IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs Sendbird comparison

IBM and Sendbird are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. IBM is ranked #26, while Sendbird is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 1.1% mindshare in HDS, compared to Sendbird’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Sendbird users who would recommend it.

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Read 9 IBM SmartCloud Control Desk reviews

499 Views
484 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Sendbird

Read 7 Sendbird reviews

425 Views
310 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Sendbird

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and Sendbird compete in IT service management and communication solutions. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has a stronger position due to its comprehensive IT management capabilities, while Sendbird enhances user interactions with robust chat features.

Features: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk offers IT asset management, service catalog, and incident problem management for complex IT needs. Sendbird provides advanced messaging, chat support, and real-time communication for customer engagement.

Room for Improvement: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk could enhance its user interface, reduce complexity in configuration, and improve integration capabilities. Sendbird might benefit from expanding its API documentation, improving customer support response times, and enhancing scalability for growing user bases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk deploys on-premises or private cloud with customization options and support. Sendbird operates on a cloud-based model for scalability and reduced deployment time, with customer service in line with agile release cycles.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has higher setup costs but high ROI through efficient IT management. Sendbird offers flexible subscription plans for quicker ROI via enhanced customer interaction.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

26th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Sendbird

Ranking in Help Desk Software

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Social Software (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sendbird is 0.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Sendbird	0.5%
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk	1.1%
Other	98.4%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Jose Pedro Muñoz

Director of operations at Vetasi

Helps standardize our workflow, track client tickets, and it's very flexible

Initially we used HPE Service Desk. Then, Remedy (IBM SmartCloud Control Desk) version 5. When selecting a vendor, the most important thing for us is the flexibility of the tool. It must be very flexible to change the workflow or to add new workflows for the clients. It must have stability and scalability as well.

Read full review

Pranay Koley

Junior Software Developer at Weavers Web Solutions Private Limited

Facilitates user communication with rich features

In our company, we are using Sendbird for building a chat feature within our salon application. I am using the Flutter framework to implement the chat feature, which facilitates communication between users and businesses, specifically salon shops There are many useful features with Sendbird. I…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has been stable."

"The brand name is the most valuable aspect of this solution for me. It's IBM. It's a global company that supports this product, it's not something open source or something like that."

"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."

"What I like about the Control Desk is that everything is centralized. You have all the requests in one place, you know which ones are for whom and who is working on them."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

"The workflow capability is useful. It's not a manual helpdesk operation. It's fully automated, even when an alarm has occurred. It covers the complete cycle of initiation to resolving the events. This is its most strong feature that is easily integrable with a monitoring solution. It creates tickets, and the workflow feature is the most important one."

"A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset in the company and from which date."

"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"The Sendbird developer portal provides each step, including methods, making it easy to implement."

"There are many useful features with Sendbird."

"Sendbird provides many features for real-time messaging, such as receipt ID and typing indicators."

"Sendbird is reliable and generally crash-free."

"The backend system was managed by Sendbird, eliminating the need for caching systems or local storage on user devices."

"Sendbird is very flexible, and they have made great strides towards optimization."

"Features similar to WhatsApp, such as online and offline statuses, message reactions, and replies, add significant value."

"The most valuable feature for us, besides chat, was file transfer, as we used it for sending files and images in chats."

Cons

"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."

"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."

"Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. It does work as it should and it's good, but they should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user."

"Support has been the biggest problem for us. I understand that because we use the product of a global company, some changes are not quick to deploy."

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"The user interface is not very interesting. If you look at other products like JIRA and ServiceNow, they have made it much easier for the end-users. Maybe not ServiceNow, but JIRA is quite flexible. From a presentation point of view, IBM should make more user-friendly interfaces."

"The time calculations can be improved. While working on reports, it was taking the time only in seconds, which was hard for me to work out. While creating some dialogs in the service portal, you have to use certain data types in some fields. It was very tricky to make them work. I was testing a certain type of input, and it didn't work. It didn't show me the domain that the fields have to show. I had to make the change to the database, and only then it worked. It was a tricky thing to make them work with the dialogs. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"A major issue was the requirement for a separate connection to Sendbird, resulting in a delay when initiating the chat."

"Their pricing is very high compared to competitors, which is a concern for us."

"The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information. Initially, I struggled to connect users and manage tokens for active and offline sessions, which caused frustration."

"At times, there are unexpected behaviors where the documentation suggests something different from how the SDK actually behaves, requiring us to create workarounds."

"Impersonating a user or using a template user to send messages for development purposes would be very useful."

"I thought that there should be the audio and the video call functionality as well."

"More analytics tools could be integrated into Sendbird."

"The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a yearly license. There's no additional cost. It's just the license that you need to pay for to use IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."

"It's basically for a big company because of the costs. A small company can't afford the licensing cost. For medium and large companies, it's the best product. The price of the license is on the higher side compared to others."

"The licensing we have for IBM Control Desk is on a yearly basis. They have a concurrent license and an administrative license. And with these, you get all the products. There aren't any additional fees for extra add-ons or anything like that."

"There is a starter plan for $399 per month, and a pro plan for $799 dollars."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Help Desk Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sendbird?

Testing Sendbird is challenging due to the trial limitations of only one hundred users. The subscription cost is quite high, which prevents us from subscribing before the project completion and use...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sendbird?

The documentation for integrating with the Flutter framework is lacking detailed information. Initially, I struggled to connect users and manage tokens for active and offline sessions, which caused...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Sendbird?

See all answers

Comparisons

Zendesk vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 19% of the time

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 18% of the time

ServiceNow vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 17% of the time

ConnectWise PSA vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 17% of the time

Ameyo Fusion CX vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Compared 16% of the time

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk Competitors

Zendesk vs Sendbird

Compared 100% of the time

More Sendbird Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

September 2025

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Social Software

September 2025

Download Sendbird product report

Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

Sendbird Calls, Sendbird Desk

Overview

IBM Control Desk on Cloud offer an access to a user friendly self-service, automated service management, and seamlessly-integrated, best-practice based service desk capabilities. IBM Control Desk provides the IT service management (ITSM) needed to simplify support of users and infrastructure. It also offers a unified IT asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets and enables control, governance and compliance to applications, endpoints and assets to protect critical data and prevent outages. Control Desk is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-compliant, accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools.

IBM

Sendbird offers scalable, API-driven chat features tailored for real-time messaging, supporting ease of integration and robust developer tools.

Sendbird is known for its scalability in managing extensive chat groups and API-based operations, complemented by an effective developer portal. It offers real-time messaging with features like file transfer, receipt IDs, typing indicators, and message reactions, all enhancing communication. The platform optimizes reliability through metadata and online/offline messaging capabilities. However, users experience challenges with SDK connection delays, URL thumbnail generation, and message display, particularly during version transitions. Concerns about pricing, support, and documentation quality, as well as the absence of audio/video calls and analytics tools, are mentioned.

What are Sendbird's most noteworthy features?

API-Based Approach: Offers seamless integration for various app functionalities.
Real-Time Messaging: Facilitates file transfer, typing indicators, and message reactions.
Scalability: Supports large chat groups with robust management capabilities.
Developer Portal: Provides comprehensive tools for customization and optimization.

What should users expect in terms of benefits and ROI?

Efficiency in Communication: Chat room management enhances user interaction.
Reliability: Provides optimized messaging capabilities even with high user loads.
Scalability: Grows with business needs, handling expansive communication requirements.
Versatile Applications: Supports sector-specific implementations like healthcare and travel.

Sendbird is implemented across industries for chat functionality. In travel, it connects users with flight attendants; in business, it facilitates customer interactions. Healthcare utilizes it for patient-doctor consultations. Social media and real-time applications employ it for chats and video calls, optimizing communication in mobile apps and enhancing user and business interactions in salon applications.

Sendbird

Sample Customers

St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird

September 2025

Free Report: IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Sendbird report.

See our list of best Help Desk Software vendors.

We monitor all Help Desk Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.