Replacement for Spiceworks Help Desk

[Caffeine11]

Hi All

 

Spiceworks have announced that they will be charging for their cloud help desk from June.

 

"Beginning June 01, 2025, all accounts with 6+ employees must be on a Premium Plan. Upgrade your account now to avoid service interruptions in accessing Cloud Help Desk. Learn more"

 

Can anyone recommend a free or relatively cheap and simple IT help desk system?

 

 

 

[DalekSec]

We use Desk365.io, relatively cheap and syncs with 365/Teams 

[Oaktech]

We're using a self hosted OSTicket. Runs fine on a desktop PC with a moderate spec. 

[MicrodigitUK]

I have been using GLPI the free open source community addition for 15 years. Never let me down and is scalable to a multi academy trust with multiple sites. Mainly use the helpdesk and inventory parts of the system. Also got it integrated into O365 for SSO and user creation. Can't recommend it enough. It has adapted and grown to all the needs I have ever had with change this past 15 years.
 

https://glpi-project.org/downloads/

[notalot]

I'm in the process of settings up OSTicket (used before), same issue not staying with Spiceworks.

 

[Gongalong]

Stupid question, but what exactly do they mean by the 6+ employee limit? By luck, we only have 5 staff that administrate tickets (once we've deactivated some ex-employees), or do they add into that the number of staff that might contact the help desk?

 

(I'll go and have a look at the Spiceworks forum as well)

[notalot]

My understanding is its the number of agents on the system rather than the staff logging tickets.

[CHiLL]

21 minutes ago, Gongalong said:

Stupid question, but what exactly do they mean by the 6+ employee limit? By luck, we only have 5 staff that administrate tickets (once we've deactivated some ex-employees), or do they add into that the number of staff that might contact the help desk?

 

(I'll go and have a look at the Spiceworks forum as well)

 

For any customer with five (5) or fewer admin/tech seats, you have the option to stay on the free Core platform or move onto the Premium experience to access the ad-free experience and additional features.

Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk announces platform enhancements and a new paid offering - Vendors / Spiceworks - Spiceworks Community

[Planehazza]

Very annoying as we have 6 on our team. Spiceworks cloud really isn't very good any more, so whilst it's a paint to set up OSticket, it might be a good opportunity to upgrade.

[jthompson]

On 01/05/2025 at 14:25, MicrodigitUK said:

I have been using GLPI the free open source community addition for 15 years. Never let me down and is scalable to a multi academy trust with multiple sites. Mainly use the helpdesk and inventory parts of the system. Also got it integrated into O365 for SSO and user creation. Can't recommend it enough. It has adapted and grown to all the needs I have ever had with change this past 15 years.
 

https://glpi-project.org/downloads/

Interesting that you've had success using the helpdesk part of GLPI. I've been using it for nearly as long as you, but really just the asset inventory features. I really love it for that (it doesn't get enough love on here imho), but have never really got on with the tickets/problems/changes side of things. All a bit fiddly with not very readable email templates. Every so often I try again with it but your recommendation gives me hope that it's worth trying again. Maybe it's just that I don't have a firm enough grasp of the ITSM principles around which it's built.

 

If we finally get kicked out of using FreshDesk for free, I'd prefer to try and use GLPI rather than self hosting osTicket again.

[Planehazza]

OSTicket is a total ballache to do, yikes...