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ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

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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

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)
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (3rd)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (31st)
 

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.
Mostafiz Miah - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Presales & Technical Lead at Elitbuzz Technologies Ltd
Automation has transformed daily request handling and now tracks every customer interaction
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus helps my team manage and resolve requests compared to previous methods as we previously managed things through paperwork and diaries. After deploying ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, whenever any customer request comes, we provide the customer a product demo if they ask about the products. We then convert that request to a lead, which is converted to a demo, and then to the product POC, allowing us to follow up every stage of the requests. Everything can be tracked from ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, whether at the closing stage or the initial stage. I use ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus daily in a unique way because previously everyone managed their own tracking system through their diary, but now everyone inputs data into this solution so that at the end of the day, we can get reports on how many leads we have taken care of and when they need to be taken care of. This information is visible from the ServiceDesk tool, and using the dashboard, we can easily identify it, providing an at-a-glance view. The best features ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus offers for my team include automating manual tasks, which allows whatever tasks we previously did manually to be converted into automatic tasks. Currently, they have also introduced Zia, a very helpful solution for us. Using Zia, we can search for anything, not only inside the tool but also outside, integrating it with ChatGPT and Teams, and it can integrate with other ManageEngine solutions as well as solutions such as Jira and ServiceNow. When we integrate our network monitoring solutions with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, it automatically raises an incident ticket and assigns it to the right team whenever any incident has occurred, which saves us time and reduces manual tasks. Previously, we had to communicate to the right people through mail or phone calls after an incident, but now the incidents are automatically converted and assigned to the relevant support groups along with the SLA. The integration with Teams allows us to raise tickets without logging into the portal, and we can see the ticket status and add comments through Teams, which is very helpful. Additionally, mail integration can automatically convert emails into tickets, adding further efficiency. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus has positively impacted our organization, particularly in customer satisfaction. Previously, customers managed service requests, incidents, changes, and problems manually, but after integration, most of these processes are automated. This includes change requests that now follow a workflow based on organizational needs and ITIL best practices, making tracking incidents and requests much easier for end customers through scheduled reports.
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very user-friendly. Nobody has to sit down and work on coding. We have a drag and drop option where anybody can understand it."
"Overall, the product is very good where the repetitive tasks are more in manufacturing industries and the finance department."
"Automation Anywhere is unlike any other software; Automation Anywhere provides me with my bread and butter, and I just love the tool."
"My organization has worked with multiple clients and helped them automate their repetitive and mundane processes, and these organizations have seen a drastic increase in employee productivity, reduced human errors, and better SLAs, all of which leads to customer satisfaction."
"With Automation Anywhere you can read and extract CSV data easily. You don't need multiple commands to read it."
"The Visual Studio integration is smooth and user-friendly."
"The ROI on major bots has been phenomenal."
"Automation Anywhere has by far, provided one of the best and easiest solutions to implement RPA."
"It's stable."
"It ensures the tracking of all costs for end-user issues."
"I have been impressed by how easy it is to operate and how easy the structure is to manage service tickets. If they request an incident problem train, it's a very strong model. Another strong feature in the tool is the CMDB."
"The auto-routing feature saves a lot of effort, where we used to spend a lot of time manually assigning things."
"Even though I haven't been able to test other products and I've used a very old version of ManageEngine, I still think it met our requirements and that it has everything that we need to work as an IT department."
"When somebody wants to follow up with a problem from the past, the solution makes it easy. It keeps everything in one system and updated."
"The costing for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is very flexible and is considered low-priced."
"Overall, its integration is good. There is a lot of integration that we have done. All alerts are coming to ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. Its VIP feature is also very useful where you can specify who are our VIPs. When the service desk engineer picks up the call and gets the name, he or she knows that the person is a VIP and treats him or her accordingly. It also has a mobile interface. Anybody can use the app to log cases. It is easy for the end users as well as for the approving party. For the workflow, it is easier for senior managers to give approvals through the mobile interface."
"It is easy to use."
"SolarWinds is a very good application that provides you with a detailed monitoring capability of your network and assets."
"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."
"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."
"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."
"A person who is not in IT, but has some good ITSM knowledge will be able to configure it directly on SolarWinds, and Manage Engine."
 

Cons

"The vendor should increase the training and other engagements with users before they acquire the platform, as this will simplify its usage further and ensure that there no hindrances in using the platform."
"I would like more integration with Microsoft Excel. More screenshots that can be integrated with Excel would help our customers too."
"We have a few issues which have persisted. These end up restarting the machine. We are hoping in version 11.3 of Automation Anywhere, our compatibility and infrastructure issues will be resolved."
"The Automation Anywhere community is less active than the UiPath community, which is a downside. When I ask questions in the Automation Anywhere community, responses take a longer time."
"They need to improve the real-time data and analytics."
"The control room itself is easy to use. One area that could potentially be improved is adding additional widget capability within the main dashboard in the control room itself."
"I want the tool to be more stabilized. After three or four hours, the navigation keeps changing. We will be running error handling for 8,000 process and the system will fail. We need it to be more stable."
"The basic features are acceptable, but advanced tools often require deeper technical expertise, which can slow adoption. Additionally, some users experience delays in customer support for complex issues."
"It is sometimes a bit slow. If it can have a quicker response time, it would be good for users, service desk engineers, and technicians. For service requests, they don't have an SLA for each priority. For a service request, the SLA of response or resolution is only one irrespective of the priority. SLA should be different for each priority. For a ticket, there is no response SLA for the service request. For resolution SLA, that is, P1, P2, P3, or whatever you define, you still have the same SLA. It should be different."
"The solution needs to integrate with the telecom system in more depth. Currently, the feature is limited to the SMS level for notifications."
"Its reporting could be improved."
"The licensing model should be more flexible. The current approach requires individual licenses, which become costly."
"I expected more features than it has. The flexibility is missing. I also was expecting a different level of configuration and segregation."
"Currently, I cannot configure more than one point of contact. I have the MSP version, and we have around 80 or 90 customers. I don't see the features where I can configure multiple contact points for a customer so that they're notified when we are having an outreach or when we want to send them a planned maintenance notification. Other things that are lacking are mapping SLAs with vendors and mapping back on the tickets."
"ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus could improve by making asset management better. The professional version has asset management but it should be available in the free version, it would help my organization."
"Security could be better. It would be better if ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus had really good defense products like BlackBerry. I can recommend BlackBerry for the defense part, but not the other things. For example, before we switched over to ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, we had issues with mobiles switching off cameras, and now it doesn't happen at all."
"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."
"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."
"This is a good solution, but the GUI is really old-fashion and needs to be updated."
"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk."
"However, it's a little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
"The technical team is not competent, or available, and they do not know the product."
"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."
"The program seems buggy to me. Not infrequently, when I click to add a Note, the Notes section disappears instead of opening a box to add a Note."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Automation Anywhere's pricing falls within the mid-range, but the long-term benefits outweigh the initial investment."
"If it is saving FTE and Generating a good ROI then it is Worth Investing."
"From my experience, I can say that the initial setup cost is easily recovered over a period of time once the bots start running in production."
"Licensing costs range from $50,000 to $200,000."
"They are already coming out with a community license, which is really good. That's something that I wish to have."
"While calculating the setup cost you should account for the server, virtual machines, product licenses, maintenance costs, and running costs."
"If we talk about the automation RPA. it definitely has worked very well for us. I'm talking about giving good savings, about more than 180 FTE savings, after implementing more than 200 plus bots. It has worked well. As an organization, it has supported us very well, and also for our customers."
"It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The tool's price is okay and in line with other products, maybe even cheaper than some products."
"Pricing can always be improved and made more affordable."
"It is cheaper than its competitors."
"When I compared it with a similar product, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus was $2,000 cheaper."
"ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a reasonably priced product."
"We use the cloud model, which is subscription-based, and each year, the subscription fees seem to go up, making it a more expensive solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"As compared to a lot of systems out there, it is more affordable."
"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
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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
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise81
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
Regarding pricing, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus offers three editions: Standard edition, Professional, and Enterpris...
What needs improvement with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
The biggest friction point or frustration I have run into with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is the upgrade risk and ...
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
My main use case for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is that we are receiving tickets from multiple users regarding iss...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of us...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are ...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does i...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
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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
Tranter IT Infrastructure Services Limited, Sterlite Technologies, averda, Radiology Associates
Instacart
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.