Datto Autotask PSA vs. Freshservice

In my opinion, Datto Autotask is exceptionally complicated to set up, manage, and use on a daily basis. I would think the target market for this product would be someone managing a team of 20 - 50 people, possibly more. In my experience, for it to run properly you will need to dedicate at least half an FTE to running this product in an organization of that size per month. I would not recommend it for companies with less than 10 people or for companies that value quick communication with their clients. I would not recommend it for companies using Datto's RMM product. The integration exists, but it is clearly a bolt-on. They were not developed together and they are slow to talk to each other. Frequently you cannot add details from RMM sessions into the PSA without manually copying the ticket number, and if the ticket is more than a week old, then you can't even find it with the ticket number.

Incentivized

Freshservice is a great all round product with many features. Asset management, Reporting, ticketing, automatization. It was much easier for us using the Freshservice app to scan barcodes for our new devices to get them in the asset management tool, automating certain tasks such as service requests for new devices automatically making a ticket and assigning assets to certain people and getting reports from this afterwards. For a medium to large size company this is great value. For a smaller business there are smaller bundles they provide which are much more affordable in case you do not need all of the features they provide. In summary, lots of features for a snappy, responsive piece of software.

Incentivized

• AutoTask allows for us to receive and work support tickets very easily. We've setup various 'Issue Types' that in turn are bound to SLAs ensuring that items are worked appropriately as they are received.
• The automation that AutoTask allows for with regards to various emails/requests coming through has been great. It allows for us to not have to constantly "watch the queue" as when a critical item arrives the appropriate persons are notified and can work it.
• I feel that the management of AutoTask for both user setup, and various automations is done well. We're able to copy settings as needed, and create templates for multiple items.

Incentivized

• Asset Management Module: The features I like most in this module are the discovery agent software, which allows us to collect device information without manual intervention, and the simplicity and robustness of the module itself.
• Service Catalog: This feature allows us to create forms tailored to specific service requests based on group requirements. The ability to customize forms greatly helps both us and our end-users provide the necessary information to fulfill their requests.
• Workflow Automator and Business Rules: These two allow us to have some automation in place, eliminating some of the manual steps and decreasing the number of human errors that may happen due to manual changes.

Incentivized

• The GUI is a little dated.
• Some integrations are limited for not being a Datto product.
• While not as complex to set up as Connectwise, it definitely requires some serious thought during the initial setup.
• Email processing could offer more options for parsing keywords and allow for more automation.
• The mobile app is just not worth using in my experience.

Incentivized

• Workflow management is hard to troubleshoot
• Some default fields can't be changed
• FAQ has no history
• Work flow management can't be managed via API or a command line
• Service Requests and contracts have no possibilities to choose how pricing will be calculated, like per month, per user, per year, per lifetime...
• Automatic backup of assets and FAQ is not possible

Incentivized

After using multiple products on the market, Autotask was intuitive and easy to manage.

Incentivized

We are pretty invested in Freshservice right now and have integrated it pretty heavily into our environment, so it would be hard to move away from it. For the most part, we are happy with Freshservice and the ease of use it gives us in managing tickets through the system. The only complaint we've had is customer service.

Incentivized

Datto Autotask PSA is a full featured product that can do almost anything you need. There is a significant learning curve to get started which requires several hours spent in product training. Additionally, several hours / days are needed to get clients imported, contracts configured, and integrations implemented. Once the setup and user training is complete, the product is very functional, but it's imperative to not get overwhelmed when starting out.

Incentivized

Easy to navigate and use GUI. We have many infrastructure team members from various departments using Freshservice and their on-boarding and training was very straightforward and we have not received much, if any negative feedback from non-technology users in regards to overall usability, interface or functionality.

Downtime is minimal (it does happen but not often)

Incentivized

Most reports are quick, however, it can take some time for emailed exports to come via email. It would be helpful to have the exports live in the system rather than having to wait on emails.

Incentivized

They are fairly quick at returning a response to a problem and have been able to fix all issues for the most part.

Incentivized

Support from OEM is decent but needs improvement. Sometimes OEM also needs to understand the criticality of the customer and help as an Ad-hoc, which is somewhat lacking at Feshservice. Although the normal support team is well-equipped and helps according to the matrix, if something critical for the partner or customer requires immediate attention, it still goes through the L1-L2-L3 levels, which wastes a lot of time.

Incentivized

Training was enough to use the base website

Incentivized

Their documentation is pretty good, but only available in English. This makes it difficult for some of our users to understand. There are also some basic video courses available.

Incentivized

Creating the correct groups for the stakeholders and enabling the right notifications are one of the most important aspect of the implementation. Creating Change templates will also help in the long run and it's a good practice to create one, if applicable.

The portion of Autotask that we've used other companies for prior to using Autotask is the Endpoint Management. The Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM) portal integrates perfectly with their PSA/CRM tools. It's alerting features are much better than the above software as there aren't a bunch of superfluous and unneeded alerts. Instead, it only alerts for things that you specify that you want. Alerts aside, for the PSA/CRM, I don't have much to compare it to as Autotask was the first PSA we tried. It's hard to imagine a PSA having more features or doing a better job than Autotask.

Incentivized

Freshservice is ahead in some areas, behind in others. For example, workspaces have been part of other products for many years. Freshworks just introduced it in 2023. Integration with productivity tools is better than past products we have used. Apps continue to be added as well. We selected Freshservice as it was the best mix of functionality and cost. We don't need solutions as robust as ServiceNow, for example, but found that Freshservice had some comparable advanced features.

Incentivized

The software is very scalable from a small to mid sized team. The features have seemed to scale exceptionally well.

Incentivized

• We were able to identify the profitability of our entire client base.
• We identified a loss of over 1 million dollars for time unbilled consultancy fees using metrics derived from Autotask.
• Autotask helped us serve our client base in a professional manner, it's like having an entire department at your finger tips.
• Autotask is the heartbeat of our operation.

Incentivized

• Alleviate our support team by providing knowledge directly to the end users.
• Better response times from our IT support team, thanks to automation and dashboard use.
• Better tracking of our assets by assigning them to users so we know which device was handed out to who. During off-boarding, we know which devices to ask back.

Incentivized