Gist vs. Spiceworks Help Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Gist is a unified marketing, sales, and support platform. It includes live chat, a help desk, knowledge base, email marketing, marketing automation, opt-in forms, and more.
$29
per month
Spiceworks Help Desk
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management. The Spiceworks Network Monitor provides information on observed IT for problem tracking and server performance monitoring. And finally, the Spiceworks Help Desk Software lets IT personnel stay on top of issues across the network with a ticketing system. Help desk roles with role-based…N/A
Pricing
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Editions & Modules
Professional
$29.00
per month
Premium
$99.00
per month
All Tiers
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Gist
8.6
2 Ratings
3% below category average
Spiceworks Help Desk
-
Ratings
Chat history and transcripts8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat reporting8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat and web analytics8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Spiceworks Help Desk
7.7
54 Ratings
2% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings7.653 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings5.846 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.541 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.644 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.453 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.252 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Spiceworks Help Desk
7.4
51 Ratings
4% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.947 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings5.947 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Spiceworks Help Desk
5.2
51 Ratings
38% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings6.045 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings4.010 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.045 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings5.027 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Small Businesses
Olark
Olark
Score 9.6 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(112 ratings)
8.9
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(2 ratings)
10.0
(29 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(4 ratings)
8.6
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(9 ratings)
8.7
(26 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GistSpiceworks Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
Gist
If your marketing model is selling products, services, or SAAS where you are doing inbound marketing and your website will do most of the lead generation and conversion, this is a great product. From live chat, support, event tracking, and automation, you could almost put your entire business on autopilot. If your marketing model is mostly outreach to cold leads and conversion, this software currently does not have any type of sales stages or task generation. I would still use Gist for website inbound but use another software for outreach and cold leads then when they become a lead put them into Gist for marketing automation.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
It's a great helpdesk solution - we currently have five years of data within it, roughly 25,000 tickets. The older edition is a great inventory and software license tracking tool. It is easy for users to use the interface and submit tickets and requests on the web, and its email integration is solid. The new version is a below-average system monitoring tool, only giving up/down status and a few other metrics.
Read full review
Pros
Gist
  • Customer service via a unified inbox so you dont have to separately monitor your twitter, Facebook or IG account for consumer communication there. Gist unified all into one inbox, better than anyone else I've seen in the market. They archive all communications and tie them back to a single user so you get unified customer history / data.
  • Marketing segmentation and automation: they track user history and behavior across the site and have super detailed segmenting capability, on par with ActiveCampaign's, but better I'd say. Better UI for the marketing admin person, and more unified data than in AC.
  • Live chat and chatbot. Usually it's either one or the other but with Gist you can do both seamlessly.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
  • We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
  • Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
  • Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.
Read full review
Cons
Gist
  • Plan limits can be confusing. For example, there is a monthly charge for support and a monthly charge for "growth," plus there's a separate charge depending on how many contacts and seats you have. Perhaps this is normal in the industry, but it can make it a little challenging to understand the bill every month.
  • The vast amount of features means development will never be as fast as you'd like it to be (even though they release updates all the time). This may not actually be a valid concern, and it certainly isn't unique to Gist (who doesn't have a wishlist they're waiting on their favorite SaaS to get to?), but I do believe the likelihood of being stuck without your desired feature being developed goes up a lot as the product gets bigger and bigger.
  • Email deliverability has been less than perfect in the past, but it has improved drastically in the last year.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
  • It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
  • Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Gist
Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is a free tool, so there would be no hesitation if we are required to upgrade it. We have installed Spiceworks on a dedicated server with more than enough resources to get the most from this tool, so we will have this running in our department for years to come.
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Usability
Gist
It’s pretty simple, but it does a lot so there are more complicated features which depend on an individuals ability for software implementation. I am not an IT expert and I’ve managed to implement everything myself, others that are more tech-minded may find everything easier.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is user friendly and easy to set up. It can be customized to suit your needs. If there are any problems, you can go to the community forums for support and be in contact with many IT Pros, as well as the Spiceworks support staff and development teams who are always happy to help users out
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Reliability and Availability
Gist
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.
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Support Rating
Gist
Fantastic support. Ask a question, get an answer within 24 hours every time. And sometimes within a few minutes. They've always come through for me, helpful and, even when it's an issue on my end, they point me in the right direction.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.
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Implementation Rating
Gist
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth
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Alternatives Considered
Gist
Gist combines all our previous products into one application and adds many more features that would require more apps. Gist is excellent and a no-brainer all-in-one application when compared to having to manage multiple applications at higher cost. The support from the whole Gist team has been extremely responsive.
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Spiceworks Ziff Davis
EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.
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Return on Investment
Gist
  • They are perfect for me as a someone who needs a lot of bang for the buck. The chat messenger device on my website alone has brought me new prospects that I did not have to spend money recruiting.
  • I am able to save hours of time with the automated emails that are GDPR compliant.
  • I don't have to pay for a designer to have excellent looking emails either.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
  • Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
  • Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
  • Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.
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ScreenShots

Gist Screenshots

Screenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of Email MarketingScreenshot of Marketing Automation WorkflowsScreenshot of Knowledge BaseScreenshot of Meetings