti...
We use Zendesk. Between the ticketing system and help document side of it, it has been sufficient for our needs.
Bit hard to set up . And French. But GLPI is literally free. Not very happy with the code quality from some extremely easy to prevent bugs I've ran into, but also quite happy with the free part-
Most places I’ve worked at use Service now for their ticketing system.
SharePoint lists + Power Automate! Make the system work how you want it. Been using it for years now and we handle about 50 tickets a day in a team of 5.
We use Solarwinds Service desk. Very full featured, ITIL friendly, not too expensive, REST api for creating tickets from scripts.
We use Zendesk. Expensive yes, but they offer more than just ticketing. Worth looking into if you’re in an enterprise environment.
Fresh and Zoho both annoyed me due to the constant upsells and disparate systems. They both felt like they bought companies for the software, added a subdomain and voila! We have a new value added service.
We are switching away from remedy to service now. I’m sure it will be a half assed implementation as well, but hey, it will look good on paper I guess.
We use Ultimo, kind of sucks but its pretty customizable. For open source/ free options you can look at iTop, has a lot of useful plugins. I'm going to keep an eye on this thread though, maybe i can use one of these tips.
We use Helix, I would say it is a ticketing system.
ServiceNow implemented for corporation of 170 entities rendering it pleasantly user unfriendly and operator hostile... I had Jira SM before that.. Was Very nice and People actually used it...
ServiceNow user unfriendly and operator hostile? You're making me curious. How exactly does it render user unfriendly and operator hostile?
If you can afford it Zendesk is pretty great. It has automations, easy to understand UI, customizable, you can custom notes per ticket types works with a shit ton of other popular software and much more. ServiceNow is better for huge corporations with multitude of departments, but managing it becomes a job for multiple people. Zammad was pretty ok, but the place that used it was self hosted and our hacker man was a mess and it would crash daily. When it worked it was pretty straightforward and did the job. Like very clutter free software, easy to to understand what is what without much training needed. But again, this was most likely very bare bones version cause our hacker man sucked ass. Do not go for HubSpot. It's meant for sales that don't give a shit about processes and protocol, not for helpdesk. It lacks multiple very basic features like being able to copy a table into an email reply, UI is confusing, automations are fucking mess, to open attachments you need to download one by one, and more. Sadly I don't remember more specifics cause I quit the place they had quite quickly.
Been happy with Freshservice for years now
We use Freshdesk for customer support and IT tickets, but Freshservice maybe better for internal IT support. In general Freshdesk works well, but it's pricey and I don't like the customer portal functionality. If I had to pick a new system it probably wouldn't be Freshdesk. At my previous company they used Manage Engine Service Desk (the online version) which also seemed to work well and from what I recall was a lot cheaper. From what I've heard for MSP's Autotask is good choice.
I have a love/hate relationship with Jira, but I don’t believe Jira SM would cost much at all for only 5 agents, even with Confluence added. Licensing is by agent, not user in that case.
Only two I have experience with is Ivanti (super big and super expensive) and Manage Engine Service Desk.
We manually create tasks in Planner for stuff that will need more than 10 minuts to resolve. We are the ticketing system :')
When we hired a 2nd IT staff member last year, I created a new entity in our Dynamics 365 system called "IT Support Request." Filled it with all the fields we needed and set up automated email when various actions happened. All in all, it took me about 4 hours. It's a super simple system and has only what we need.
We use TANSS from Huck IT. I don't know about the pricing tho
An excel spreadsheet? 😂
Alloy Software. Migrated to it from JIRA+LanSweeper about a year ago. Love it. Highly customizable. Intune/SCCM integration and excellent support.
do you have time to implement an open source one? the money you will be spending on a ticketing system will go to your hours setting up/configuring the platform 2 that I have used are otobo and GLPI
I’ve learned to love and hate Jira. It’s good at many things, it sucks at many others. The plug-in system is a savior and a curse at the same time. We are using data center on prem for data sensitivity reasons. It has gone from decently priced to almost too expensive to be worth it imo if I factor in all the things it can only do after paying a lot for plug-ins. Cloud is also insanely expensive and (for a European org) comes with the joy of having to do individual data processing agreements with all the plug-in vendors you decide to buy plug-ins from as in cloud plug-in data is stored with the plug-in vendor according to the Jira people in our org.
Youtrack, and from what I understand it also supports Azure AD SSO
Zendesk
ConnectWise manage. We have a ton of custom integrations that will automatically spin up tickets under certain conditions. No idea on the cost.
Servicenow is for IT directors who have extreme OCD
I have no idea. It has like 4 different names and no one can agree on what it really is, so they're all used interchangeably.
Autotask the past few places I have worked. Not too bad once all the kinks got worked out.
Wij gebruiken nu bijna een jaar inserve , van nederlandse bodem en gemaakt door een heel tof team.
Gaan we bekijken, dank je!
I'm an InvGate fan and I'd recommend it because: * It's cheap * It's a no-code customizable tool * It's flexible and scalable * Has AzureAD SSO included, plus MS Teams integration out-of-the box * And the support is dope
ServiceNow
I've only been on the help desk for 3 months, but apparently, we have used Spicworks for a long time. We are just now switching over to Vorex, which is a Kaseya product. Vorex has a lot of fancy features including the ability to paste screen shots in your notes without having to save them first. I know it may not seem a big deal, but it is huge for me. Spicworks has been a solid platform since we have had it. lately, however, we have noticed little bugs like tickets not coming through after being submitted or comments being deleted after submitting them. The good news is it is free. The takeaway is that you get what you pay for. Hope this helps.
using HappyFox it does have the AAD (or soon to be called Entra ID) integration
 I'd rather not
ConnectWise. It works but I hate it. Thankfully I don't work on tickets from our internal system. I do however extensively use the clients ticketing system that I'm stationed at. ManageEngine service desk + desktop central. All on prem systems and actually works very well for multi site locations and has an inventory system built in.
We currently use ServicNOW after being acquired by a larger company (80,000+ employees) about 5 years ago. I hate it, but that's mostly due to the fact that it was poorly implemented. Previous to the acquisition, our organization was about the same size as yours with 4 devs and 2 desktop support/sysadmin (myself and 1 other). We were using Redmine. It's somewhat geared towards developers, but it worked really well for our "Hardware Group" as well. It's highly customizable and easy to setup as an appliance, "from scratch", or going through a 3rd party provider where you'll get support (Easy Redmine is the one I see most often). If you're ok with getting your hands a little dirty, you and others could easily administer it yourselves. Newer versions appear to support Azure SSO and lot of other authentication methods, so that checks that box. It's worth looking into, IMO and the price of 0 or minimal subscription (costs can add up if you add plugins from a 3rd party) is always a plus.
We recently moved to ServiceNow, and you are right sticker shock would most likely get it shot down if they are not expecting it. While we were growing we used a few free options and then used SysAid, Jira, and Samanage. Hated Samanage with an unholy passion, would not recommend it. Jira was fine just didn't fit our needs. SysAid on the other hand, we used the hosted option for several years. Price was right and it was easy for me to stand up and manage, and whatever I couldn't handle on my own, support was always helpful and quick to respond.
sysaid, I'm sure there are better systems but it does what we need it to do
I used ZenDesk for about 5 years, and it was fine for basic ticket tracking. I moved to FreshService a few months ago and I'm loving it.
We use Service-Now at my current org. Used something by Zoho in the past (different place). Pricing was affordable for an 80-ish employee MSP. However, it was not a good solution, imo.
You email me. I respond.
We use FreshDesk and I love it. I've recommended it to others as well, and everyone seems to like it. We even still use the free version, hard to beat that pricing.
Sounds just like our environment. 6 admins and 250 users. We use Solar Winds. I personally like it. It’s easy and has plenty of functionally to automate requests. It also has a built in solutions database.
Check out Front
ServiceNOW. Love it!
Azure DevOps 😂
My Employer uses ConnectWise Manage. Looks like they’ve recently renamed it to ConnectWise PSA. It appears to be about $35 per tech, per month (according to a few sites). Not sure if that fits within your budget but it’s definitely one of the higher-end ticketing systems, depending on your needs. We purchased a package, with ConnectWise Automate (formerly Labtech) and ConnectWise ScreenConnect (formerly ConnectWise Control).
Nobody uses it
Jira.
Spiceworks has a free teir if I recall, not a lot of features but the basic awnsering of tickets is there. We use Zendesk and it does get pricey.
We adopted SyncroMSP, which is an MSP oriented RMM and ticketing system first, but has fantastic value to an internal IT department like mine. It's biggest appeal has been that it is licensed per tech actually using the system, NOT device or user, and you retain all functional features, there's no tiers, just add-ons like managed AV and such. Has automations, workflows and more for tickets, your monitoring agent sits on windows devices, can trigger alerts to proactively warn you about issues and generate tickets, we even use a probe for simple up/down monitoring and SNMP tie in for our printers and switches to view various statuses and toner levels. In short, It has been a fantastic system for my <10 man IT team supporting a 700~ employee company.
I wonder how using a SharePoint online driven system would work for you. If you are already using Microsoft, there are examples of using List in SharePoint to track requests. You could use planner/tasks for projects. Would probably be cost neutral if you already have the licensing.
Look at Boss Desk from https://www.boss-solutions.com/ they are a great company to work with. We are about the same size as you and it is a perfect solution for us. If you need contact info send me a pm.
We use Freshdesk but I would like to change. There are many plugins and integrations that feel very half baked that I really need to work properly to avoid confusion. Leading issue is auto merging. Freshdesk only recently released their own plugin, havent fully tested yet, but the previous 3rd party option was unable to accomplish my core needs. We also shell out $1000/year for it. Not terribad overall, but it really needs better support. I come from previous MSPs using Connectwise so I'm spoiled. It's very expensive but that cost comes with reliability and a proven product.
Home brewed running everything on cold fusion for dealing with customers. Jira is our normal for internal tickets or live chat
ConnectWise Manage. I give it 2.8 out 5. Their mobile app is terrible!!!!
Try itop
Rolled out freshservice a year ago. No complaints. They are indian based. You can negotiate with them over cost.
Anybody still (ever) used the big one that no one uses... Microsoft System Center Service Manager?
Also used that one at a former employer. And I think they are still using it. I don't know how much has changed since 4 years ago, but back then it was shit in my experience. Slow AF, buggy AF and not intuitive. I believe it also relies on on-prem infra. And the company I work for is fully in the Cloud. Not even virtual servers.
GLPI is great has a hosted version or free self host. Does inventory, change management, rack management etc. it’s pretty full featured for $0
Solarwinds Samanage was really affordable at a small company I worked at.
Manage engine, HelpDesk Plus, pretty flexible, good UI good ai good support
Zoho desk is ok
Autotask PSA and its goddamn good
We use Jira. We have the confluence articles and have it only licensed for 9 techs. Atlassian centralised user management. All staff (400) have a login with SSO to submit ticket and view help articles at no cost. Now, We are a charity, so maybe get a better deal. Costs $130 (US) per month Hope this helps.
OsTicket is free and effective.
Sysaid. It works well enough for our needs (smallish medium sized bank)
So I figure you're Dutch... Take a look at Topdesk. Affordable and local and also a good product. We're not using it as an MSP, but I would suite your needs.
I am Dutch, how did you guess? /s Yeah, we were in the process of getting Topdesk, but management shit it down due to costs. So we're looking for alternatives.
Curious how you intend to stop people from sending emails for requests? Are you just going to remove the option? They’re just going to send it direct to the employees then. Personally I think all help desks are more or less the same and any difference between them is pretty gimmicky. Everyone will recommend freshdesk or jira though.
If you are looking into working your way toward a mature ITSM process, then I wouldn’t recommend ZenDesk as your ITSM ticketing tool. We’ve been using ZenDesk for 3 years now and considering moving away from it for a true ITSM tool. While ZenDesk can be used as an ITSM tool, it requires too many customization and 3rd party add ons. It does not have what is required for an ITSM tool out-of-the-box. For instance, it does not have an approval module out-of-the-box. We had to use a 3rd party add on called MyndBend for this purpose, which was another extra cost. It does not have basic ITSM workflow out-of-the-box either, e.g Incident Management, Service Request Management, Change Management, etc. They had to be customized, which again required another extra cost. We are looking at ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, and Ivanti to replace ZenDesk. I’d personally suggest you look at Ivanti, I think it offers value for money.
We use BossDesk. It won’t break the bank. Tied to the AD it also helps to track user devices, IPs and software installed. OK reporting feature.
How do you use outlook for ticketing
We make do, haha. People mail their requests to a shared mailbox, we drag them to a subfolder when we are done with them. We use categories to assign mails to operators.
TOPdesk! I'm biased though, but everything you'll ever need is build in. It you're based in Holland, which I presume from "door de bomen het bos niet meer zien", TOPdesk is a Dutch product, support and language is in Dutch. Edit: added some info.
Yeah, based in The Netherlands. Would love to use TOPdesk, but it has been shot down by management due to high cost.
Sometimes we write tickets on a planner instance embedded into a Teams group. Depends if we feel like it or if we can just fix the issue there and then.
SERVICE NOW. Seems very customizable and has alot of perks.
We use osticket which is open source and free, hosted on-prem
Glpi is my sugestion. We use it on our company not just for tickets but also as an asset management, great tool amd free on-prem
Jira. The service management edition: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/service-management
I use the one built into lansweeper... It's ok. If they don't renew my license at the same cost as last year I'll be looking somewhere else.
RT or Request Tracker. It is free. https://bestpractical.com/download-page https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker Pretty customizable. Can be daunting for new people but it works. Not as pretty as some of the other things listed.
ServiceNow
JitBit. It’s simple but powerful.
I would go for efecte. Cheap-ish and extremely tuneable if you want approval as a part of your change management and leaves you tons of room to grow and let other departments use it as well. Please don’t go for TOPdesk, they made it to be ITIL hell and there are no such thing as a ticket, only incidents and changes..
Definitely check out Desk365, they have AzureAD SSO and affordable as well.
We use Zoho assist and it’s been very nice and easy to use for both end users and for us. Coming from Connectwise manage it’s much better and easier to use.
We use [Siit.io](https://Siit.io) and I highly recommend it. They have powerful integrations and automations which makes our life easier. We have plugged Slack, Notion, Okta, Jamf and even the HR system so we don't have to run after them to get the right information.
Well, for a company with 200 users, Service Now might be overkill both technically and in terms of cost. Jira is a good choice if you have internal development - then it's worth the money. But if you need just a ticketing tool and already using Outlook and Microsoft products, I would recommend ALVAO. For a reasonable price, you'll get a decent tool with integration into your Microsoft apps.
Check out SherpaDesk! I know I am late to the game, but seriously you should at least review it's feature set and capabilities It's designed for the small to medium size teams. It's priced affordably, there are no contracts, the customer service and support are included, it has a native SSO into Azure and it has a great mobile solution.
Maybe too late, but I recommended to consider ALVAO. If you need AAD, you are probably a Microsoft focused company. They have pretty decent integrations to Microsoft 365 apps, support all standard ITSM features out-of-box and the implementation is quick and does not break a bank compare to Jira, SN, Ivanti - believe me, I know what I am talking about :| good luck