Freshservice vs ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Freshservice
freshworks.comManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
manageengine.comSide by side
| Figure | Freshservice | ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $19/mo | $10/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 9 |
| Spec score · Enterprise Service Management Software | 9.1 (#1) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Spec score · IT Change Management Software | 9.1 (#3) | 8.9 (#8) |
| Spec score · IT Vendor Management Software | 9.0 (#3) | 9.0 (#4) |
| Spec score · IT Problem Management Software | 9.1 (#3) | 9.0 (#8) |
| Spec score · Self Service Software | 9.1 (#2) | 8.8 (#8) |
| Spec score · IT Help Desk Software | 9.1 (#4) | 8.9 (#13) |
| Spec score · AI IT Service Desk Software | 9.0 (#2) | 8.8 (#6) |
| Spec score · IT Service Catalog Software | 9.1 (#2) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Spec score · Configuration Management Database | 9.0 (#3) | 8.8 (#6) |
| Spec score · IT Release Management Software | 8.9 (#4) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Spec score · IT Incident Management Software | 9.1 (#3) | 8.9 (#8) |
| Spec score · IT Knowledge Base Software | 9.0 (#6) | 8.8 (#11) |
| Spec score · IT Ticketing Systems | 9.2 (#3) | 9.0 (#8) |
| Spec score · CMDB Software | 8.9 (#6) | 8.8 (#8) |
| Spec score · IT SLA Management Software | 9.0 (#8) | 8.9 (#12) |
| Spec score · IT Service Management - Midmarket Software | 9.1 (#5) | 9.0 (#6) |
| Spec score · ITSM Software | 9.1 (#6) | 9.0 (#7) |
| Integrations | Freshworks says its marketplace has thousands of apps and its broader ecosystem exceeds 1,200 enterprise apps. | Native integrations include Endpoint Central, Patch Manager Plus, Remote Access Plus, Vulnerability Manager Plus, Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager, Microsoft 365, Active Directory, Entra ID, Zoho Assist, EventLog Analyzer and Log360. |
| Licence | Freshservice is proprietary commercial software; its Android app separately discloses third-party open-source components and their licences. | ServiceDesk Plus is proprietary licensed software rather than open source; the EULA prohibits modification, reverse engineering and redistribution and restricts an installation to one server. |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.5 out of 5 from 805 reviews | 4.4 out of 5 from 234 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.6 out of 5 from 1,320 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 253 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.4 out of 5 from 1,219 ratings | 4.4 out of 5 from 1481 ratings |
| Rating on Trustpilot | 2.2 out of 5 from 102 reviews | 3.2 out of 5 from 15 reviews |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.4 out of 10 from 367 reviews and ratings | 9.2 out of 10 from 142 reviews |
| Security controls | The trust center documents audit logging, multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, encryption at rest and encryption in transit. | Security documentation states SAML 2.0 SSO, HTTPS and SSL transport, token-authenticated mobile connections, input filtering against SQL injection and XSS, role-based access, audit trails, brute-force/DoS detection and encrypted failover replication. |
| System requirements | The web app supports the latest two versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge; mobile support is iOS 10+ and Android 7.1.1+. | The published MSP requirements list Windows Server 2019/2022/2025, Debian 11–13, RHEL 8 or later, Ubuntu 14 or later and CentOS; a baseline under 100 daily requests is 500GB SSD, 16GB RAM and four to eight CPU cores. |
| What it does | Freshservice is Freshworks' cloud-based AI service-operations and IT service-management platform covering IT service, operations, asset management and enterprise service delivery. | ServiceDesk Plus combines IT service management, IT asset management, CMDB and enterprise service management for departments such as HR, facilities and finance, with cloud and on-premises deployment. |
Plans
Freshservice
- Starter$19 a month
- Growth$49 a month
- Pro$99 a month
- Starter$19 a month
- Growth$49 a month
- Pro$99 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
- Standard$13 a month
- Professional$27 a month
- Enterprise$67 a month
- Standard Cloud$10 a month
- Professional Cloud$21 a month
- Enterprise Cloud$50 a month
- Standard On-premises$120 a month
- Professional On-premises$248 a month
- Enterprise On-premises$598 a month
In their own words
Freshservice
Freshservice is an IT management service for employee service and IT operations. Its service desk covers incident, change and problem management, service catalogs, knowledge management and SLA policies. IT asset management includes asset lifecycle management, discovery across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments, and a continuously updated CMDB. Operations features include alert and on-call management, major incident management, service health monitoring and a status page. Freddy AI includes an agent studio, a copilot for drafting responses and summarizing tickets, and insights for identifying trends. Freshworks Marketplace lists more than 1,000 integrations, including Microsoft Teams, Slack, TeamViewer, Jira and Azure AD. Freshservice offers web access, iOS and Android apps, and RESTful API access; API rate limits vary by plan from 100 to 500 calls per minute. Freshworks states that data is encrypted at rest with AES 256-bit encryption and in transit with HTTPS and TLS 1.2. GDPR and SOC 2 are listed across the four plans. Annual billing starts at $19 a month, and a 14-day trial is offered without a credit card.
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is an IT help desk product with a free plan and a 30-day trial. Its feature set includes SLA management, a knowledge base, approval workflows, an employee portal, single sign-on, and IT asset management. The paid plans separate core help desk use from broader management needs: Standard is $13 a month, billed monthly, for IT help desk work; Professional is $27 a month, billed monthly, and adds asset management; Enterprise is $67 a month, billed monthly, and includes change management and projects alongside the help desk and asset management. The product is available on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows, with mobile apps listed. That combination gives teams a way to compare the included service and asset capabilities against their plan requirements while accounting for access across desktop and mobile platforms.