6 Top-Rated Affordable ITSM Software
If, as an IT service provider, you’re spending a lot of time addressing common questions that users can find answers to in the knowledge base, consider investing in IT service management software (ITSM). With this tool you can provide self-service options to your customers and employees, leaving you with ample time to focus on critical IT requests.
However, before you decide to purchase any ITSM tool, you should analyze various options available in the market to find a tool that meets your business needs. We suggest you start with an affordable option before making a long-term commitment.
To help you find the right tool, we have highlighted the six top-rated affordable ITSM software based on their pricing, as found on vendor websites and verified software reviews. Based on our research, we've considered products priced less than $35 per month as affordable software and have arranged them in ascending order. Read more.
The tools listed in this article are dedicated IT service management software offering change management, incident management, and problem management as core features.
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between January 2022 - January 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
1. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a comprehensive solution that integrates incident management, project management, contract management, and knowledge management into a single interface, simplifying IT support operations. It also helps enhance asset management by consolidating asset details such as IP addresses, domain credentials, and user information. The software tracks asset changes, monitors their usage, and manages purchasing agreements.
Product features of interest*:
Service catalog: Create a directory including all types of IT services you offer to your end users, with details including expected resolution time, costs, and required approvals. This catalog aids in simplifying service delivery, making it easier for users to find and access IT services.
Change management: Maintain comprehensive documentation for all IT infrastructure-related changes, such as password changes, software updates, and network reconfiguration. Create workflow processes to better manage and implement the planned changes, and evaluate the potential impact of upcoming changes.
Customized domain: Replace the generic ServiceDesk Plus URL with your own branded link, making it easier for employees and customers to remember and access the service desk. The personalized domain URL will enhance brand identity.
Starting price: $10 per user, per month (for English language)
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, chat, and phone support
Who should consider ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
IT managers and teams looking to efficiently oversee their assets and manage service requests can benefit from ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. The tool will help them discover, track, and manage IT assets, including hardware and software. It’ll help ensure optimum resource utilization, thus maximizing return on investment. Additionally, it’ll simplify contract management by monitoring assets’ expiration dates, enabling timely contract renewals, and ensuring smooth, uninterrupted operations.
2. Wavity Help & Service Desk
Wavity Help & Service Desk leverages artificial intelligence to analyze customer interactions and identify high-risk support tickets. This analysis enables you to quickly respond to customer inquiries and offer personalized solutions. Besides, Wavity Help is a no-code platform, featuring a drag-and-drop interface that helps you build workflows and software applications. Alternatively, you can customize pre-designed templates to address the unique requirements of your support team.
Product features of interest*:
Email ticketing: Automatically convert customer emails into trackable IT support tickets. The system categorizes, prioritizes, and assigns these tickets to appropriate support staff based on predefined rules, simplifying communication and ensuring timely and organized responses.
Alert management: Identify and notify the relevant personnel about critical incidents or system anomalies. It automates the monitoring of IT services and infrastructure, triggering alerts based on predefined thresholds or unusual patterns.
Third-party integrations: Integrate Wavity Help & Service Desk with third-party project management, data management, and collaboration tools to sync the data. This integration ensures a cohesive IT ecosystem and provides a comprehensive view of IT operations.
Starting price: $12 per user, per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, video demos, emails, chat, and phone support
Who should consider Wavity Help & Service Desk?
Customer support managers can leverage the no-code functionality of Wavity Help & Service Desk to build specific workflows and applications that are unique to their business requirements. Additionally, they can also set up automated responses for common queries. This will help ensure every customer receives immediate acknowledgment and basic support, enhancing customer satisfaction.
Pro tip
Opt for a tool with activity-tracking features so that you can monitor tasks and ensure accountability and transparency in your IT operations. This visibility helps you identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and enhance productivity.
3. BOSSDesk
Along with the help desk, incident, problem, and change management, BOSSDesk helps with facilities management. It allows the users to report facility-related issues through a centralized portal, similar to how IT tickets are raised. The system automatically generates work orders based on received requests and categorizes, prioritizes, and assigns these orders to the relevant maintenance staff or department, simplifying the response process.
Product features of interest*:
Dashboard reports: Visualize the key performance indicators and metrics related to IT service management operations, including ticket status, agent performance, and service level compliance, on a dashboard. These dashboards support quick data analysis and help make informed decisions, identify trends, and optimize processes for improved efficiency.
Knowledge base: Create a centralized repository that stores and organizes information, such as solutions to common issues, how-to guides, and FAQs. It enables users to quickly find answers and resolve problems independently, reducing the volume of incoming support requests.
Workflow automation: Automate routine tasks and processes by creating predefined rules and conditions that trigger specific actions, such as ticket routing, notification sending, or status updates. This reduces manual effort, minimizes errors, and speeds up response time.
Starting price: $19 per user, per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, emails, chat, and phone support
Who should consider BOSSDesk?
Small business IT support and administrative teams can consider investing in BOSSDesk to simplify IT ticket and facilities management operations. The tool allows users to report both IT-related and facilities-related issues via the same interface and alerts the relevant support service member, enabling quick response. Moreover, managers can track the status of ticket resolution and agent performance on a dashboard. They can also analyze the metrics to spot trends in incoming tickets or agent performance to make data-driven decisions.
4. Freshservice
Freshservice features an AI-powered virtual assistant, Freddy, offering immediate support directly within Slack and Microsoft Teams. Integrating Freshservice with these platforms, alongside your knowledge base and service catalogs will allow you to handle common inquiries efficiently. It references these integrated data sources to provide accurate, conversational responses, simplifying the support process and enhancing user experience.
Product features of interest*:
Service level agreement (SLA) management: Set clear expectations for response and resolution times, and monitor these metrics in real time. Alerts are generated for potential SLA breaches, enabling proactive management. This feature helps maintain high service quality, customer satisfaction, and operational transparency.
Release management: Orchestrate the planning, scheduling, and implementation of software releases. The tool ensures updates, upgrades, or new releases are systematically deployed, with minimal disruption. This feature coordinates various departments, manages risks, and maintains stability while introducing changes.
Employee onboarding: Automate tasks, such as account creation, access provisioning, and resource allocation, to ensure a smooth and efficient start for a new joiner. This feature coordinates across departments, from IT to HR, ensuring that all necessary tools and information are provided timely.
Starting price: $19 per user, per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, community forum, video tutorials, emails, chat, and phone support
Who should consider Freshservice?
IT support teams aiming to improve user experience can benefit from Freshservice. The tool offers self-service capabilities through Freddy that resolve common questions in real time, enabling employees to get instant resolutions. Additionally, Freshservice simplifies the new employee onboarding process by automating routine tasks, ensuring a smooth introduction for new employees. The tool also supports batch onboarding, enhancing the efficiency of IT teams by creating multiple new employee accounts simultaneously.
Pro tip
Go for an ITSM tool that maintains detailed records of all system activities. This audit trail facilitates compliance with regulatory requirements and provides a clear history of changes and actions.
5. JIRA Service Management
JIRA Service Management is a comprehensive ITSM platform that helps provide IT service to employees across the organization through a single interface. It brings together requests from various channels, including emails and chat, and allows service providers to perform bulk actions on the tickets. When an incident or problem is reported, this ITSM solution assists in investigating the root cause. It monitors the status of underlying services and helps identify potential causes.
Product features of interest*:
Request management: Capture, track, and resolve user requests, ranging from access to services, information inquiries, or provision of standard IT services. This feature prioritizes user satisfaction by ensuring efficient handling, timely responses, and clear communication.
Asset discovery: Identify and record details of IT assets within your business by scanning for hardware and software, capturing essential information, and maintaining an updated inventory of assets. This feature ensures visibility into asset utilization, supports compliance and audit processes, and aids in effective asset management.
Change calendar: Display scheduled changes to IT infrastructure in a calendar format. This improves planning, coordination, and communications of the changes, ensuring all stakeholders are aware of upcoming updates or maintenance.
Starting price: $22.05 per user, per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, community forum, email support
Who should consider JIRA Service Management?
JIRA Service Management can be a viable option for IT managers looking for a tool to help them set up their IT operations quickly. The tool comes with pre-configured request types and workflows for service management tasks. It offers templates for alerts, call schedules, automated change requests, and asset management. These templates help simplify and enhance IT service management.
6. Issuetrak
Issuetrak simplifies issue management by grouping and categorizing related issues together. This approach enhances knowledge sharing and ensures faster response rates. It also simplifies task management through automation, enabling you to create workflows, define criteria for auto-status updates, generate event-based issue notifications, and automatically distribute issues to users.
Product features of interest*:
Surveys: Gather feedback from users about their experiences with the provided IT service. It typically includes the creation, distribution, and analysis of surveys to measure satisfaction and identify areas of improvement.
Issues schedule: Create a schedule for recurring issues, updates, or maintenance activities to ensure tasks are performed in an organized manner, minimizing disruption to services. This feature helps resource allocation, prevents task conflicts, and informs stakeholders about upcoming activities.
Web forms: Design and publish web forms on websites and service portals, which users can use to submit requests, report issues, or provide information in a structured manner. These forms help capture specific data, ensuring IT teams receive clear, actionable information.
Starting price: $26 per user, per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, emails, and phone support
Who should consider Issuetrak?
Customer service managers focused on improving user experience can consider investing in Issuetrak to capture customer feedback via surveys and feedback forms. These forms can help capture data related to customer satisfaction, the behavior of the support agent, and the likelihood of recommending the provided service. This information allows service managers to accurately assess their operations and develop targeted strategies for improvement, ensuring a more effective and user-centered service approach.
Pro tip
Consider an ITSM platform that allows you to gauge customer satisfaction and gather insights on service performance via surveys and feedback. This feedback is essential for identifying areas of improvement, aligning services with user expectations, and fostering continuous enhancement of your IT service delivery.
How much does ITSM software cost?
An ITSM tool can cost as low as $10 per user per month or all the way up to $115+ per user per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, infrastructure requirements, business size/type, training availability, deployment options, integrations, and storage. Most ITSM solutions typically include the following pricing plans:
Free trial: No-cost trial plans ranging from 7 to 30 days, giving users access to either all or limited features of the software. These are ideal for businesses that wish to try out a tool before purchasing it.
Free version: Free software plans offer basic features and limited premium feature access. These are ideal for small business owners with a limited budget.
Entry-level: Starts at $10 per user per month and offers limited features, such as incident management and knowledge base. These are ideal for small businesses with basic ITSM needs.
Mid-tier: Ranges from $21 to $89 per user per month and offers advanced features such as problem management, change management, and service catalog. These are ideal for businesses that have outgrown basic ITSM solutions but don’t require the full range of functionality offered by enterprise-level tools.
High-end: Advanced plans going up to $115 per user per month offer release management, customizations, and advanced data security features. These are ideal for large enterprises.
Hidden costs associated with the affordable ITSM software
Besides the software license itself, there may be additional costs associated with affordable ITSM tools, including:
Implementation costs: Setting up and configuring the software to match your specific business processes can cost extra.
Data migration costs: Migrating data from old systems to the new ITSM software can be complex and costly.
Scaling costs: As your business grows, scaling the software to accommodate more users or additional features can lead to increased expenses.
Frequently asked questions when selecting affordable ITSM software
Does the tool integrate with various third-party solutions?
Integrating ITSM software with third-party tools such as project management software, collaboration software, and productivity software maximizes the software's value by enabling data synchronization, process automation, and a unified workflow across different platforms. Check this integration compatibility before purchasing the tool, as it will help you save time, reduce errors in manual data entry, and enhance overall operational efficiency.
What are the scalability options in ITSM software?
Your IT demands will change as the business grows. The ITSM solution you invest in should be able to handle increased workloads, new users, and expanded services without compromising performance. This adaptability reduces the need for frequent software changes, saving time and resources. Ultimately, scalability ensures that your ITSM solution remains efficient, cost-effective, and aligned with your business's growth trajectory.
Is the tool ITIL-compliant?
You should ensure the ITSM tool you're considering complies with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to guarantee it adheres to industry best practices for IT service management. ITIL compliance means the tool is designed to efficiently manage and deliver IT services, helping you improve processes, reduce costs, and enhance service quality. It also ensures that the tool supports a structured approach to service management, aligning IT services with your business needs and facilitating continual service improvement.
Methodology
For this article, we selected the top six products that met the following criteria:
Each product should be a part of Software Advice’s Frontrunners report 2023 for ITSM software.
We assessed all 15 products in the Frontrunners report for their monthly pricing (as of Jan. 17, 2024) and considered the products with publicly available pricing information. Based on the assessment, the average price was calculated to be $35. Products with a monthly subscription price lower than $35 were then shortlisted to be included in this list and arranged in ascending order.
Each product must include change management, incident management, and problem management as core features.
Each product must meet our market definition for ITSM software: “IT service management (ITSM) software helps businesses manage the delivery of services to customers, including internal and external IT support. It assists organizations with designing, automating, operating, and controlling IT services.”
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of Jan 17, 2024) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from ITSM software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.
We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.
Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s ITSM software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Software Advice directory that offer them.