SolarWinds Web Help Desk vs Zendesk comparison

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SolarWinds Web Help Desk

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

SolarWinds Web Help Desk and Zendesk compete in the IT service management sector. Zendesk generally holds an advantage with its feature-rich platform that appeals to businesses focusing on customer service.

Features: SolarWinds Web Help Desk includes robust ticketing, asset management, and integration with IT tools, making it ideal for IT-focused companies. On the other hand, Zendesk offers customizable workflows, multi-channel support, and extensive third-party app integrations, which are preferred by users in dynamic customer service environments.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could enhance its user interface and reporting capabilities and expand its multi-channel support features. Zendesk may improve by offering more affordable pricing options, simplifying setup processes for smaller teams, and enhancing offline support features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Web Help Desk is known for its quick deployment and straightforward implementation process, backed by efficient customer support. Zendesk offers cloud-based deployment for easy adoption and provides comprehensive customer support, which appeals to businesses looking for scalable solutions.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Web Help Desk generally involves a lower initial cost, offering significant ROI for IT management-focused businesses. In contrast, Zendesk, while more expensive initially, delivers greater ROI through features enhancing customer interaction and satisfaction. Zendesk's extensive capabilities attract those prioritizing comprehensive customer engagement, offsetting its higher cost.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Web Help Desk vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: March 2026).

SolarWinds Web Help Desk vs. Zendesk

March 2026

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Helped 884,873 peers since 2012

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

SolarWinds Web Help Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

19th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (4th), CRM (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (10th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (20th), AI IT Support (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Web Help Desk is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 5.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Zendesk	5.4%
SolarWinds Web Help Desk	1.1%
Other	93.5%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

GANESAN K

Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited

Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments

We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Read full review

AmandaSanchez

Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises

Macros and automation have streamlined workflows and reduced manual effort across support teams

The ability to communicate on the Zendesk ticket through the actual user software, so TOPs, would have been helpful. Somehow seeing a user's ticket history within our app would have been beneficial. That is the only thing that I do not think existed at the time that might have been helpful. Some people struggled with Zendesk, but it was always easy enough to show them how to use it and what they were missing. The only times we really had people report concerns about it was when they did not understand that it could do that or how to use it in that way.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."

"The solution scales well; currently is working for 60 help desk technicians (IT and non-IT) for over 2,000 users."

"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."

"It is easy to use."

"The biggest advantage for SolarWinds Web Help Desk is the user interface; we were able to configure a different UI for administrators, employees, and HODs based on their hierarchy level."

"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."

"Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."

"It's very great for tracking your customer service activities, building reports, and gaining satisfaction from responses."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

"We were able to get up and running with Zendesk in a very short time and build a robust web app including help desk functionality that makes the product owner and client very happy."

"Ticket submission has been completely streamlined and our ability to respond has been greatly simplified coming from our past solution (Sharepoint-based)."

"Zendesk has helped us to better connect and respond quicker to our clients."

"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."

"The most valuable feature was its simplicity as it was made easy to use."

"This feature allowed our team organize and assign certain members to a particular group."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."

"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."

"The working part, the deployment part, and the configuration part was a little bit complex."

"A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."

"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk."

"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."

"This solution needs to have mobile application support added."

"Customer Service: 6/10 – usually helpful but sometimes very slow. Technical Support: 6/10 – usually helpful but sometimes very slow."

"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."

"Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple."

"My experience with Zendesk's customer support has not been positive. When I open a ticket for a bug, it often does not expedite the resolution process."

"It would be good to be able to edit. Unfortunately, Zendesk believes that the integrity of a ticket and its comments are important."

"We needed to code stuff on our side due to business specific needs which Zendesk could not account for."

"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."

"Merging tickets is very time consuming; maybe the system can automatically merge tickets that are related and on the same topic."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."

"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"The price is very competitive."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Retailer

13%

University

11%

Performing Arts

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of use, and ease of access. These were the three functionalities we were looking for ...

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are dealing with Zoho. We are not dealing with solutions such as Zoho Mail or Zoho P...

What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more o...

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

I wish there was a more easily dynamic tool. Currently, it is quite difficult because not all the tools are labeled. A feature that would be beneficial is if hovering over an icon would tell you wh...

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JIRA Service Management vs Zendesk

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Freshservice vs Zendesk

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Freshdesk vs Zendesk

Compared 3% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs Zendesk

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Download SolarWinds Web Help Desk product report

SolarWinds Web Help Desk

February 2026

Download Zendesk product report

February 2026

Also Known As

No data available

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

SolarWinds Web Help Desk simplifies service management with unified ticketing, asset, knowledge, and change management. Key features include:

Maintain asset inventory by managing the use, availability, and health of IT assets, and tracking this over time.
Control change management, It regulates and manages change requests through automated approval workflows and panel voting options.
Employs robust reporting and monitoring using a built-in reports and dashboards to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
Automate ticketing management that Automate service request management through ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
Centralize your knowledge management, Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
Meet your SLAs, it has "SLA breach approaching" notifications and date-specific SLA reminder alerts that help customize escalation and de-escalation workflows.

SolarWinds

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

Instacart

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber