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Cherwell Service Management [EOL] vs Freshdesk comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
662
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Cherwell Service Management...
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (29th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (26th)
Freshdesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (3rd), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (5th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
Gauri Thakur - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Portfolio Projects at Microland Limited
Integrated support workflows have provided a unified view but need broader enterprise flexibility
Freshdesk's scalability could be improved for larger businesses across departments. Its intuitive interface is appealing for small to medium-sized businesses. However, when you look at larger enterprise levels, ServiceNow operates more efficiently. This scalability is an area where Freshdesk could expand its offerings. Additionally, I don't have too much hands-on experience with Freshdesk ticket routing. I need to check with the service desk team if they've used it. Similarly, for analytics capability, I haven't explored much on Freshdesk, but I have done it for ServiceNow. I have seen a lot on ServiceNow and the BMC Remedy, so I can speak better for them. I haven't had the chance to look at it so much that I can do a comparison. I haven't had much experience with Freshdesk's reporting. Within its paradigm of customer service management, Freshdesk is quite scalable. But I've said that inter-department and the interoperability is better off in ServiceNow than in Freshdesk.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Its user interface is very understandable. Even a non-technical person can understand it. Everything in the user interface is self-explanatory. It is quite good."
"Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value."
"I like working with most of the commands in Automation Anywhere, such as object cloning commands. I like MetaBot for automating Citrix."
"Compared to before, when processing a document took around three hours, we now complete it in one to two minutes thanks to Automation Anywhere and the latest document automation technology, saving around two hours and 55 minutes per user, which is a significant saving."
"One of the strengths of Automation Anywhere is its user-friendly interface, which makes it accessible even to those without a development background."
"Co-pilot certainly makes the job easier if the client has a subscription. It allows me to analyze desktop flows and activities and create flows using natural language."
"Our ROI has ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the type of process being automated."
"Automation Anywhere is quite easy to use for users who are not technical, especially business users."
"Implementing CSM has made us very efficient and we're now able to plan changes and the steps required for implementation."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"We use the solution every day and quite extensively."
"The best feature is the ability to create functional dashboards, where the IT manager can interact with its data through the dashboard using the drill down feature."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."
"These features are easy to use, and the filtering is really good, providing a good overview of active tickets and who's working on them."
"Through chats we now connect with a bigger audience and satisfaction surveys have allowed us to know clients' points of view in a better way."
"We're able to respond to customer inquiries much faster and with better information."
"There is the option to create different roles for specific users. We make use of groups for each customer service team which has been very effective. We are able to apply different sets of rules for each group which determines how they interact with customers and escalate issues."
"I would definitely recommend Freshworks to potential users."
"Freshdesk is a time saver and reduces the need for fewer employees."
"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."
 

Cons

"The price is a little high and could be reduced."
"They need to make the solution more robust."
"Automation Anywhere Control Room should update to the newer versions with one click, including the newer features. There should be minimum effort required from the IT organization. The major resistance from any organization is from the IT organization because they have a lot of dependencies and will sometimes resist doing changes because they have other activities and applications to manage. Future versions should minimizing their work."
"I would like a better code migration solution, because this is something that we do a lot."
"The stability could be enhanced."
"We have faced some downtime and crashes with the system, but with the cooperation of the Automation Anywhere team, we have been able to contain that."
"We have trouble with large volumes of data in Excel and are not getting good results."
"Some of the things I have not appreciated about Automation Anywhere is that when I was setting it up at the beginning, it was a bit complex and it required some technical knowledge for me to set it up; however, there was documentation about its use that helped me in setting it up, but mostly the setup is a bit complex."
"We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"The support from the actual manufacturer is poor."
"Agile delivery should be supported."
"They need to improve their mobile interface, as well as features regarding the extension of the mobile access to the end user."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"Technical support is not the best. It could be much, much better and offer better support to users."
"We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."
"For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."
"The solution's inbound calls could be improved."
"I would like on-the-go translation,"
"If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."
"There are a few things we have asked for, like a forward button. When a ticket comes in, we forward it, but it doesn't sync up with the forward. That is the one they have to rework. The other is when we forward the ticket, it doesn't go all, or certain things don't go with it. We have told them about it, and they are working on it. It would be better if they gave us a more standard reporting template. Although they already have some, many aren't usable. It would be easier if we had more templates to work with."
"Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution itself is free unless we want to add the support option but we have to pay for the bots we use."
"AA comes at a more affordable price than the other tools."
"They recently launched a Community Edition, which is okay, but they should have done this a long time ago."
"I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!"
"We have seen ROI on one of the process, but not on the other processes yet."
"Licensing costs range from $50,000 to $200,000."
"Their overall pricing falls in the middle of the market. Cost-wise, Automation Anywhere is quite expensive because of their analytics, IQ Bots, and MetaBots. For a standalone machine, the pricing is okay. When adding in the licensing for IQ Bots (or MetaBots), it can become quite costly."
"We're on a license package with Automation Anywhere (AA), paid yearly. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization."
"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
"It is costly."
"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
I think the main problem with Freshdesk is the deep settings, interface, and analytics. When you need complex cross-f...
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
My main use case for Freshdesk is customer support tickets. A specific example of how my team uses Freshdesk for cust...
What advice do you have for others considering Freshdesk?
My advice for others looking into using Freshdesk is to consider that compared to Zendesk or Salesforce, where the se...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
No data available
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Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
Find out what your peers are saying about Cherwell Service Management [EOL] vs. Freshdesk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.