SaaS Help Desk or "on-premise" Help Desk?

Many companies are turning to SaaS help desks rather than on-premise help desks. A SaaS help desk provides full remote access to help desk software. This means that the help desk solution is able to be scaled to the company's needs and can leverage advanced technology that the company might not be able to afford. Many SaaS help desk solutions offer full integration with existing company technology such as their email service or even Active Directory catalog.

An on-premise help desk usually requires an advanced server system to host the help desk. It also doesn't usually come with the same level of support as an SaaS desk would and it will sometimes necessitate on-site staff members to maintain it. Not only will this system be more difficult to maintain, it will also go down if there are problems with the local office and it may be slow to access remotely if the office does not have enough bandwidth.

SaaS desks have an advantage because they can easily provide telecommuting capabilities from anywhere in the world. They are also far faster because the SaaS host will have access to increased bandwidth, and they will be managed by the SaaS team to make sure that nothing goes wrong mechanically. All of this can make it far easier on both maintenance and the budget.

Most SaaS desks only require a small monthly fee for the service, where an on-premise help desk will usually cost quite a lot in installation fees and setup fees. On-premise help desks require both software and hardware investments which means that a company may have large upfront costs. They will also need to maintain the software and hardware and this can include extra licensing costs and repair costs.

Please read our cheapest SaaS helpdesks review.

Companies can usually demo a help desk solution before they decide on whether they want to commit to it and this allows a company to test out the functionality of a solution and to see how it will work for them. Most help desk solutions can be adapted and extended to suit a company's specific need and many of these services also offer tiered pricing so that the company doesn't pay for anything they don't need.