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Cherwell Service Management vs Freshdesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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

Cherwell Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (27th)
Freshdesk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (5th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.0%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Freshdesk3.0%
Cherwell Service Management1.7%
Other95.3%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

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

"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"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 dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"The UI is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Freshdesk that I have found useful are the quick and automated customer handling that uses AI and self-service options along with collaboration tools, which I plug into Slack, allowing my developer team to know directly what errors come from the main core of our website."
"Freshdesk provides a plain vanilla solution, making it user-friendly and less complex."
"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."
"Freshdesk's requirement for appending resolution details before allowing ticket closure ensures the automatic creation of a knowledge base."
"Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great."
"While using Freshdesk for their ticket management solution for reaching out to the end users, we are transferring a large part of that to the central team which is operating through ServiceNow, so everything which is flowing there ultimately flows into ServiceNow to give a 360-degree view of how well the support is running."
"It is very easy to make reports."
 

Cons

"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"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."
"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"Asset management and branding are two areas in the solution that have scope for improvement."
"Technical support is not the best. It could be much, much better and offer better support to users."
"I would like a better integration towards Azure DevOps. The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well."
"An area for improvement in Freshdesk would be enabling all features regardless of company or user size."
"The billing issues I have with Freshdesk are in terms of additional users getting subscribed without my intervention."
"I would like on-the-go translation,"
"Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs."
"I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"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."
"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"It is costly."
"The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Freshdesk?
Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
Freshdesk works great, and I do not have any suggestions for improvement; however, I do expect more features to come in the near future. I wish for improvements related to the pricing point to enha...
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
My main use case for Freshdesk is for integration with the service desk, where I integrate it with Site24x7 to receive tickets based on notifications triggered by Site24x7. A specific example of ho...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 vs. Freshdesk and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.