Best IT management tools 2021

The best IT management tools make the process of managing IT systems simpler and easier, from customer support to diagnostics.

This is especially important, as running an organization involves keeping track of a wide variety of assets, both hardware and software. For a very long time, this task was handled by maintaining manual logs on a company spreadsheet. Now, it’s done using dedicated software managed by the IT department.

IT management software is responsible for organizing, tracking, and managing all the data so that you can have easy access to your entire company assets from a single computer screen. It can help you manage all of these, as well as oversee multiple projects, and ensure customer satisfaction—all through a single interface. 

However, the options are many, and picking the right tool for the job is essential. When it comes down to it, you need software that’s simple and user-friendly with enough room for your company’s future growth. Here is a list of the best IT management tools available right now, hand-picked by our experts to help you make the proper call.

• We've also featured the best ITSM tools.

Agiloft Service Desk is a helpdesk solution that prides itself on fluidity. It is ITIL and ITSM compliant and designed specifically for IT Departments. While the initial setup does require you to invest a lot of time, the work quickly pays off as the software is flexible enough to work for businesses of any scale. 

Some knowledge of HTML is helpful when using Agiloft, although you don’t have to be a web design expert to configure it. The software is highly customizable, and everything from the dashboards to the user interface can be edited and transformed to suit the needs of the hour.

Agiloft is free for up to five users, with certain limitations. Beyond that, it offers three tiered plans known as Professional, Professional Unlimited, and Enterprise, priced on a monthly basis. 

• Read our full Agiloft Service Desk review.

Owned and operated by Freshworks, a software company that designs products geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, Freshservice is a customer support tool that also doubles as asset management software. It’s the so-called big brother of Freshdesk, the company’s original customer support software offering. 

Freshdesk is geared towards smaller businesses and focuses mainly on external customer service. Freshservice, on the other hand, is a broader offering that works as a full-fledged tech support tool for internal use at medium to large businesses. 

At its core, it employs a ticket-based support system that allows your employees to flag potential issues for the tech team to handle. There are options for escalating issues and sending them higher up the chain of command. The user interface is clean but powerful.

• Read our full Freshservice review.

Acquired by Oracle in 2016, Netsuite offers a variety of solutions designed to custom fit your business needs. When you sign up on its website, you’re asked to provide information that helps tailor the software to your requirements. However, because of the fluid nature of the software, there is no fixed pricing, and the service will need to be customized to your requirements. 

Among other things, Netsuite enables you to perform tasks like accounting, inventory management, and customer service. Unlike Freshservice, Netsuite is a business management solution and the focus is not just on IT. The software can be customized to work for any department, from accounting to HR. 

Used by over 300,000 organizations across the world, SolarWinds Service Desk is a full-range IT service management (ITSM) solution for medium to large businesses. It is entirely cloud-based and boasts powerful features like smart ticketing, asset management, and workflow automation. 

Like Freshservice, SolarWinds is built upon a ticketing system that allows employees to submit support requests to the IT department. It also comes with an asset management functionality that helps you keep track of all your hardware and software throughout their life cycles. 

Apart from incident reporting and asset management, SolarWinds Service Desk comes with highly detailed analytics to help you measure your organization’s performance. The benchmarks dashboard is easy to use, with separate indicators for things like customer satisfaction, average response time, and so on.

• Read our full SolarWinds Service Desk review.

Used by over 1,700 organizations across the globe, Cherwell IT Service Management is a great combination of flexibility and ease of use and is meant to support companies of any size. The best thing, however, is that its prices start at a fraction of those of its competitors, especially higher-end software like Oracle Netsuite. 

While the user interface may not be the best-looking of the bunch, it offers a lot of options to configure and customize everything according to your organization’s needs. With Cherwell, ticketing and inventory management is a breeze, and the software is compatible with a range of other products and solutions. It is a well-rounded solution that also works well for departments beyond IT.

Ivanti is in the process of acquiring Cherwell and will enable end-to-end service and asset management.

• We've also featured the best IT infrastructure management services.