advertisement
Top 14 ITSM tools for 2020
As technology proliferates throughout today’s digital organizations, IT Service Management (ITSM) has become a critical facet for serving the business, and…
As technology proliferates throughout today’s digital organizations, IT Service Management (ITSM) has become a critical facet for serving the business, and the tools aimed at supporting your organization’s ITSM efforts are evolving to support those needs.
ITSM tools help organizations streamline customer service, starting with the IT help desk. These suites help IT departments maintain ticketing systems, build reports and identify defects or flaws in products and services. As the market for ITSM tools grows, and the importance of customer experience intensifies, it becomes harder to identify the best product for your organization.
Top ITSM tools
advertisement
- Alloy Navigator
- Atlassian Jira Service Desk
- BMC Remedyforce
- Cherwell Service Management
- Freshworks Freshservice
- Ivanti Service Manager
- InvGate Service Desk
- ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
- ServiceNow
- SolarWinds Service Desk
- Spiceworks
- SysAid ITSM
- TOPdesk
- Zendesk
Alloy Navigator
Alloy Navigator is a relatively new ITSM tool that was released in 2019. Alloy offers customizable asset management solutions to integrate your help desk, ITIL standards, and ticket, asset, incident and change management. The service desk platform allows for customized IT processes and includes a mobile app for technicians, an online web portal and an end-user self-service portal.
Pricing: The explorer package for one to three technicians starts at US $19 per technician, per month. The express package, for midsize companies, allows for four or more technicians and starts at US $49 per technician, per month. The enterprise package, which includes added features for large organizations, starts at US $79 per technician, per month.
advertisement
Atlassian Jira Service Desk
Jira Service Desk is intuitive and easy to implement — and for smaller organizations, it can help meet simple requirements without becoming too complex for business users outside IT. Jira Service Desk will help your organization receive, track, manage and resolve requests from customers across every department. Requests can be submitted through email, a help center that can be customized for your business needs or through an embedded widget. Setup is designed to be easy, according to Atlassian, and the software comes prepared to handle automation, SLAs, real-time reporting and ITIL-certified processes such as incident, problem and change management.
Pricing: You can get started with a free account that has a limit of three users. The standard and premium packages start at US $20 and US $40 per month, respectively, and both allow up to 5,000 users.
advertisement
BMC Remedyforce
BMC Remedyforce offers incident, problem, change and service-level management, and it also includes self-service, discovery and asset management. You can configure and customize the system to deliver reports and to manage specific IT issues. Remedyforce also includes collaboration features that help IT staff work together to solve issues faster.
Features include chatbots that integrate with apps such as Skype, Slack and mobile apps, dashboard reporting, the ability to configure the platform with coding or scripting, and “seamless upgrades twice a year” without any software or hardware to install or manage. Remedyforce is built on Salesforce, so if your business already uses the platform, it will be a simple integration. However, if you aren’t using Salesforce, Remedyforce might not be the best fit unless you plan to start using Salesforce.
Pricing: You can try Remedyforce free for 30 days, and then you’ll be charged a monthly fee of US $66 per user, per month. BMC also offers custom pricing for larger organizations with a high volume of users.
Cherwell Service Management
Cherwell touts its service management software as “frictionless ITSM software for the modern enterprise,” with an easy-to-use, intuitive platform. It’s a comprehensive service that focuses on ITIL support for IT departments that need to streamline IT management.
The software includes IT service desk management and full integration for the 11 most commonly used ITIL processes. You’ll also find the support to handle change, configuration and IT asset management in one streamline platform. Cherwell also offers “concurrent, inclusive licensing,” which means add-on services — such as password resets, manager approvals, and other automations and integrations — won’t require a separate license.
Pricing: Starts at US $150 per month, but Cherwell offers pricing based on custom needs, so you’ll have to contact the company for your monthly rate.
Freshworks Freshservice
Freshwork’s Freshservice offers an intuitive, user-friendly platform — especially on the mobile app. Freshworks states that its ITSM software helps build a “standardized, sustainable approach” to problem management that also “allows for easy collaboration between agents.” It helps businesses isolate problems and find patterns between multiple incidents, without disrupting the business.
For smaller organizations, Freshservice offers an easy solution for ITSM that you can get up and running fast. You can even gamify your service desk, adding features that make it a “highly engaging and fun experience for your agents,” according to Freshworks. It’s also easy for IT workers to navigate, so you won’t have to spend extra time training workers on the platform.
Pricing: You can try Freshservice free for 21 days. Accounts for small teams start a monthly fee of US $19 per user and go up to US $49 per user for growing teams, US $79 per user for large teams and US $99 per user for enterprises.
Ivanti IT Service Manager
Ivanti Service Manager is a cloud-based service that promises to help businesses with everything from IT help desk support, to ticketing, to advanced ITIL service management processes. The software is simple and sleek, so it’s easy to navigate — it’s also designed to scale and adapt to your business needs.
The software delivers complex reports, offers real-time insights and helps IT departments automate processes for other departments. It comes with pre-defined workflows and ways to automate processes without coding, so IT won’t have to spend extra time on redundant manual efforts.
Pricing: Ivanti offers three subscription tiers for Service Manager — help desk, service desk and service management. Each tier offers different features, but you will have to contact Ivanti for pricing.
InvGate Service Desk
InvGate Service Desk offers ITIL-aligned tools and services to assist with streamlining your IT service desk, supporting asset management and delivering analytic insights and reporting. InvGate offers the standard features of ITSM tools such as change, workflow, problem and ticket management and a self-service platform. But it also offers gamification tools to help improve employee engagement in IT support as well as multi-department support, which means it can translate well to other departments, such as HR or finance.
There are three services to choose from: InvGate Insight, which organizes your physical, cloud and virtual assets in one platform; InvGate ServiceDesk, which helps you manage your IT support; and InvGate Assets, for asset management and IT asset expenditure and usage.
Pricing: Depends on which platforms you choose — you will get a discount when purchasing multiple InvGate solutions.
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine’s ServiceDesk Plus is more than a ticketing system; it offers services for incident, problem, change and asset management. The service catalog enables you to publish your own custom service catalog with custom SLAs, and the configuration management database (CMDB) service helps you track, manage and visually analyze changes.
With ServiceDesk Plus, you can create customized reports and real-time dashboards to gain insights. It also offers project management features, so you can manage resources, track progress and manage requests for any IT indicatives you have running.
Pricing: Accounts start at US $10 per user per month for the standard plan, US $21 per user per month for the professional plan, and $50 per user per month for the enterprise plan. Each plan includes extra fees that will depend on how many technicians and nodes you need. There are also multiple add-ons for an additional price, so you can build a custom plan.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow offers a cloud-hosted IT management platform that helps businesses to manage and maintain their IT infrastructure. It offers deeper insights into incidents and depreciation in the organization, on top of service desk management. It’s designed to help streamline complex IT environments and to deliver insights through sleek, organized reports that can be customized.
ServiceNow’s ITSM platform includes incident, problem and request management alongside a mobile app complete with a mobile onboarding program for new hires. Employees also get access to a live agent who can help with any questions or issues. It also integrates with more than 240 types of apps, software and services, including Azure, LogMeIn, TeamViewer, AWS Service Catalogue and User App for Microsoft.
Pricing: You’ll have to contact ServiceNow to get pricing details for your organization.
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds acquired Samanage Service Desk last year, replacing SolarWinds’ previous ITSM service, Web Help Desk. SolarWinds Service Desk offers all the standard ticketing, automation, reporting and management features you’d expect. It also includes tools for service level management, a self-service portal for users, risk detection features, and CMDB software. SolarWinds also offers several integrations with tools such as Active Directory, Dropbox, Google Apps, Jira, Slack, Zendesk and more.
Pricing: Team level starts at US $19 per user, per month, plus $0.10 per device. The Business package, which offers additional features, starts at US $39 per user, per month, plus US $0.30 per device. The professional package is customizable and designed for mature IT organizations; it starts at $69 per user, per month, with an additional US $0.50 per device.
Spiceworks
What makes Spiceworks’ ITSM software unique is that it’s free. It allows IT departments to run a comprehensive ticketing system that is customizable to specific business needs. You will have to deal with some ads, but they’re unobtrusive and ultimately seem to be a fair tradeoff for the free services.
The user interface is easy to navigate but not as intuitive as other services. The mobile app, however, is well-designed and easy to navigate. Spiceworks’ software is offered in the cloud or as a hosted service, so you’ll want to review your needs to see which option suits you best. The cloud service is easy to set up and get running, but the self-hosted service offers more control for IT departments. Spiceworks offers two additional ITSM tools, one targeted at IT departments and another designed for brands to help manage their presence in the market.
Pricing: Every plan offered through Spiceworks is free, with the options of an individual, team, enterprise or custom plan. The service does include advertisements.
SysAid ITSM
SysAid ITSM offers companies a comprehensive tool that integrates ITIL capabilities into the software. The base features include service request management, mobile device management, an end-user self-service portal, automated password reset, customer service chats, mobile apps and other workflow and automation capabilities.
However, it’s a highly customizable service, with a marketplace tool that allows users to add on pre-built features, including integration with third-party services such as Skype, Google Apps, Slack and other IT services, including Jira Software and SolarWinds.
Pricing: SysAid offers a 30-day free trial; packages include a basic or full plan, with the option to add extra features using an a-la-carte service. Pricing is available on request and will depend on the services you choose.
TOPdesk
TOPdesk offers a range of features, including change and release management, dashboard and reporting, incident and asset management, a self-service portal, problem management and resource management. It also includes operations, knowledge and resource management in addition to supplier service level management to help manage service agreements. You can also use the service to create reports for all KPIs and to help manage workloads in the IT department. It’s a feature-rich solution that will also integrate seamlessly with ITIL.
Pricing: TOPdesk offers two tiers — the essentials, which targets smaller IT teams, and the mature processes tier, which targets larger HR and IT departments. Pricing is available on request and rates depend on your business needs.
Zendesk
Zendesk is a user-friendly, comprehensive IT ticketing system that is easy to implement and maintain. Zendesk also regularly pushes updates and adds new features, so the product can grow with your company.
The Zendesk suite includes Support, Guide, Chat and Talk — you can buy the entire suite or you can purchase each service individually. Support helps you track and solve customer’s support needs; Guide helps you deliver self-service answers to customers; Chat lets you engage in real-time with customers; Talk helps you provide phone support and connect helps you virtually solve customers’ issues.
Pricing: Pricing for Zendesk depends on which services you choose to purchase, but packages start at $5 per month per agent. The Support package includes the ability to track and solve customer support tickets. The Suite package includes everything in support with added live chat and messaging, voice and text and other reporting features. You can also opt to build your own package if you contact sales directly.