Compare Focus Desk и Spiceworks

Benefits:

It's impossible to beat the cost of free. The product is well designed and functions extremely well for the job it is designed for.

Drawbacks:

Larger IT departments won't be able to route tickets to specific teams. It would be very nice if spiceworks could expand its offering to include su... Read more

Larger IT departments won't be able to route tickets to specific teams. It would be very nice if spiceworks could expand its offering to include sub service desks etc.

Summary:

Overall I have been very happy with Spiceworks, especially the community of users.

Benefits:

Spiceworks ive used the community for years now so when I found there IT Helpdesk I started to use it but I then stopped for a while until there cl... Read more

Spiceworks ive used the community for years now so when I found there IT Helpdesk I started to use it but I then stopped for a while until there cloud IT Helpdesk came out which for me works best as I dont need to worry about hosting anywhere. So now I have a great IT helpdesk for my clients to log tickets with all for free!

Drawbacks:

The only Con to Spiceworks IT Helpdesk was that I was initially released as a windows installer which didnt really work for my business as I dont h... Read more

The only Con to Spiceworks IT Helpdesk was that I was initially released as a windows installer which didnt really work for my business as I dont have my own servers, it wasnt until the Cloud IT helpdesk version came out that I then started to use Spiceworks IT helpdesk again as my client IT helpdesk solution. Its also lacking some features you would see in premium solutions but it does the basics and works for my IT Consultancy business.

Summary:

Spiceworks IT Helpdesk Cloud version does everything I want from a cloud based Ticketing system so even though its lacking some features which I ho... Read more

Spiceworks IT Helpdesk Cloud version does everything I want from a cloud based Ticketing system so even though its lacking some features which I hope will get added soon as ive mentioned earlier it does do everything you would expect from a basic IT Support helpdesk ticketing system. So if your looking for a free IT helpdesk solution I would really try out Spiceworks offering and also take a look at there cloud hosted version which I use myself.

Benefits:

Spiceworks is great for managing help desk tickets. Using HTML we've been able to customize our end-user portal. Create multiple ticket templates... Read more

Spiceworks is great for managing help desk tickets. Using HTML we've been able to customize our end-user portal. Create multiple ticket templates to capture the details we truly need from end-users. We have found that the mobile application for iOS and Android to be the best on the market. It has a great GUI, very user friendly, informative, and easy to set up.

Drawbacks:

The inventory system is lacking when it comes to producing accurate information. At one point this year we were upgrading our end users to dual mo... Read more

The inventory system is lacking when it comes to producing accurate information. At one point this year we were upgrading our end users to dual monitors. We attempted to use Spiceworks to produce the make and model of the current monitor the end users were using. It came back telling us a generic description. I ended up writing a batch file that would obtain them remotely and that was accurate. We've also had issues where it would scan a computer that had 2 monitors but would only show one. We also went through a license key audit and thought we could rely on Spiceworks to produce accurate results. It ended up showing us that several computers had 3 iterations of office installed. I understand that these keys are in the registry but other similar scanners would only produce keys for whats actually installed on the workstation by cross-referencing installed applications and registry keys. We recently have been experiencing issues where Spiceworks would attempt to scan 180 assets and it would fail to complete the scan without errors. We found this out by using WSUS to determine how many computers we had and Spiceworks was off by 30 assets of the 180. At least twice a week it also locks up and our end users can't access the help desk portal to submit tickets. We've chosen to use LanSweeper to track assets. LanSweeper produced accurate results in a fraction of the time Spiceworks produced incomplete results. Spiceworks took 8+ hours, LanSweeper <30 minutes.

Summary:

Benefits:

I started using Spiceworks in the cloud and then copied the database and importing it to our VM and lost nothing. It is an efficient and easy to u... Read more

I started using Spiceworks in the cloud and then copied the database and importing it to our VM and lost nothing. It is an efficient and easy to use platform. Adding techs and break-fix categories to track what needs to be improved proved to be successful. This allows IT to focus on root cause and then to deploy solutions to prevent the same.

Drawbacks:

The reports need to be streamlined to remove redundancy. Quantity is not always a good thing and by compressing and focusing on key areas the repor... Read more

The reports need to be streamlined to remove redundancy. Quantity is not always a good thing and by compressing and focusing on key areas the reporting could be a lot better and less fractured.

Summary:

Starting a new role in the organization that had no Help Desk and no history or structure; Spiceworks proved to be the single biggest one thing tha... Read more

Starting a new role in the organization that had no Help Desk and no history or structure; Spiceworks proved to be the single biggest one thing that could be done right that would yeild improved IT services to the organization. User responsibility shifted to reporting IT issues using email and overall satisfaction improved and service impacting issues due to weaknesses in infrastructure, bad procedures or mislaid processes were identified by the ticketing system and corrected.