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Online Help Desk Software
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SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk is suitable for companies seeking a help desk solution that offers IT service management (ITSM) functionalities. SolarWinds Service Desk offers comprehensive service desk functionality that helps businesses...Read more
InvGate Service Desk
InvGate Service Desk
InvGate Service Desk is an IT service management platform that offers help desk request fulfillment, customer service and support and self-service knowledge management. The system is compatible with Mac, Windows, and iPad (or othe...Read more
Asset Vue Inventory
Asset Vue Inventory
Asset Vue provides cloud-based IT asset management solutions, which helps businesses of all sizes across industries to track inventory in real-time and record their functional status and location. Companies in regulated industries...Read more
Software pricing tips
Read our Online Help Desk Software Buyers GuideSubscription models
- Per employee/per month: This model allows you to pay a monthly fee for each of your employees.
- Per user/per month: Users pay a monthly fee for users—normally administrative users—rather than all employees.
Perpetual license
- This involves paying an upfront sum for the license to own the software and use it indefinitely.
- This is the more traditional model and is most common with on-premise applications and with larger businesses.
Rated best value for money
Document360
Document360
Document360 is a cloud-based help desk solution that enables users in businesses across various industries to create, collaborate and publish self-service knowledge bases for their products. Features include content management, gu...Read more
ChangeGear
ChangeGear
ChangeGear is a premier IT Service Management solution. ChangeGear delivers a comprehensive platform for enterprise with innovative IT Service Management capabilities, ITIL-based modules, the award-winning AI & Machine Learning...Read more
SupportHero
SupportHero
Support Hero is a cloud-based knowledge management solution that helps users create informative articles/tutorials and improve customer satisfaction. Key features of this platform include private content, SSO, statistics down to t...Read more
TeamSupport
TeamSupport
TeamSupport is a post-sale award-winning customer support software company built specifically for the unique needs of B2B (business-to-business) technology-enabled companies within the computer software, hardware, information tech...Read more
TeamViewer
TeamViewer
TeamViewer is an online meeting and video conferencing solution that connects any PC, mobile, and server to each other globally. The solution is available in nearly all countries and supports over 30 languages. TeamViewer is suita...Read more
Confluence
Confluence
Confluence is a project management solution that enables organizations to create, collaborate, organize and review project documents. The system offers both cloud-based and on-premise deployment. Confluence’s editor feature a...Read more
ConnectWise Control
ConnectWise Control
ConnectWise Control is cloud-based operations management solution that allows technicians to perform remote support, gain remote access and run remote meetings. It acts as a meeting point for technicians and customers, enabling th...Read more
Popular Online Help Desk Software Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: May 23, 2022What's meant by the term "help desk software'" can be unclear. Go browse a handful of vendor websites, and you'll see the term "help desk" applied to two distinct groups of software—general customer service software and software for managing IT assets and services.
While customer service and help desk software do share some common applications—a central ticket-tracking system, for example—they are by no means interchangeable. If you were to purchase customer service software to manage your small business's IT endpoints and networks, you'd quickly regret the decision. And if you tried managing your company's customers with software designed to manage computers and networks, you'd regret that all the more!
This guide is about cloud-based help desk software for IT management. If you're looking for customer service software, take a look at our customer service software buyer's guide.
But, if you're looking to manage and support your internal IT assets, you're in the right place. Here's what we'll cover:
What Is Online Help Desk Software?
Common Features of Online Help Desk Software
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Market Trends to Understand
What Is Online Help Desk Software?
Online help desk software helps companies manage their entire IT infrastructure, which can include:
- Individual endpoints, such as desktop computers, laptops and tablets
- Peripherals, such as printers, scanners and POS systems
- Back-end equipment, such as servers and backup storage systems
- Networks and networking hardware, such as LANs, routers and Wi-Fi access points
- Any software that keeps the business running and employees productive
This is an IT-centric definition. From the point of view of the employees who rely on IT, online help desk software is more about getting support for IT services. It's a small but important distinction we'll discuss more below in the Market Trends to Understand section.
Like most software, help desks began as on-premise (i.e., locally installed) software. Today, online help desk solutions are cloud-based, meaning that they're hosted, updated and maintained by the vendor. Many of these tools provide both cutting-edge functionality and user-friendly interfaces.
RemedyForce is an online help desk solution that offers a user-centric interface
For most small businesses, online help desks are the smartest choice. They require little (or no) installation of local software, are automatically updated and patched by the vendor, have lower startup costs and provide the best end-user and administrator experiences.
Common Features of Online Help Desk Software
| IT asset management | Tracks and manages all physical IT hardware owned by (or used within) a business. |
| Network monitoring and management | Helps administrators control and configure networks and network access, while monitoring traffic and connections. |
| Knowledge management | Organizes the information, or knowledge, used by IT department employees. Can be used as a self-service resource for employees. |
| Configuration management | Manages the settings and permissions configured on individual devices. Lets administrators apply configuration or settings changes to multiple devices at once. |
| Service catalog management | A service catalog helps larger organizations guide their employees to the IT staff that can best support them. Service catalog management functions help administrators create and maintain these catalogs. |
| License management | Helps companies track and make the best use of their software licenses. |
| Remote access and control | Allows technicians to access and control a workstation from a remote location, facilitating remote diagnosis and resolution with minimal end-user involvement. |
| Impact analysis tools | Analyzes planned changes for any potential conflicts, flagging possible conflicts before the changes get rolled out. Provides a “look before you leap" style safeguard. |
| Service level agreement (SLA) management | SLAs guarantee that issues of a certain type will be addressed or resolved within a certain timeframe, among other service guarantees. These features allow users to set prioritization triggers, automatic escalations and other custom rules to ensure applicable issues are handled in compliance with an SLA. |
| ITIL compatibility | Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of IT service management best practices that ensure service management is aligned with business priorities. |
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Online help desk are generally used in two different business contexts:
Internal. This is traditionally the most common use. The help desk is the central platform for a company's internal IT department. It serves the company's local and remote employees. These buyers should look for platforms with core help desk functionality and determine requirements based on their company's IT environment, strategy and growth plans.
Managed service provider (MSP). Companies can outsource their IT services management to third-party companies called managed service providers, or MSPs. MSPs should look for help desk systems with more robust remote access and control applications and tools for managing and monitoring individual service level agreements.
Market Trends to Understand
Over the past decade, IT service management has undergone a change in perspective. It began as an IT-centric discipline in which problems and services were managed with a focus on the underlying assets and tools. With today's more modern approach, IT service management focuses on the workflows that the IT department supports.
This shift is also described as the consumerization of IT, a phrase explained in Gartner's "Elevate the Employee Experience With Consumer-Oriented IT Service Delivery" report. It states: "The consumerization of IT isn't so much about using consumer apps for business purposes. It's more about applying the tactics of consumerization to the IT fabric, so as to make employees more agile and engaged." (Full report available to Gartner clients.)
Selecting the right online help desk platform can go a long way toward managing your company's IT to improve the end-user experience, while allowing your IT teams to manage these systems more effectively and efficiently.