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Cherwell Service Management vs Freshservice comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cherwell Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Freshservice
Ranking in Help Desk Software
4th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (10th), Cloud Management (10th), IT Asset Management (4th), AI IT Support (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshservice is 3.9%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Freshservice3.9%
Cherwell Service Management1.7%
Other94.4%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
RF
IT Service Delivery Manager at Symposiam
Automation and AI have transformed our service delivery and have made IT support faster and more efficient
I always keep up with Freshservice's roadmaps and new features. Freshservice has been very good at listening to feedback and adding those feature requests into their next iterations. I wish they would offer more granular data export options for utilizing in Power BI, along with predictive analytics for capacity planning and SLA breaches to enable more proactive support management and reduce firefighting. While the dashboards are effective, some users find custom reporting limited compared to ServiceNow or Jira. I would also appreciate deeper integrations, especially for niche apps requiring development coding work to enable advanced orchestration. Native integrations for DevOps pipelines such as GitHub Actions and Jenkins, along with stronger API flexibility for complex workflows, would enhance functionality. Although the CMDB and asset management are solid, they do lack advanced dependency mapping compared to other enterprise tools. My wishlist includes automated impact analysis for changes and improved visualization of asset relationships, enabling quicker resolutions from an agent's perspective when alerts come in. I acknowledge that Device42 may enhance this, but it is an extra cost beyond what we already pay. While Freddy AI is excellent for triage and suggestions, some users desire more proactive automation, such as predictive ticket routing based on historical patterns and AI-driven capacity forecasting. Lastly, the pricing tiers might seem rigid for mid-sized teams, so a more granular add-on option for features such as Device42 or pay-per-use for orchestration workflows could be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"The most valuable feature of Freshservice is you can assign downloaded tickets and the reports are useful."
"It has a very easy, flexible model. You can open up a particular module and work on the next. That's what we did. Overall, it provides a simple way of getting your support teams up and running. That was one thing that I thought was quite easy to do."
"With Freshservice in place, we have reversed the trend of creating tickets."
"It has reduced the time to look up who is responsible for a service, and it has reduced the time to finalize a service request because it now goes directly to the person who is responsible for the service in that location. So, a service request is handled quickly and directly by the person responsible for it."
"What I have seen in Freshservice is there's no room for customization. Which works as an advantage in some cases and it works as a disadvantage in others. If you are someone that starts managing your IT services, it is a great solution, because there's no way to go out away from the direction of the system. You have to follow the process as it was intended for the designers of a solution because there's no room for customization or configuration."
"Freshservice has had a significant positive impact, especially when managing AWS-related IT operations by centralizing incident management and automating repetitive tasks."
"The solution has been stable."
"It allows for customization and offers a broad feature set."
 

Cons

"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"We'd like to see a CMDB, a Configuration Management Database, in the future."
"Not integrated with Google."
"The product should look at BCM or ServiceNow and see if there are features that would make nice additions. It would help them stay competitive."
"The round robin ticketing feature that they have is not ideal."
"A chat bot needs to be added to the portal."
"Freshservice has an AI agent that needs improvement for finding knowledge base articles."
"Freshservice could improve the delegation and workflow management features."
"You can't implement a complicated delivery workflow. We don't have the same problems with incident and change workflows. It's only for delivery workflow. They have a mechanism for modifying your incident or change workflow. There's a visual interface for that, so there's no reason not to have the same function for request management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
"It was a middle tier. It wasn't an expensive one. It was a tier model usage. Licensing costs varied between admin users and regular users."
"The solution may be around 20,000 euros a year."
"Our licensing fee for Freshservice is $2,500 a year."
"Its price is great. Its pricing is supposedly a lot less than ServiceNow and other alternatives."
"Freshservice is a fairly cheap solution. Though monthly payments can be made towards the licensing costs of the solution, my company prefers to make annual payments."
"The price of Freshservice could improve, it is expensive."
"We're basically paying about $100 USD per agent per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Freshservice?
The solution has been very helpful engineering insights into the client's environment. We have been able to manage calls and incidence very efficiently which provides us with a clear understanding...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
I do not have any experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, as it was assigned to the infrastructure team.
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
Freshservice is a strong IT service management platform, but there are several areas where it could be further improved to deliver even more value. One key area is advanced reporting and analytics....
 

Also Known As

No data available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
Find out what your peers are saying about Cherwell Service Management vs. Freshservice and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.