Spiceworks Reviews

Spiceworks is for the IT guy that wants to monitor systems that he doesn't have a managed service partner behind him. And that's where Spiceworks has a really good place.

The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space. This is a nice thing to have. I think it's getting better at discovering network equipment.

There are a lot of disadvantages to Spiceworks because it's not an agent-based solution. So you don't get near the quality of discovery versus something that's got an agent on it. It's not really multi-tenant, in the sense that you couldn't use Spiceworks to manage multiple clients from the same console. I think if they had a paid subscription for the support it would be nice. I'd rather pay so much per asset per month to be able to pick up the phone and call them.

I have been using Spiceworks for ten years. I know it very intimately.

I think we did have some trouble, but it was not really the fault of Spiceworks. It was more the way that we reconfigured our firewalls and ports, so it couldn't discover the many things. And with all this stuff going on with ransomware and stuff like that, it's going to be challenging for all of those companies to be able to browse a network, including your network equipment, but not allowing any ports open. It's kind of difficult.

It is pretty easy to expand so it is very scalable.

That's another downside with Spiceworks. You can't really call Spiceworks. You can go to the community and you can ask questions, but you can't pick up the phone and call a number. I'd rather pay so much per asset per month to be able to pick up the phone and call them.

I looked at about 10 different systems, Lansweeper being one. SysAid, Samanage.

Very easy to setup, download the install file, it determines the IP range and away you go.

No, the last install I did of Spiceworks, which was for a customer, they're running it no problem. It's self-sufficient.

The cost could be recouped within a few months. I resolved a very critical issue a client was facing after doing a major "non-roll-back" upgrade, comparing working system vs non working systems we were able to determine the a IE patch was causing the issue and through to tool were pushed out the new update and resolved the problem within a few hours. Without SpiceWorks all 300 systems would have had to be touched. 

I have used a product called SAManage and implemented it at a number of clients and it worked really well.

So Spiceworks would have an even more market share if they had a paid subscription model because you could turn off all the advertising that pops up all the time. But I think in general, I would give it a seven on a scale of ten compared to some of the other mid-tier stuff.

I primarily use this solution for the Spiceworks Inventory system, as well as for helpdesk-related stuff. I have used it to find information to fix various issues.

The most valuable features are the inventory and personalization.

Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good. If I have taken a device off of the network then it would be nice to have it included in the same system, and not somewhere separately. That is the only thing that I have to look for outside of this solution.

I have been using Spiceworks for about four years.

I have not had any issues with stability.

This solution does not seem to have any trouble scaling up, or down. I am the only person who is currently using Spiceworks in the company.

I am very satisfied with the community support. I find most of my solutions there.

Prior to using Spiceworks, I used a local tool. I switched because it has the ability to scan the network and find devices. I just have to punch in the credentials for the different devices and it will go off and do all of the scans for you. It will also provide all of the information about purchase dates and warranties.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is nice and easy to follow.

Spiceworks is a system that I recommend for both inventory and helpdesk, although it is good in its entirety. Other than support for integrated asset management, I cannot think of additional features that I would require.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We're primarily using the solution so that we have all of the information about our IT assets, and network management. Spiceworks has good tools for that.

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 would be nice to connect multi Spiceworks servers together to get all of the information across different sites. Currently, Spiceworks works only on a local site, not multiple sites.

It would be nice to have remote access to the solution via a tablet. They also need remote control from a PC. Right now, to complete the technical support process, you have to have a tool to access the PC, and check the problems.

The solution is very stable.

Technical support is very good. I'd say we're 95% satisfied with it.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We're using the community edition of the solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for asset management of our asset collection.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the asset inventory.

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.

It would be ideal if they could add contract management features into the solution in a future release.

Regarding Contract management, I'd like to register all my support/renewal contracts and reminders for renewal.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable and efficient.

The scalability is okay, but it could be improved. We have about 800 users currently. We don't plan to increase usage at this time.

We've never reached out to technical support, so I don't have any experience with them.

Previously, we used Manage Engine. It was a bit slow, and a little bit old, which is why we switched.

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment typically takes an hour or less. You only need one person to deploy the solution and two people for maintenance.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

The solution is free. We're not paying for any licensing or other costs.

I didn't evaluate other options before choosing Spiceworks.

We use the on-premises deployment solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Tickets by e-mail, with actions by hastag.

We are able to escalate tickets, or shuffle tickets via e-mail, instead of having to login at a location to route things. Clients know immediately what is going on with a ticket.

The SNMP sniffer requires a lot of work to get right.

I've been using Spiceworks personally for over seven years, five in my current environment.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues encountered with the stability.

There were no issues encountered with the scalability.

It's great.

It's great.

I've used and evaluated others - Spiceworks is the best bang for the buck.

Straightforward, aside from the SNMP config.

In-house. I installed and set up.

As a free solution, it has provided us a huge benefit, with the only expense being a virtual machine off of an existing cluster.

It's free.

Take the time to set up the SNMP agents to match up with the hardware you know you have on your network. It is a really great tool when it comes time to inventory or track equipment uptime/age.

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

I don't have a specific organization at this time. I was a SpiceTrainer, and I helped other organizations deploy and manage their Spiceworks installations. When I began using the product, I was working for a company that had no helpdesk, and it was chaos. I was supposed to support 250 end users, and about 500 endpoints across four states. On my first day, a rainy one, I hadn't even removed my coat before a user was begging for help with a fax application. In less than six months, I had everyone in my division sending tickets and we were handling, on average, about 180 tickets per month. This was a drastic change from “just send an email” type of support and everyone was happier for it.

Recently, they deployed a login process that links to their online community. While I understand that change, I don't agree with it. They've also tried to integrate it with social logins, like Twitter and LinkedIn, and that type of login authentication has no place in a corporate application. Resources spent on this social aspect could have been used to fix the existing login to sync with AD for the IT users (it already syncs to AD for end users) and everyone would have been happier. This would have been especially good since Spiceworks has become more and more predominant for enterprise level IT instead of the SMB market that they started with. Taking that in to consideration, I also believe that their new CEO needs to take the application in a new direction and make it enterprise ready with performance and capabilities that can meet that environment. Right now, if you have >2000 endpoints in Spiceworks, you will probably hate using it just because it's so bogged down. I've done installations for clients that were in excess of 5,000 nodes and it's just dreadful. They may be edge cases for Spiceworks, but I see them becoming more prevalent as time wears on, especially if Spiceworks continues to dominate the IT landscape with their community.

I started using it in August 2008 when it was v3.1. New versions are released approximately every six months.

As a consultant doing installations professionally, I am almost exclusively hired to handle difficult installations. I work to train the IT group as I'm performing the install(s), and show them how to maintain it so that I'm not just “that Spiceworks guy.” I also do this because I hated it when a contractor would come in, set something up in my environment and then I was expected to maintain it without that contractor having communicated anything to me at all.

The stability of the program is remarkably good, with some exceptions. As I've noted, any installation in excess of 2500 nodes is going to be slow and it requires some extra work to maintain and configure. If you don't do it right, the application will perform poorly and crash. Similarly, there are plug-ins that you can add (written by IT pros) which may decrease reliability. Overall, however, I think it's very good. I wouldn't say perfect; my test install fails about twice a week and requires a service restart.

Spiceworks support is only surpassed by the baristas at Starbucks. If the support guys were allowed to do call outs, I'm sure they would, and I know they do on certain occasions. Their support is free, just like the application(s), and all email based. They really know the product and when they have a problem they can't fix, it gets logged and you can see the bugs in the community.

They are very technical, with many of their team having converted from being SysAdmins to doing support. They have to be on the ball; their clients are all IT pros!

I've used SCCM and it sucks. A lot. It took three months to configure/setup, and it didn't provide a good helpdesk solution. SCCM also doesn't manage non-Microsoft endpoints, so switches and routers were not tracked, and it was impossible to get a feel for how big the environment really was. The worst part was deploying an agent from SCCM to all MS endpoints; Spiceworks is agentless.

When I first set Spiceworks up, I did it on my laptop and ran through the wizard, getting the Inventory information done. It took a while to scan so I set it aside. It wasn't until a week later that I came back to it and realized what it had done with the couple of credentials I had supplied. I thought it was just a simple toy because of all the colors and icons, and here it had gathered my warranty information, models, serial numbers and more. That was when I really started digging in to it and began using it. Before the end of that month, users were submitting tickets and I was a happy, organized IT person.

When I deployed, the application was very basic. There were no consultants like me available. The community was small and Spiceworks had one person as their support group. The devs and founders would often respond to threads in the community. I didn't need any help. Now, the application has grown so much that I would highly recommend that any IT department with more than 3 people, or more than 2000 nodes to manage, contact someone like me (there's one other guy in Atlanta that does the same thing I do for Spiceworks consulting) before doing your installation. The training James and I can provide is invaluable and we'll make sure your database doesn't get horked up!

The product is free so the ROI is outstanding. The real concern on ROI isn't purchasing the application, or the server(s) it needs to live on. It's the time spent configuring and learning it, especially with some of the new quirks. The man-hours spent on configuration and solving scan errors can be very disheartening to management. To that end, I would say that a modern installation would have a good ROI, about 5/10, though it's possible to raise your ROI if management sends the IT team to a place like Spiceworld (the annual convention in Austin) or contact a SpiceTrainer. There are free “classes” online at www.SpiceworksUniversity.com, and they're great if you can focus on them.

The product is free! Get it now.

In addition to SCCM, we [former job] also checked TrackIT and Heat. Their price-point was too high.

If you're a one-man IT shop, or the accidental IT pro (the CEO's cousin that hooked up an Xbox that one time and now you're in charge of 45 users), get some training on the product. Use the free stuff online at the very least. The same goes for the large IT shops with over people in the team. If you're in the latter position, get your company to hire someone to help with the install, especially for those larger environments. You'll be glad you did!

Help Desk, Inventory, Purchases, Reports

We are a IT consulting firm for several companies and implemented SpiceWorks for a centralized help desk solution. Now each customer can submit a help desk ticket, it then is routed to a technician who then contacts the customer. We copy the customer, lead technician, and the account manager to not only close the communication gaps but to hold everyone responsible.

Reporting has been a huge success for our account managers on open tickets, for our IT manager on inventory, time spent on tickets and purchases for our invoicing, and etc.

Purchasing has also been very helpful keeping track of our many purchases. Both real time understanding what the status is on our purchase and to recall past purchases for price comparison or when you need to make the exact same purchase again.

Reporting for any application is a must. Where the reporting is very useful in SpiceWorks, I would like a more powerful reporting tool to better filter what I want and do not want. There are some built in filters, but a simple if-then ability would be incredibly helpful to narrow down my reports.

5 years

Deployment is easy but getting the full details on every networked component can be a challenge. The product has gotten better over the years but there are still some complexities you will more then likely struggle with. There is a client that can be installed to correct this however the client was designed for mobile devices and will categorize them as such by default.

Stability has been solid for all the years I have used this product.

We have taken this from a central location and expanded our reach over 8 different companies with around 1000 devices all reporting to one location. I have had no issues and dont foresee any as we continue to expand and install SpiceWorks at our remaining customers.

I have only used customer service twice and both times they were exceptional.

The initial setup is very easy.

The investment with SpiceWorks is your employee time. The product is free. Our ROI is based on the ability to provide our customers with not only better response times to issues but proactively. Using a product like SpiceWorks helps reveal needs or issues before they become critical. When there are needs for improvement we can bill for that time and look better because our customer networks run more stable.

This product is free.

This is not a true managed service product as many might think at first glance. This product is awesome for help desk, inventory, purchasing and some monitoring. If you are looking for a full managed service product you will need to keep moving to a different solution such as LabTech.