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SolarWinds Service Desk
Your IT requests arrive by email, phone and chat. Changes are approved in threads nobody can find — SolarWinds Service Desk runs incidents, changes, the service catalog and a CMDB from SolarWinds’ cloud — with change management on the $39-per-technician tier and requesters free on every plan.
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Same software. Better outcome — at a lower cost.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
The SolarWinds platform family
This page covers SolarWinds Service Desk — the cloud ITSM platform, formerly Samanage, in Essentials, Advanced and Premier. The rest:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Cloud ITSM with CMDB, change and catalog
- Formerly
- Samanage, acquired by SolarWinds in 2019
- Hosting
- SaaS only, on AWS — US, EU or Australia
- Price
- $39 / $99 / $124 per technician a month
- Billing
- Annual, up front; requesters are free
- Asset management
- Priced separately, by device, on request
- Security
- SOC 2, ISO 27001, SSO and MFA on every plan
- Analysts
- No ITSM analyst placement published
- India
- No India region; Web Help Desk self-hosts
- In India via
- TechBag — INR/GST, sizing and rollout
Understand ITSM platforms before you buy one
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is an ITSM platform?
One system for how IT takes, fixes and changes things — requests and incidents in, changes approved, and every asset and dependency on record.
A shared mailbox and a spreadsheet vs a cloud service desk — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | A shared mailbox and a spreadsheet | SolarWinds Service Desk |
|---|---|---|
| How requests arrive | Emails, calls and hallway asks | Portal, email, Teams, Slack and catalog forms |
| Making a change | A message thread and hope | Change requests with approvals on every tier |
| Knowing what breaks | The senior engineer’s memory | CIs and relationships linked to each ticket |
| Other departments | Their own shared mailbox | Segregated ESM desks from the Advanced tier |
| Who runs the server | Whoever installed the old tool | SolarWinds, in its AWS regions |
| What it is NOT | — | Not self-hosted — Web Help Desk is that product |
The cheapest test is the 30-day trial: it opens every Premier feature, so route one team's real tickets and one change through it before you pick a tier.
The five pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
Tenant
Each customer runs in SolarWinds’ cloud on AWS, in a US, EU or Australian data centre the customer selects; SolarWinds applies every update, with nightly backups to a second site.
Portal
Employees raise tickets from the branded portal, email, Microsoft Teams, Slack or the mobile app, and pick items from a service catalog; none of them needs a paid licence.
Workspace
Technicians — the only licensed users — work incidents, problems, changes and releases against SLAs, with automations and runbooks on Advanced and AI drafting on Premier.
CMDB
Configuration items and their relationships link to tickets and changes; discovery agents and a network scanner fill it, and Premier draws the dependency map automatically.
One SaaS tenant on AWS — portal in front, technician workspace in the middle, CMDB underneath, in the US, EU or Australia.
Nine capabilities. Resolve, control, extend.
SolarWinds Service Desk gives IT one cloud system for requests, incidents, changes and the assets behind them.
Tickets from every channel
Web portal, email, Teams, Slack and mobile feed one queue, with SLAs, business hours, surveys and real-time agent feedback on every plan.
A service catalog on the base tier
Requests for laptops, access or software come from catalog forms with approvals; Essentials includes the catalog, the portal and the knowledge base.
Drafts, summaries and a virtual agent
Advanced adds a virtual agent, smart suggestions and resolution summaries; Premier drafts replies, summarises incidents and links them to problems.
Change and CAB approvals from $39 a technician
Change requests with approvals, problem and release management all sit in Essentials; Advanced adds change templates and multi-step workflows.
Configuration items tied to tickets
CIs and relationships come with every plan; discovery mapping arrives on Advanced, and a visual CMDB with automatic dependency mapping on Premier.
Audit history and data masking
Advanced adds audit history, login and email audits, data masking and a HIPAA business associate agreement; Premier adds a sandbox for testing.
Separate desks for HR and facilities
Enterprise service management on Advanced lets other departments publish their own services in segregated desks, each with its own access control.
IT asset management, priced apart
Inventory, discovery agents, warranties, POs and software normalisation, with licence compliance from Advanced; the asset count is quoted separately.
Hooks into the tools IT already runs
Jira, SCCM, Jamf, vCenter, AWS, Azure, Okta and Dameware Remote Everywhere connect natively; webhooks and a REST API reach the rest.
Watch SolarWinds Service Desk in action
Features that cut ticket volume, running CAB approvals for changes, and the generative AI features in the upper tiers.
ITSM | SolarWinds Service Desk Features That Reduce IT Tickets Fast
Portal, knowledge and automation that cut ticket volume.
ITSM | How to Streamline CAB Approvals in SolarWinds Service Desk
Running change approvals through the desk.
SolarWinds Service Desk Onboarding - 9. Generative AI
The generative AI features, tier by tier.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough for your environment?
Book a guided demo →IT requests scatter across mailboxes and chats. Service Desk puts them, and every change, in one cloud desk.
Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
Full ITIL on the cheapest tier
Essentials, at $39 per technician a month billed annually, already holds incident, problem, change and release management, the service catalog, SLAs and a CMDB. Several rivals hold change and problem back for a higher tier, so the honest comparison is their mid tier against this entry one.
A price list with three lines
Essentials $39, Advanced $99 and Premier $124 per technician a month, billed annually, with unlimited requesters on all three. The 30-day trial opens every Premier feature. The number to ask for is asset management, which SolarWinds prices by device on request.
Cloud, so SolarWinds does the upkeep
SolarWinds updates every tenant, backs data up nightly to a second AWS site, and holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001. That is the line between this product and Web Help Desk, its self-hosted sibling, where the server, the upgrades and the patching stay with your team.
Where it stops
No India data region: tenants live in the US, EU or Australia, so an Indian residency rule means Web Help Desk or another vendor. Billing is annual only. Automations, runbooks, ESM and the HIPAA agreement start at Advanced, and the visual CMDB and sandbox need Premier.
The numbers behind the platform
What your SolarWinds Service Desk rollout looks like
Count technicians and devices
List who resolves tickets — only they need licences — and count network-capable devices, which set the separate asset quote.
Pick the tier by process
Map the processes you run today: Essentials covers change and CMDB; automations, runbooks and ESM mean Advanced.
Run the 30-day trial
Start the trial with Premier switched on, choose the data centre, build the portal and route one team’s real tickets through it.
Connect identity and tools
Turn on SSO and MFA, deploy discovery agents, and connect Teams or Slack, remote support and your monitoring alerts.
Open the catalog to everyone
Publish catalog items, move change approvals into the desk, then retire the shared mailbox and the old ticketing tool.
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“Our auditors wanted a change trail with approvals. Essentials had it at $39 a technician, where the tool we were pricing wanted its top tier for the same.”
“Portal requests went live in the first week. The catalog forms replaced a shared mailbox and a spreadsheet nobody trusted.”
“We budgeted for Essentials, then found runbooks and automations were Advanced. Two-thirds of our technicians ended up on the higher tier.”
“The data had to stay in the country for one business unit, and there is no India region. That unit stayed on a self-hosted desk.”
“HR runs its own desk inside ours now. Their cases are hidden from IT technicians, which was the condition for them joining.”
“Asset management was quoted apart from the technician seats. Get the device count right before the contract, not after.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the ITSM market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag ITSM Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
Essentials $39 per technician a month, billed annually.
Hosting Choice × Entry-Tier ITIL Depth
The grid nobody publishes — where the desk and its data can live, India included, vs how much of ITIL the cheapest paid tier already covers.
Change and CMDB at $39 per technician; US, EU or Australia only.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
SolarWinds Service Desk vs the ITSM field
Against Freshservice, ServiceNow ITSM, Jira Service Management, ServiceDesk Plus Cloud and TOPdesk — on hosting, ITIL coverage per tier, price, add-ons, security and India.
| Dimension | SolarWinds Service Desk | Freshservice | ServiceNow ITSM | Jira Service Management | ServiceDesk Plus Cloud | TOPdesk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Cloud ITSM, 3 tiers | Mid-market ITSM | Enterprise platform | Dev + IT service desk | ITIL suite, 3 editions | Per-agent service desk |
| Deployment | SaaS only, on AWS | SaaS only | SaaS | Cloud or Data Center | Cloud or on-premises | SaaS on Azure |
| ITIL processes | Change on entry tier | Change at $99/agent Pro | Change in Advanced | Change workflows Prem. | Change on Enterprise | Change from Engaged |
| Pricing model | Per tech, annual | Per agent, annual or mo. | Custom quote only | Per agent, monthly or yr | Per tech + assets | Per agent, by contract |
| Published entry price | $39/tech/month | $19/agent/month | Not published | Free for 3 agents | Free to 5 technicians | £51/agent/month |
| Included vs add-on | Assets quoted apart | AI Copilot $29 extra | Discovery is ITOM | SSO via Atlassian Guard | Modules as add-ons | Unlimited assets |
| Scale and limits | 1,500 API calls/min | Orchestration capped | Sized per quote | Up to 100,000 agents | 15 desk instances | Unlimited light agents |
| Security and compliance | SOC 2, ISO 27001 | SOC 2, GDPR | Ask for attestations | Audit logs on Standard | Controls not listed | SOC 2, ISAE 3000 |
| Integrations | Jira, SCCM, Jamf, DRE | Marketplace apps | Service Graph | Native Jira + CI/CD | Not on the price page | 100+ integrations |
| Governance and SSO | SSO on every plan | SSO on every plan | Enterprise governance | SSO needs Guard | Roles per instance | SSO on every plan |
| India storage region | US, EU or Australia | India data centre | Mumbai, Bengaluru | India (Mumbai) option | India DC, or on-prem | No India location |
| Support | Chat 24/7; phone Adv. | 24/7 email, 24/5 chat | Not published | Premium Support at Prem. | 24x5 phone and email | Local team, 99.9% target |
| Lock-in and exit | Annual, paid up front | Annual or monthly | Negotiated contracts | Monthly billing option | Change or cancel freely | Downgrade at term end |
| Best fit | Mid-size cloud desks | Indian mid-market IT | Large enterprises | Jira-centred teams | Residency-bound estates | Europe-based desks |
Which approach fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose SolarWinds Service Desk if…
- ✓You want change, problem, release and a CMDB without paying for a top tier
- ✓A cloud desk that SolarWinds updates and backs up suits you better than running a server
- ✓You already use Dameware Remote Everywhere or SolarWinds monitoring and want them linked to tickets
Compare alternatives if…
- ✓Ticket data must be stored in India — Freshservice, Jira Service Management and ServiceDesk Plus offer that
- ✓You need the desk on your own servers — ServiceDesk Plus, or SolarWinds’ Web Help Desk
- ✓Monthly billing matters — Freshservice, Jira Service Management and ServiceDesk Plus offer it
Do not expect…
- ✓Automations, runbooks or ESM on Essentials — they start at Advanced
- ✓Asset management inside the technician price — it is quoted by device
- ✓An India data region — the choices are the US, the EU and Australia
SolarWinds Service Desk is one of 22 itsm & service desk products TechBag carries. The ITSM & Service Desk guide narrows them to a shortlist and shows the reasoning. →
What does unmanaged IT support cost you?
Drag the sliders (employees your desk serves; technician-hour cost). Estimates model technician time lost to requests by email and phone, manual routing and repeat questions at an assumed 1.5 hours per employee a year, with 70% of it removed by a self-service portal, catalog forms, knowledge and automation. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Published, in USD: Essentials $39, Advanced $99 and Premier $124 per technician a month, billed annually at the start of the contract, with unlimited requesters on every plan. IT asset management is quoted separately by device count, and larger, academic, government and non-profit orders may be discounted. TechBag sizes your technicians, tier and devices first, then quotes in INR with GST.
Essentials
Best for growing IT teams
- $39/month per technician, billed annually
- Incident, problem, change, release and CMDB
- SSO, MFA and 24/7 live chat support
+ Platform add-ons
Best for a broader rollout
- Scoped to your estate
- Add-on modules as needed
- Phased, right-sized deployment
Advanced
Best for mature and multi-department desks
- $99/month per technician, billed annually
- Automations, runbooks, virtual agent, ESM
- Audit history, data masking, phone support
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
Which processes must you run? Change and CMDB are in Essentials; automations, runbooks and ESM need Advanced.
Who actually resolves tickets? Only technicians are licensed — requesters and portal users are free on every plan.
How many network-capable devices will you track? Asset management is quoted separately, so get the figure in writing.
Must ticket data be stored in India? Service Desk offers only the US, EU and Australia — decide this before the trial.
Does policy forbid a vendor cloud? Then this is the wrong product; SolarWinds’ Web Help Desk runs on your own server.
Do you need a HIPAA agreement, audit history or data masking? All three start at Advanced, not Essentials.
Are AI incident summaries, reply drafts and runbook drafting part of the case? They are Premier features at $124.
Can finance pay a year up front in USD, or do you need INR invoices with GST through a reseller?
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate SolarWinds Service Desk?
Count your technicians and devices first, or let a TechBag advisor map your processes to the right tier and check whether US, EU or Australian storage meets your data rules.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.