15 Best Service Desk Software Solutions

Service desk software solutions are computer programs that make the service desk function more efficient and effective. A service desk — a call center, contact center, or help desk — is a single point of contact for all users’ IT requests and requirements.

This special kind of software actively solves user problems (incidents) and answers user questions, providing a single interface for all customer change requests, third parties, software licensing, etc.

Choosing a service desk solution with the right set of features for your company can be challenging and time-consuming. In this article, we have prepared a list of the best service desk software systems, selected by our SaaS experts, to help you find the very best solution for your needs.

1. Freshservice

Freshservice is an award-winning ITSM software, highly rated for its usability and customer satisfaction. It provides everything needed for IT support. It’s easy to use and set up (it has a modern, intuitive, and fully customizable UI). If you’d like to try out the main features of the software before buying, you should check out the free trial plan offered by the vendor.

It also offers multi-channel support (email, self-service portal, phone, chat, or in-person), empowers users with knowledge (through information in the knowledge base and services in the catalog), provides information at your fingertips (maintain detailed records of all your assets from acquisition to expiry), and helps you work smarter on the go (with its mobile app for iOS and Android).

Freshservice offers a great free trial plan as well. You can use it to see all the features in action first.

Freshservice

Try out Freshservice with their free trial

Using Freshservice, several service desks have evolved from simply being cost centers to innovation catalysts and revenue drivers, by making simple changes to their daily functions.

It is a popular cloud-based customer support platform that enables companies of all sizes to provide great customer service. It complies with best practices without the need for expensive consultations.

Its key functionalities include a robust ticketing system, an accessible knowledge base, asset discovery, and CMDB. Moreover, the software is equipped with capabilities, such as vendor, incident, problem, change, and release management.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the leading help desk software apps currently available on the market. It is designed to be scalable, flexible, and reliable. Likewise, the app helps you to improve communication and make sense of customer data that you have with omnichannel capability and drill-down analytics.

What makes Zendesk a highly useful app? Three things: First, it is designed to increase speed and efficiency while reducing friction in your customer support process. Second, it helps you make smart decisions through customized reports that give insight into the metrics that matter — the health of your customer base and how it affects your business. Third, it helps you manage the growing pains as soon as your business gains traction, which likely means more customer concerns to address. The app works right out of the box and integrates with other tools, expanding to fit your business. Scaling becomes easy.

Zendesk

Try out Zendesk with their free trial

To experience its tools and features firsthand,  you can sign up for Zendesk free trial.

3. LiveAgent

A screenshot of LiveAgent’s dashboard.

LiveAgent is one of our top-rated service desk software, and for a good reason. It tries to combine all aspects of a help desk solution in one convenient platform, including email, live chat, and social media (including Facebook and Twitter). In addition, it supports POP3 email protocols, gamification, file sharing, contact forms, and dynamic statuses.

What sets LiveAgent apart is its simplicity, even among its contemporaries that lionize a straightforward approach to customer service. The interface, as you see above, is intuitive and clean, which makes it easy to learn and master. But in case you still need help, they have a lifetime 24/7 support manned by an in-house support team. This is only apt, as a help desk software needs top-class support of its own.

You can check the solution closely when you sign up for LiveAgent free trial.

In addition, LiveAgent’s claim to simplicity isn’t limited to its UI or its customer service. The pricing is also on point with its philosophy of simplifying everything for the user. Unlike its competitors, LiveAgent allows you to design your own paid plan with the combination of features you need. This means that you don’t need to pay for things you won’t use, as the price is adjusted to the features you’ve set.

4. SysAid

SysAid is a scalable help desk solution designed for large businesses. The platform offers various modules, so you can start with a single module and work your way up as different needs arise. These modules include incident management, service request management, IT asset management, mobile device management, and chat. The software also offers various industry benchmarking functionalities.

The software can automate help desk functions, allowing users to remotely manage and control assets as needed. It offers powerful ticket management capabilities, along with self-service options that allow users to submit and track tickets. The platform’s extensive ticketing system also allows admins to monitor help desk processes from first contact to resolution. Incident management capabilities also make issue logging and reporting easier.

Aside from ticket submission, self-service options offered by SysAid also include viewing IT announcements, contacting IT teams via chat, and resetting passwords. End users will also be able to enjoy remote access to their desktops through built-in features in the software.

Through the system, you can also create a knowledge base for use by admins and end users. This way, you can easily document solutions to common issues and create articles with embedded media files and resources. For added convenience, you have the option to add specific solutions or tips right after tickets are closed.

5. Samanage

Samanage offers a single service desk for every service provider within your organization. It aims to increase collaboration and efficiency across departmental lines, providing everything needed for IT Services & Support. The vendor also offers a great free trial plan that you can use to try out all the key features of their app first.

Samanage is built in the cloud and is ITIL-certified, with configurable ticketing and asset management. It’s quick to set up and can scale as you grow, making it a good internal service desk for teams large and small.

What makes Samanage stand out are its best-in-class ticketing (improves resolution time and customer satisfaction with automation, service portal, knowledge base, and service catalog), and IT asset management (tracks hardware, software, licenses, and vendor data).

It also features a service portal (service requests are always consistent, repeatable, and seamless), smart automation (execute predefined processes automatically like approvals, requests, and changes), and is ITIL-certified and simplified (it’s rooted in ITSM best practices and certified for key ITIL process areas). You can start a free trial or get a quote for your company.

Samanage can be deployed via a true cloud, SaaS-based model. There’s no installation required, and no maintenance ever on your site. Once deployed, Samanage automatically collects all IT asset configuration data, empowering IT with comprehensive reporting and alerts in a simple and elegant interface.

6. ManageEngine ServiceDesk

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus (a division of Zoho) can either be downloaded as an on-premise software or deployed via the cloud. It aims to be a game-changer, turning IT teams from daily fire-fighting to delivering awesome customer service.

Service Desk provides central control and good visibility when dealing with IT issues to ensure that businesses suffer no downtime. They try to incorporate best practice ITSM workflows, integrations with IT management apps, smart automation, reporting capabilities, and codeless customizations.

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

Try out ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus with their free trial

They also offer flexible plans for your IT needs, including Standard (a starter kit to get your ticketing right), Professional (the package for integrated IT asset management), and Enterprise (the complete ITIL-ready ITSM suite with all the features that an IT service desk needs). They offer a free trial and a live demo. You can also get a quote for your company.

With a number of useful features and unique capabilities, ServiceDesk Plus fuses your help desk requests and assets to enable you to manage and monitor your clients’ needs and concerns, as well as your own performance more efficiently.

The software assists in the implementation of ITIL best practices and also troubleshoots IT service requests in significantly shorter times.

7. JIRA Service Desk

JIRA Service Desk has been recognized as a leader in service desk software by G2 Crowd. It’s a simple service desk, the only one built on JIRA. It’s easy to use, simple to set up and has everything you need for IT support and customer service. You can get started in minutes.

With JIRA Service Desk, you can make asking for help easy. Their self-service portal makes it easy to request help, track progress on issues, and search knowledge bases. It also helps you work smarter, as it has everything to make your IT teams more productive. It has approval workflows, SLAs, queues, automation, and more.

JIRA Service Desk helps dev, and IT work together since you can link JIRA Service Desk tickets to JIRA Software issues for fast issue resolution. Finally, you only pay for the agents you need; customers are always free. You can get started for as low as $10 a month for up to three agents.

JIRA Service Desk is a hosted service desk platform developed by Atlassian. The system is a very popular help desk solution, widely used by many popular open-source projects.

JIRA Service Desk is primarily deployed as a software development issue tracking tool by many software companies and has proven to be effective in identifying and tracking software bugs and their locations. Customers can submit their requests via tickets or handle their own concerns via the JIRA Service Desk customer self-service portal.

8. Track-It!

Track-It! is one of the most widely-used IT help desk software in the world. It aims to help make your life easier through help desk automation (no more manual triage of issues through stacks of sticky notes and emails), knowledgebase (documentation for known issues are centralized and fully searchable), and improved efficiency (you can measure the productivity of the help desk, get feedback on technicians’ performance).

Some of its popular features are a knowledge base, automated email to ticket creation, end-user self-service portal, automatic routing and prioritization, automatic notifications and escalation, and reports and metrics (you save time and money by capturing and automating all of it). You can download a 30-day free trial or request a quote for your company.

Track-It! is a tool that combines the features and functionalities of a help desk solution and an asset management platform into one dynamic package. Developed for small to medium-sized businesses, Track-It! is a perfect tool for the discovery, management, and audit of the “assets” in your organization.

Over 55,000 companies are using Track-It! to manage their assets, which could be anything from a piece of hardware to a software license.

9. BMC Remedy 9

BMC Remedy 9, for years now, has been a leading mobile-first digital enterprise management platform, designed to boost workforce productivity by up to 75% and make complex IT simple.

It is a complete digital service management package, providing people-centric user experiences, stunning reports and visualizations, native mobile apps, embedded ITIL v3 processes, and more. You can develop your own apps with Innovation Suite, a rich portfolio of drag-and-drop tools and designers. Whether you’re a service desk manager, change manager, service delivery manager, or an IT Director, Remedy 9 delivers fast and smart service.

With Remedy 9, you can work from anywhere with the full power of the service desk on any device, empower the workforce with self-service on every device, enable the Service Desk to be 75% more productive with formless ticket entry.

Remedy 9 is available on-premise or as a service, through a subscription or perpetual license. It comes in three options: Service Desk (for a service desk experience), Service Optimization (to empower those who manage and transform IT), and Service Innovation (for those who want to create). Remedy 9 can also be tried for free.

BMC Remedy 9 is an IT service management tool designed specifically for mobile devices. This innovative application enables employees and IT personnel to improve their productivity with very detailed reports, attractive visualizations, and other ITSM features, combined with social and modern elements. Remedy 9 is a very powerful tool with many innovations that can actually revolutionize the digital workplace.

10. Cherwell IT Service Management

Cherwell IT Service Management (ITSM) is a flexible and powerful IT service management (ITSM) solution that helps IT teams automate, implement and modernize support and service processes to meet evolving needs — all at a fraction of the complexity and cost of legacy ITSM tools.

Cherwell aims to reinvent the service desk to move at the speed of business. The platform is very easy to customize and configure, making your service desk truly “agile.” You can add new capabilities, integrate with third-party applications, and extend the service management benefits to other departments in just a matter of days (instead of months), without needing an army of programmers. As a result, it has enjoyed a 98% customer retention rate.

One of its features is flexible, transparent licensing. You can choose from subscription or perpetual pricing, on-premises or SaaS, Cherwell-hosted or public cloud infrastructure — plus the ability to switch anytime. You can also reduce costs by 50-70% with concurrent licensing. There are no hidden or unanticipated costs — ever.

Cherwell IT Service Management is a robust, feature-rich, modern ITSM system that gives IT teams the versatility they require to quickly configure, tailor, and constantly improve their IT systems and processes while reducing overhead. The platform aims to do all these and more at a greatly lowered cost, minus the complexity associated with legacy ITSM tools.

11. Agiloft

Agiloft allows you to configure enterprise-class applications without custom coding. You can rapidly respond to changing business needs and deploy complex systems in weeks instead of months. Available as a cloud service or via in-house deployment, Agiloft is secure, scalable, and robust.

Agiloft can manage contracts, customer service and support, ITIL services, workflows, assets, and change. One thing that sets it apart is its confidence to provide an unconditional satisfaction guarantee that covers both software and consulting services.

Agiloft is the platform that brings agility as well as control to even your most difficult business processes and task workflows. Improve performance, communication, and efficiency across your company with this tool. Agiloft gives you a highly versatile and configurable framework to automate and handle all your operations.

Agiloft is being used by at least 2.5 million users at companies ranging from small startups to Fortune 100 firms, to US government agencies. Its innovative applications include contract management, custom workflow, help desk, and more. The tool specializes in complex automation processes that competing vendors cannot handle. Its agile technology and best practice templates assure a fully extensible system and rapid deployment.

12. Re:Desk

Re:Desk is an ideal service desk software solution for small and medium companies. It has the right balance of feature set and pricing plans to meet the needs of companies with small support teams. The solution’s automated workflows help reps optimize their time, focusing only on high-priority tickets while letting Re:Desk address recurring issues.

Small support teams can cut down resolution time, improve customer satisfaction ratings and ensure no queries are left unanswered. They also avoid repeating emails or, worse, replying to the same customer with different answers. Other Re:Desk features to note are: unlimited support agents, custom domain, spam filter, staff role permissions, ticket routing and API for developers.

13. ServiceNow

ServiceNow aims to modernize ITSM by consolidating your on-premise IT tools to an easy-to-use, modern service management solution in the cloud. No infrastructure is required. With ServiceNow, you get real-time trending on key performance indicators, a single place for users to make all IT requests, and you can assign and prioritize with drag-and-drop.

ServiceNow also helps you eliminate service outages by proactively identifying issues on a service health dashboard. You can pinpoint disruptions with service maps and automatically orchestrate remediation. In one glance, you can know the status of business services. You can then instantly determine the severity of an alert, and quickly and easily access remediation options.

You can also resolve real security threats fast by integrating your existing security portfolio with a single repository for incidents. You can enrich incidents automatically with threat intelligence data and handoff tasks easily between IT and security with a single platform.

Further, you can resolve customer issues quickly, by eliminating calls before they occur, with self-service. You can proactively prevent issues by assessing product or service health in real-time and engage the proper resources in fixing issues immediately.

ServiceNow is a cloud-based IT solution for small businesses. The powerful IT management application can take care of every issue, IT process, or operation.

14. GoToAssist

GoToAssist provides support when and where it is most needed. Finally, you can solve issues faster and make customers happier with Remote Support. This is remote support you can count on to be there for you, so you can be there for your customers.

With its trusted tools, GoToAssist helps thousands of support teams make a difference day in and day out. Their lasting reliability is still going strong, after over 15 years and 48 million remote support sessions later. This results in increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and streamlined processes.

GoToAssist provides a simple solution for awesome support. It provides live IT resolution and accesses unattended computers from anywhere. Now, you can connect, diagnose, and fix things when an issue crops up. Just jump into a support session instantly, connect to the remote computer, see the screen and take control. GoToAssist makes it very easy to identify and solve problems fast so you can keep your customers more productive and happy.

This simple software meets simple pricing with unlimited support, free upgrades, and no hidden costs at all. Whether you support external or internal customers, GoToAssist has you covered. It is reliable, easy to use, and simple to set up. It’s the solution of choice for many small and medium-sized businesses. You can even deliver support using your iOS or Android device. Connect to computers, mobile devices, and unattended issues.

15. Spiceworks

Spiceworks is the destination for IT. You start with one of our free tools: Help Desk.

With Spiceworks Inventory, you can manage your devices instead of letting them manage you. We all know that keeping tabs on IT isn’t easy. This is why this SaaS offers built-in reporting tools that let you track your equipment, inventory, and other assets in real-time. It even offers custom views, so you get the information you need right at your fingertips.

With Spiceworks Network Monitor, you can know what’s happening on your network at all times of the day. Now, you can stay in the know on your infrastructure all day, every day. From servers and switches to SNMP devices and more — you can get alerted at the first sign of trouble.

With Spiceworks Community, you have millions of IT experts, thousands of tech vendors, all in one place. It’s the most trusted tech community around. You can get fast answers to your IT questions, level up your IT game, and research vendors and products.

The best part is … Spiceworks is free. Millions of IT pros do their jobs in Spiceworks, and thousands of tech vendors are getting in front of them through relevant, targeted advertising and content that the IT pros really love.

By Christopher Robinson

Christopher Robinson is a senior productivity research analyst who specializes in optimizing online collaboration and project management using Scrum and agile approaches. In his work, he always emphasizes the need for distributed work training and the formation of efficient work habits. His work was mentioned in various business publications, including Entrepreneur and InfoQ. He’s a strong proponent of the GTD model. He has been cooperating with the FinancesOnline team for 5 years now, and his publications always focus on practical aspects of productivity tools that can have an actual, transformative impact on a company.