LiveAgent vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
LiveAgent
Score 9.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
LiveAgent is a help desk software designed to help users bring personalization to customer interactions. LiveAgent presents an omnichannel universal inbox, real-time live chat, built-in call center, and a customer service portal. It offers customer segmentation, automation, built-in CRM, and an analytics package, as well as gamification features, ultimately containing are over 180+ help desk features, and 200+ integrations. The solution boasts users among companies like BMW, Yamaha,…
$0
per month
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Web Help Desk is ticketing and IT asset management software. It is designed to simplify help desk management. This solution includes built-in ticketing management, asset management, change management, and knowledge base capabilities.N/A
Pricing
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
per month
Small
$15
per month per seat
Medium
$29
per month per seat
Large
$49
per month per seat
Enterprise
$69
per month per seat
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsSolarWinds also offers Perpetual licensing starting at $1129 per technician.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Considered Both Products
LiveAgent
Chose LiveAgent
I did a demo with Zendesk which was fine, but the customer service and system for LiveAgent was a better choice for me. The demo with LiveAgent was wonderful and very informational, any concerns were answered immediately, extremely accommodating with the free trial, better …
Chose LiveAgent
Bold360 worked for our basic purposes but it was pretty bare bones. It didn't give us the option to get sales or to translate from Spanish to English and it made things a bit more difficult. LiveAgent has the features that we needed and it has many of the similar options that …
Chose LiveAgent
Night and Day, Zendesk is very very basic, We also faced multiple technical and connection issues when using zendesk which resulted in loss of customers due to the chat randomly disconnecting now this is a thing of the past thanks to LiveAgent, the connection is always stable …
Chose LiveAgent
I haven’t used any other software
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent was way easier to configure and setup initially and was more customizable (branding, signatures, directory, notifications, etc.).

Chose LiveAgent
We have 5 brands and had to have different solutions for these. But with LiveAgent we could use 1 software to operate all brands!
Chose LiveAgent
We use 3PL as well as LiveAgent to complete our daily work. Using them together seems to be a good combination for what we need the programs to do.
Chose LiveAgent
We have used some other systems for a very brief period of time but they did not offer us the specific functions we needed.
Chose LiveAgent
I hated Zendesk we used them for 2 years and found them very unreliable and [unprofessional]. The system was laggy, bugged and beyond basic. It is nowhere near as good as LiveAgent and I am over the moon that we found them and decided to make the switch.
Chose LiveAgent
After testing a few web-based CRM I found LiveAgent to be the overall best. Manage email, chat and calls plus respond to social media posts and messages.
Chose LiveAgent
The price that LiveAgent has is just outstanding even with the features and helps us save money rather than spending loads of cash on other systems. It has also helped us better support our customers.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent is much easier and it's well designed to keep great work organization. Separate boxes provide a great view so one is aware of what every single member of the team is working on.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent is clearer and offers all forms of communication in one app.
Chose LiveAgent
Ability to call chat and email from the same spot.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent is much more complete and all the channels are available at the same place. The way customers get an answer is friendlier than Zendesk.
Overall, LiveAgent is much more user friendly and simple to understand. It has knowledge base section.
Chose LiveAgent

My initial experience with LiveAgent was when the company I work for, Bus2alps, was reviewing an assortment of chatting platforms to use. My responsibility was to compare and contrast various features of them all and select the one which we would implement on our website to …

SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Many years ago at a different employer, we utilized CA Service Desk, which is now under the Broadcom umbrella; previously it was under Computer Associates. What a nightmare to configure and set up ... it took months to get this product off the ground. SolarWinds Web Help …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
I used ManageEngine ServiceDesk and ServiceNow at previous jobs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk was in place when I came to this job and I was disappointed when I started using it as it has a more clunky, less intuitive interface, and lacks the features of those products. And it gets …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
This product is "fine" if you need a basic ticketing solution and your users are on prem. It ties nicely to an on prem active directory solution, but not Azure or Google workspace. The reports are decent, but there are better options available.
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) holds its own among the top competitors for help desk systems. Some advanced functionality, and more-so the lack of polished interface knocks it down compared to some competitors. I selected SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) simply because I came …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
From a quality and use standpoint, they leave ALL of them in the dust. As far as support is concerned, they are faster and more accurate at resolving issues. Their software goes in easily, and functions as it is supposed to with minimal problems. And, as I have said before, …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
We looked at Zoho CRM but it was more expensive and not as robust as SolarWinds.
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
It is more feature-packed then other RMM providers and has better support.
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
SolarWinds Help Desk's overall package of tools is superior in our opinion to the other Help Desk products we have evaluated and tried in the past. We selected SolarWinds because the overall ROI was greater and the efficiencies that we could implement immediately made more …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Web Help Desk is definitely lacking in the UI/UX department compared to most other ticketing systems I have used int he past. It's very utilitarian; however, what it lacks in UI it makes up for in extensibility and customization. The main issue that the developers need to …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Azure technician services app is too complex. SolarWinds has a lead here.
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
BMC Track-It! was my first choice for a help desk solution, but we chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk primarily based on cost alone, a now regrettable decision. Track-It! is a far superior product and is better than SolarWinds WHD in every way. That being said, for the cost and …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
SolarWinds is probably the most basic of the 3 that I've worked with. SolarWinds was selected because it was the cheapest and we just wanted to use something that was fairly quick to set up and get going. Autotask is quite robust and might be a bit too much for what we need. …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
SharePoint is a tool that you make fit your requirements. This takes a lot of time and effort. WHD had most of the features our organization was looking for without the hassle of having to write HTML and pay licensing fees for a product that needed to be tailored to be properly …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
UI overall was poorly implemented and work flow seemed wonky at best. Ease of use of SolarWinds Web Help Desk was simple and implementation was a breeze. Major plus was asset tracking over old product.
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
We have used other systems. The simplicity of SolarWinds Web Help Desk, its ease of setup and use have made it a valuable tool in our toolbox. You can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a sprawling Help Desk package, but if your needs are like most companies, SolarWinds …
Chose SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
We primarily selected SolarWinds Web Help Desk because of the rich feature set and low price point. When we were doing comparisons of the different suites available, we wanted to find an easy to deploy, feature rich, and inexpensive solution. Web Help Desk met all these …
Features
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
LiveAgent
7.7
Ratings
4% below category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.8
Ratings
20% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets7.90 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Expert directory7.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.40 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ticket response8.40 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
LiveAgent
10.0
Ratings
24% above category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.4
Ratings
18% above category average
External knowledge base10.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Internal knowledge base10.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
LiveAgent
8.5
Ratings
9% above category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.4
Ratings
19% above category average
Customer portal10.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
IVR7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Email support7.40 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration10.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LiveAgentSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Likelihood to Recommend
I think [LiveAgent] is great from a customer service perspective, though I don't know that I would recommend it for B2B purposes. It has so many features that are fantastic as far as creating a great customer experience goes, I just think it is far more geared toward B2C than B2B.
Read full review
[SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)] works well in education, I'm responsible for over 500 classrooms, thousands of users and computers. Using WHD to keep track of who has what devices and which devices need to be retired has helped the user experience. I'd recommend this product to anyone managing an IT department.
Read full review
Pros
  • It's a complete OMNI channel. You can configure all communication medium for your customer with LiveAgent i.e. Ticketing, Social Media, Phone, and Chat.
  • Low on pricing.
  • You can easily setup LiveAgent for your organization. You don't need to be a technical expert to implement this.
  • The user-friendly application.
Read full review
  • Email notifications are pretty good; you can add hidden notes, close/resolve/update tickets just by selecting the appropriate link in the email that is sent when a ticket is created or edited.
  • It provides a great deal of information to both the user and tech.
  • It allows us to automatically update asset information with our mobile device management system by using an extension.
Read full review
Cons
  • Occasionally when "resolving" a ticket, the page will not load the full list of remaining tickets. However, the moment you scroll, the tickets appear so it's not too big of a deal, but I'd like to see that cleaned up. It does not always happen.
  • When dialing a phone number, the format needs to be specific, i.e. +15125555555. We often receive phone numbers in the more traditional format, i.e. (512) 555-5555. The outgoing call will not work when pasted this way. I think it will get fixed. These little things seem to get sorted out after enough people complain about it.
  • The mobile version has a few bugs, but when on the run, it at least allows you to read and respond to email. Examples of bugs include not being able to transfer the ticket to another department (on iOS the drop down menu functions like a text field for some reason so clicking into it selects the text as if you are going to copy and paste it). Also, the ability to add an admin note would be nice on the mobile version.
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  • I have been a user for over 8 years and the product continues to exceed my expectations!
  • I am amazed at the fact that the users have an impact on how the product continues to evolve
  • Continued efforts put forth on the security of all the SolarWinds products have been amazing
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
I am giving this rating as Live Agent is a very good software that is essential to any small or big business that provides customer support services. It gives you the possibility to manage any of your clients issues, answer questions and keep a good relationship with them by providing quick solutions.
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We are definitely going to be sticking with Web Help Desk for the foreseeable future since the product is very inexpensive for the features that it provides, the integration that it has with our existing systems, and the ease for managing users, assets, locations, and tickets. Web Help Desk is a great product that is backed by even better support, which is well worth looking into if you are considering moving to a new ticketing system.
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Usability
The initial setup, onboarding and training is easy. The system provides 2 graphic version of interfaces in black or white default colors. I would appreciate, if there were more. Some of the setup forms are not correctly resized. Overall, I'm always able to find what I am looking for in LiveAgent.
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It's not cloud based so users have to be on the network to submit a ticket. It doesn't plug into Google or Microsoft Azure so all inventory has to be manually entered. It seems like solar winds is allowing the product to slow fall into obsolescence
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Support Rating
The one time that I contacted the customer support at LiveAgent, they were very quick to help me out and the customer support representative walked me through every thing that I needed to know to set up what I needed. Over all, the support staff at LiveAgent were perfect.
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SolarWinds is a great customizable and affordable ticketing system. We use SolarWinds Web Help Desk for IT and Software
Development trouble ticket tracking and resolution. The reporting that
SolarWinds provides is great since it helps us discover problem areas and fix
those areas so they don't keep reoccurring
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Implementation was quick and when not counting a bug on our website, it took a couple hours. It was mostly done on our end or with the assistance of LiveAgent's live chat support team. We recommend to check out LiveAgent's tutorial videos on their youtube channel or browsing their knowledge base - we've almost always found answers to our queries there.
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Take the time to roll out a test VM to configure and make changes to before doing a live deployment, this way you don't end up with a VM that has been tweaked and re-tweaked until it's perfect and instead end up with a final, polished product. I would also recommend taking the time to read through the support forums for figuring out minor issues that may pop up, chances are that you aren't going to be the first one to encounter them. When all is said and done, SolarWinds Support is VERY responsive and you shouldn't hesitate to contact them.
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Alternatives Considered
bold360 worked for our basic purposes but it was pretty bare bones. It didn't give us the option to get sales or to translate from Spanish to English and it made things a bit more difficult. LiveAgent has the features that we needed and it has many of the similar options that we also still use.
Read full review
I used ManageEngine ServiceDesk and ServiceNow at previous jobs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk was in place when I came to this job and I was disappointed when I started using it as it has a more clunky, less intuitive interface, and lacks the features of those products. And it gets frustrating because sometimes it doesn't work right. Like I will open a ticket and click on the button to add a note and instead it will close the Notes section. So then I have to close and reopen the ticket and try again. Same with closing a ticket. I change the Status to "closed" and click on "Save" and it doesn't save. So I have to keep repeating this until it works. Also, it's lacking features like the ability to unmerge or split tickets, that I had in other products. And sometimes when users reply to tickets it creates another ticket instead of adding it to the existing ticket and then we have to merge tickets. Also, it's lacking the integration with users and assets that those other products have.
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Return on Investment
  • We are generating more sales by having sales representatives online chatting with customers.
  • The customer service team is able to avoid answering the same guest on a number of platforms (ie. when a guest emails in, fills out a "contact form," and chats with a representative in live time in the span of ten minutes) because LiveAgent enables us to have all of our communication in one platform.
Read full review
  • Overall we have become more efficient using this tool and our ROI for implementing this has been great. By having a service tool that can manage inventory, tickets, as well as change management just to name a few, our company is better off in our support.
  • The core business community has seen quicker responses to tickets through use of the ticketing tool. Business continuity has had less disruptions as we are better able to anticipate or respond to issues.
  • Finance has been happier with our ability to do cost analysis by using the various tools in SolarWinds help desk.
Read full review
ScreenShots

LiveAgent Screenshots

Screenshot of Inside of TicketsScreenshot of Chat - Support ViewScreenshot of Chat - Customer ViewScreenshot of Chat - Fully Customizable

SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of