Freshdesk vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses of all sizes to deliver customer support. Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets, and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets the user automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics, to stay on top of customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot,…
$0
Up to 2 agents
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
FreshdeskSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 2 agents
Growth
$15
per month (billed annually) per agent
Pro
$49
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$79
per month (billed annually) per agent
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskSolarWinds 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
FreshdeskSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Features
FreshdeskSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.8
Ratings
20% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.10 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Expert directory8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.40 Ratings9.80 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ticket response9.20 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.4
Ratings
18% above category average
External knowledge base8.10 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.3
Ratings
7% above category average
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
9.4
Ratings
19% above category average
Customer portal7.70 Ratings9.70 Ratings
IVR8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Email support9.40 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.80 Ratings8.00 Ratings
User Ratings
FreshdeskSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
4.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.4
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.6
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.8
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
6.9
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskSolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshdesk is really good for start-up companies that want to update their current system or buy a new one. It is the best option possible when it comes to having a structure, following up, and making a better strategy because you can always see what your team is doing, and you have some great reports to help you.
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[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.
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Pros
  • Follow up on all conversations that enter and are easy to use by the employee and save responses ready for use.
  • Find out the average rate of the number of conversations that occur in the company and conduct the analysis.
  • There is a feature it allows one to take a permit in the name of the employee who responds to the conversation and to know the problem faced by the customer and the solution.
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  • 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.
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Cons
  • Data Security.
  • SLA Policies where it is not customer / contract driven but agents / groups driven.
  • Audit Trail is not available in Pro version makes the tool adoption difficult from compliance perspective.
  • Chat Bot and Fresh Chat Services has greater potential to explode, but the pricing model tagged to chat bot sessions .are illogical as it limits the ability to use the fresh chat feature
  • Agent Logon Screen use earlier version of Captcha as it is annoying for the agents to login. Very frustrating experience.
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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
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Likelihood to Renew
My company that used Freshdesk was acquired by another company that uses Salesforce, so our only reason to keep Freshdesk would be records, but migrating the tickets, notes, and company details from Freshdesk to Salesforce was straightforward enough. Had the acquisition not occurred, we would have renewed Freshdesk because the cost of switching would've been too great in terms of price, time, and sunk cost (our Freshdesk customizations would not port over well).
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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
I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 because they delivered on everything we asked them to do. Easy to setup, easy to deploy to end users, easy to customize, easy to enter tickets and so much more. Our experience with their support is top notch! After opening a ticket for support they call use back within 10 minutes every time!
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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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Reliability and Availability
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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Performance
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The main thing about Freshdesk user service is that once a request has been made for information about a feature of the platform, the support team responds to tickets quickly, within a day of writing and submitting them, with information that is concise enough so that there is no need to ask for help on the same topic again.
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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
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In-Person Training
Support Team's knowledge and understood the company's requirement, and always shared the insight of the usage of the tool to it s full potential, moreover the team checks periodically to check if we using the tool right and if we are facing any kind of challenges. Also they would update us on new features that can make the work easy.
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
Video tutorials, questions answers round before and after testing and Fresh desk team would always share best practices on the needs. Furthermore would periodically check if we are able to work smoothly. Would send alerts to known any issues, send recommendation on new features. Freshdesk team always available when we need certain advise.
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Implementation Rating
Most important, Freshdesk is a user- friendly platform which directly supports interfaces and navigates user to start. Helps to provide multiple and complex documentation and troubleshooting. It provides build templates for different workflows and processes also refuces effort and time to implement and perform corporate tasks and complete the execution.
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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
I use Freshdesk over other similar products I've tested because the price difference and ease of use for the end user seem to me to be the most suitable for achieving a better return on investment within my company. I also found the various AI-powered automation tools to be more optimal and automated, without having to go through long learning curves.
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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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Scalability
My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
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Return on Investment
  • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
  • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
  • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
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  • 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.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) Screenshots

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