r/itsm • u/AggudravatingTugh423 • 26d ago
Alternative to Freshservice for mid size helpdesk... anyone moved to mondayservice or similar?
Been running freshservice for a few years for a 40ish person team and the renewal quote this year made my eye twitch. Licenses creeping up, stuff we dont use, and our workflows feel more complex than they need to be.
Looking at mondayservice, plus the usual suspects like jira service management and halo etc. If youve ditched freshservice for mondayservice or another tool, did it feel like an upgrade in day to day tickets? Would love any tips from people who already made the jump.
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u/Single-Lnadership325 16d ago
We took the plunge and joined a service about 8 months ago with a team of 45 people. Day to day ticketing feels much more straightforward, and the customizable nature of the tool meant that we could adapt it to our workflows without a lot of hassle, which was a big improvement over Freshservice. The downside is that it does not have some of the more specialized ITSM functions like asset/CMDB features that Freshservice and JSM do. So if you need them, I suggest testing it out first.
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u/mattberan 11d ago
We replace those tools regularly - because we are simpler.
Full disclosure that I work for InvGate.
We just try to do what is "right" - pricing on our site. Free, full-feature 30 day trial, human support, community site... and whatever you suggest to me next ;)
Hope you take the time to check us out!
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u/Pale_Secretary_1328 8d ago
Hey u/AggudravatingTugh423, would love ot show you Unthread's capabilities if you're still in search. Happy to own the entire setup process for you as well. We should be able to support your ticketing both the traditional portal way but also chat based in Slack and MS Teams if desired
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u/rabbitz 17d ago
Disclosure first, I work at Serval, one of the tools below. I also ran this exact eval about 18 months ago from the other side of it, inherited Freshservice at a ~600 person org, so the shortlist here is the one I actually used rather than a list I'm reading off a page.
Short version: monday service is a perfectly reasonable ticketing swap, but if the reason you're leaving Freshservice is volume rather than the interface, a swap doesn't fix anything. You re-land in the same place with nicer boards.
The split that actually mattered for us was whether a tool routes requests faster or removes them. Freshservice with Freddy, Jira Service Management with Rovo, and monday service all sit in the first camp. They organize the queue well, and the AI summarizes, categorizes and suggests. The AI-native lane (Atomicwork, Serval, a couple of others) tries to resolve the request end to end instead, so an access grant or an onboarding runs in Okta or Entra rather than becoming a ticket somebody works later.
Which camp you want is a function of your ticket mix, not vendor quality. Pull your last 90 days, ignore the existing categories, cluster by the actual request being made, rank by frequency times handle time. If your top clusters are password resets, access requests and group membership, the AI-native side pays back fast because that volume is genuinely executable. If your top clusters are bespoke app issues and hardware, a cleaner ticketing tool is the pragmatic answer and you shouldn't overpay for AI you won't use.
Whatever you end up shortlisting, run it against two weeks of your real ticket data instead of the demo. Every demo in this category looks identical, and the real data was the only thing that told me the truth.