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Cherwell Service Management vs Freshservice comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
28th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Freshservice
Ranking in Help Desk Software
7th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (9th), Cloud Management (15th), IT Asset Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshservice is 4.2%, up 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 (%)
Freshservice4.2%
Cherwell Service Management1.4%
Other94.4%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Trilochana Gouda - PeerSpot reviewer
Smooth incident management and easy to use while needing better escalation management
We are using Freshservice for the IT ticketing system for business users We use the ticketing system primarily, which is very easy to use for all users. Freshservice is helpful, especially in incident management. Incident management is very helpful, and the system is straightforward, making it…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"The solution facilitates a transition from an organizational structure that is function-based to a process-oriented approach."
"The most valuable feature of Freshservice is you can assign downloaded tickets and the reports are useful."
"It allowed the development team to concentrate on the client’s requirements instead."
"Freshservice's best feature is its user-friendliness."
"Its ease of use is fantastic. It is just above and beyond, especially when you compare it to something like Cherwell, Salesforce, or anything like that. It is on its own level. It is so easy to administer. The way everything is organized and the way it builds its own documentation is very good."
"Freshservice has automated a lot of our tasks, including ticket responses and call assignments, which has sped up our operations considerably."
"The workflow and the change management process are valuable."
"The portal is straightforward for the end-user, but that's not the best part of Freshservice. Integration is the part that's interesting because it's easy to set up a process. It's extremely simple to integrate. In one week, you can add change management. It's incredible."
 

Cons

"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"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."
"Some of the ways that tasks are reported on and shown can be better. You can't see tasks in your regular ticket list view. You can't see a combo view of tasks and tickets. It is a little bit difficult to get a solid overview of your list of things to do. You can only see them in separate views, instead of one single view."
"The most significant area for improvement is consistency across the different modules, as they are inconsistent. It makes me think the modules have different development teams with no consistent approach. From an end-user perspective, I can do certain operations in one module, such as instant management, but not in problem management, for example, and I don't see why that should be the case. It would be good to see more consistency in the development process."
"The product should look at BCM or ServiceNow and see if there are features that would make nice additions. It would help them stay competitive."
"The ability to customize the user interface is a bit lacking, and the reporting is a bit lacking because they're very stringent upon what you can pull reporting-wise within Freshservice. They have a lot of built-in reports that are very nice, but when it comes to customizing these, they just provide you with certain data. When you try to build your own report wizard, you aren't able to go and select some of the data that is shown in some of the reports that come with Freshservice. This is something that we have brought up with our account representative, and we have suggested these as feature updates in the future. We're still waiting on them to go and implement something like that."
"Freshservice automation capabilities are improving the way we respond to a few customers. There is a bit of delay when we must respond to the customer."
"I experienced some delay in response time for non-function critical queries."
"Asset management can definitely be improved because it doesn't pick up every single device on the network or every single piece of information. Some manual information still needs to be entered."
"On the reporting side, when we were doing reporting, one thing that was a bit of a limitation was when you had a data list containing a list of changes that have occurred for the whole time and you had to fit the list onto a page. If the list went over the page, it would just truncate it at the page. You wouldn't get all your data. So, it didn't work. That was one big stand-out for me. What we tended to do was convert things into a more readable format, and then we had more targeted exception reporting, but it would be nice to have a full list of things that could be automatically generated and that can flow over pages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"Compared to other tools, Freshservice is affordable."
"It is good for the price you pay. It has different plans. If you need all features, you need to go for a higher plan. Currently, with the second tier plan, you cannot completely separate the group of agents. So, the agent in each group can see another person's ticket. You also cannot modify the rules based on the viewable, readable stuff and cannot have a custom role in this plan. If you want to do that, you have to go for a higher plan. It works in our case because it doesn't matter if the other group can see our ticket because it doesn't contain anything sensitive. We also didn't need the project or change management features. That's why we didn't go with a higher plan."
"The cost at the current timing is very reasonable but as the product gains popularity, I anticipate it might become expensive. Fortunately my customers have been offered a generous discount making it more affordable for me and satisfying both my needs and customers requirement."
"The solution may be around 20,000 euros a year."
"I can't recall exactly how much we pay, but it is somewhere in the middle compared to the rest of the market. The more we purchase, the cheaper it becomes, and I think the solution offers good value for money."
"There are some additional costs but not that many. For example, we have unlimited assets, which is something for which we pay extra. We also paid for additional orchestration. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. They are right in the middle."
"Freshservice price is competitive, it is not more than other solutions on the market."
"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Legal Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
19%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Freshservice?
The solution has been very helpful engineering insights into the client's environment. We have been able to manage calls and incidence very efficiently which provides us with a clear understanding...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
The solution offers flat licensing and appears to be cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
There is a need for improvement in terms of automatic escalation to the next level if an issue is not resolved. It should optimize and allow customization. Additionally, asset management needs impr...
 

Also Known As

No data available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
Find out what your peers are saying about Cherwell Service Management vs. Freshservice and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.