IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs Spiceworks comparison

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Read 47 Spiceworks reviews

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Spiceworks and IBM SmartCloud Control Desk compete in the IT management category with Spiceworks having an upper hand for small businesses due to its free cost structure.

Features: Spiceworks offers simplicity, strong community support, and integration with Active Directory for inventory monitoring. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk provides a feature-rich service management suite with asset management and robust automation features.

Room for Improvement: Spiceworks lacks advanced features and scalability, with reports of network scanning and basic ticketing limitations. IBM users highlight the outdated interface and complex usability, suggesting improvements in the user interface and support agility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both offer on-premises and cloud deployments. Spiceworks uses an active user community for support without direct professional services while IBM offers robust technical support but faces complexity and slower response times.

Pricing and ROI: Spiceworks is free, providing exceptional ROI primarily for small businesses, whereas IBM SmartCloud Control Desk involves annual licensing fees, catering to larger organizations with justified costs through advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Spiceworks Report (Updated: March 2026).

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Spiceworks

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Helped 885,311 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

30th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Spiceworks

Ranking in Help Desk Software

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (42nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spiceworks is 1.3%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Spiceworks	1.3%
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk	1.2%
Other	97.5%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Klemen Muhvič

Computer System Engineer at Informatika d.d.

Has centralization and asset management features, and a helpful and knowledgeable technical support team

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.

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Rohit Samel

Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd

Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports

The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

"In general, it's been pretty stable."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

"The most valuable are its flexibility and agility; it's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs."

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

"The most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs. That's the most important for us."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk pros

"After the software got deployed it all became much faster, easier and more organized."

"It's a pretty good product, I like it, and it's given me some fairly valuable information that I've needed on a couple of occasions that no other product would present to me."

"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free."

"Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product."

"The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally."

"It's easy to understand."

"The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful."

"It shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know up front."

More Spiceworks pros

Cons

"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."

"Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. They should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user."

"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."

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

"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."

"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."

"Technical support can be slow in terms of resolving issues."

"The main issue that we hear from our customers is that the self-service user interface is a little bit old, possibly due to the fact that IBM is such a large enterprise company. People say that they think they're in the year 2004, because you can very clearly see that the technology is lagging behind modern trends."

More IBM SmartCloud Control Desk cons

"I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves."

"The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice."

"Most problems are the system bugs and slowness, also because the product has a web interface that makes a lot of problems like refreshing and information loss."

"The ticketing system could be more robust, more like a service desk."

"I was never able to properly get the product to monitor our Exchange server or SQL server."

"Attachment handling within a ticket could be improved; only one item can be attached at a time unless email is used."

"I am a bit emotionally triggered and pissed off because of it because it's wasting my time and it's not what I want."

"Mac networking needs improving, as everything has to be manually entered in a Mac environment."

More Spiceworks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"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."

"The tool is cheap."

"It's free."

"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."

"The product is free! Get it now."

"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

11%

Construction Company

11%

University

Manufacturing Company

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	24
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Spiceworks?

I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.

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What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?

If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, we will ensure it is provided.

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What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?

It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially with Channel Partners. Whenever we are posting any query or reply on a ticket, i...

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Product Reports

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk

Download IBM SmartCloud Control Desk product report

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Also Known As

SmartCloud Control Desk

No data available

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

From network inventory and network monitoring to help desk software, and mobile device management (MDM) to cloud services detection, Spiceworks helps you manage everything about your IT workday from one easy place.

Sample Customers

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

Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino

IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. Spiceworks