10 Best Startly Alternatives For ITSM In 2026

Startly offers an all-in-one ITSM software for service delivery organizations that helps you manage projects, customer support, change and assets.

However, some users of the software have been unhappy with its occasional bugs and errors, limited reporting capabilities, and the fact that it has not been built with enterprises in mind.

In this buyer guide, I’ll go over the 10 best Startly alternatives for ITSM in 2026 that can help you manage your IT management workflows.

But first, I wanted to go over the reasons why some IT leads have been looking to make the switch in the first place: ⤵️

Why have some IT managers been looking to switch from Startly?

The main reason why some IT leaders have been looking to switch from Startly is due to the platform’s occasional bugs, its limited reporting features, and the fact that it’s not been built for enterprises but rather SMEs (e.g., limited customization and few integrations).

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that Startly offers a poor ITSM solution that you should be running from.

There are hundreds of satisfied small IT teams from around the world that will tell you otherwise.

However, some customers have been dissatisfied with the solution for several reasons:

#1: Occasional bugs and errors

One of the most common problems that Startly users have been facing is the tool’s pop-up errors, which have caused some customers to log out.

Apparently, this happens often to a verified user from Capterra, who mentions that they’re getting logged out when they’re actively working on the platform.

‘’I receive pop-up errors often and have to log out, then back in. I'm unsure if this is a time-out feature, but it happens as I'm actively working in the system frequently.’’ – Capterra Review.

#2: Limited reporting capabilities

Next up, customers of Startly frequently mention its limited reporting and dashboard capabilities. 

➡️ Good reporting and dashboards can provide real-time visibility into service performance so you can improve your incident resolution.

‘’The reporting features are well, not very up to par, let me put it that way. Exploring phases of a specific project or digging deeper into individual contributions of one of the team members is not very handy.’’ – G2 Review.

#3: Not built for enterprises

Startly appeals to smaller IT teams with its affordable pricing model ($15/month/seat). However, the product lacks:

• Advanced customization options for your workflows.
• Native integrations with third-party apps (limiting the automations and data exchange).
• Multilingual interface, which means that your team in France or Portugal will have to use it in English.
• A mobile app that has the same functionality and speed as their desktop (the features are making the app a bit slow to use).

What are the best Startly alternatives on the market for ITSM?

Here are the 10 best Startly alternatives on the market for IT service management after looking at 30+ tools:

#1: SmartSuite: Best for IT teams looking to manage IT processes, projects, and asset management in an all-in-one platform.

#2: ServiceNow: Good for IT leaders looking for a comprehensive ITSM platform to resolve issues quickly using AI and machine learning.

#3: Jira Service Management: A nice option for companies looking for enterprise-grade IT service management that is easy to implement and configure.

#4: SolarWinds Service Desk: Good for organizations looking for an ITSM solution that focuses on incident and asset management.

#5: Freshservice: Best for IT leads looking to automate and streamline service desk operations for end users.

#6: ClickUp: Ideal for IT teams looking for an affordable ITSM solution for project management, team collaboration, and task management.

#7: SysAid: Good for organizations looking for automated ticketing, asset management, and workflow automation.

#8: Monday: Ideal for teams looking to speed up
IT response time by reducing manual work with automatic assignment to a relevant agent.

#9: HelpScout: A nice option for customer support teams looking to use AI to help support reps handle more tickets.

#10: Ivanti: Best for large enterprises looking for a scalable ITSM solution that has no-code automation.

#1: What makes SmartSuite the best alternative to Startly?

SmartSuite offers the best alternative to Startly in 2026 for IT service management with our modern solution that helps you streamline critical IT processes, organize projects, and remove traditional obstacles in the tech landscape.

Here’s a quick walkthrough of the platform and our solution for IT teams:

Let’s go over the capabilities that make SmartSuite the best choice for small and large IT teams looking for a Startly alternative: 👇

All-In-One IT Service Management

SmartSuite helps teams manage their IT processes, projects, and assets all in one single solution. Our no-code, easy-to-use platform lets you automate all technical processes with ease.

Here are the capabilities and use cases that your team will get with SmartSuite:

• Manage critical IT processes: Manage IT data and workflows in one place, from deploying help desk and issue management solutions to ensuring core business operations stay uninterrupted.

• Track tickets & issues: Deploy help desk and issue management solutions to ensure your business operations are not interrupted.

• Manage your IT assets and licenses: Track all of your IT assets, to whom they are deployed to and what software versions are deployed.

• Manage internal IT projects: Plan deployments, schedule your teams, and monitor progress to ensure you deliver on time and under budget.

• Integrate with your existing systems: Integrate with existing systems and data to consolidate and centralize your data. 

• Automate for accuracy and efficiency: Remove inefficiencies and the chance for human error by automating repeatable workflows.
• Monitor and report on your work with customizable IT dashboards: Slice and dice data, track help tickets, work requests, and more in dynamic interactive dashboards.

Streamline Your Team’s IT Workflows

You can standardize your IT request workflow with a centralized work request process. 

SmartSuite lets you prioritize tasks, assign IT staff and ensure that you achieve service level agreements. 

You’ll also be able to monitor your team with flexible reports and dashboards that keep you updated in real time.

Apart from that, SmartSuite's no-code automation builder provides IT teams with a visual interface that makes it easy to respond to events and take action.

That means you can customize your ITSM workflows without technical resources.

💡 Working from mobile? Stay connected to critical IT information, tickets and device information with our native iOS and Android apps.

Your team can use our mobile apps to share files, images, updates and other feedback to resolve problems and close tickets.

Ready-To-Use ITSM Templates

We have prepared a bunch of ITSM templates for IT teams looking to get started right away, instead of building everything from scratch, such as an IT Help Desk.

Our ITSM templates include:

• IT Service Request Management, where you can streamline work requests, automate repetitive tasks, and manage IT assets.

• IT Help Desk, which we built for internal IT departments looking to capture and resolve internal technology issues.

• IT Asset Tracker, where you can keep track of IT assets issued to employees or implemented in networks, facilities and workspaces.

You can customize our ITSM management templates here for various use cases, such as IT Security Policies, IT Security Audits, and IT Work Requests.

How is SmartSuite different from Startly?

Unlike Startly, SmartSuite offers a platform with:

• A modern solution with an intuitive interface that does not confuse your IT team or require extensive training.
• A 14-day free trial to help you get started, as well as an Enterprise-grade fully custom plan.
• Automated workflows that can help you build multi-step automations to trigger actions at the right time.
• Customer support and account management, which will help you with setting up the automations inside the platform.

💡 Case Study: Learn how MediaLab transformed operations, minimized risk, and saved $40,000+ per year by cutting software costs.

Pricing

Unlike Startly, SmartSuite offers a 14-day free trial of its Professional plan (no credit card required), with automations, team collaboration, multi-dashboard views, and more.

There are three per-seat plans plus a per-solution Signature plan, all available through the 14-day free trial:

• Team: $15/user/month billed annually ($20 billed monthly, minimum 3 users), including 5,000 records per solution, 50GB of file storage, and 25,000 automation runs and API calls per month.
• Professional: $32/user/month billed annually ($36 billed monthly, minimum 5 users), adding 100,000 records per solution, 100GB of file storage, two-factor authentication, and Gmail & Outlook integrations.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with no seat minimum, adding 400,000 records per solution, 500GB of file storage, audit logs, data loss prevention, SSO, and SCIM provisioning.
• Signature: A customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size with no predefined limits.

Pros & Cons

✅ A 14-day free trial of the Professional plan with access to advanced features and unlimited solutions.

✅ 9 ready-to-use ITSM templates that you can get started with right away.

✅ Dynamic dashboards and reporting that are easy to navigate.

✅ Integrated document and file management.

✅ Automate risk scoring, compliance tracking, audits, and vendor reviews.

✅ Modern and intuitive user interface.

❌ Less native integrations when compared to other alternatives on the market.

#2: Who is ServiceNow best for?

Best for: IT leaders looking for a comprehensive ITSM platform to resolve issues quickly using AI and machine learning.

Similar to: Jira Service Management.

ServiceNow offers an all-in-one ITSM software that helps teams remove complexity and consolidate their IT services and tools.

The platform is a viable alternative to Startly for large organizations looking to automate essential IT processes within a single system of action.

Features

• Performance analytics that enables IT teams to anticipate trends, prioritize resources, and improve operations with real-time analytics.
• Now Assist for ITSM to help you accelerate productivity with generative AI on the Now Platform.
• A management database that helps your team track the dependencies and relationships of supported IT services to maintain continuity.

Standout Feature: Virtual Agent

ServiceNow’s ITSM offering stood out to me with its Virtual Agent, which makes it easy for end users to resolve issues quickly from a conversational chatbot that has been trained with commonly asked questions and answers.

Pricing

ServiceNow’s pricing is not publicly disclosed, so you’d have to book a demo with their team.

I did find ServiceNow customer and public reviews, which show that the average cost of ServiceNow contracts can range between $50,000 and $500,000 annually.

The pricing structure depends on the number of licenses, features, and other configuration requirements.

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced IT service management capabilities that can scale.

✅ Delight users with relevant, contextual, and conversational exchanges with a chatbot.

✅ Integrations with other platforms and centralized management of alerts and IT service management tickets.

❌ Steep learning curve and complexity, which is why some IT teams have been looking for ServiceNow alternatives.

❌ Training, skills development, and ongoing support can be costly.

#3: Who is Jira Service Management best for?

Best for: Companies looking for enterprise-grade IT service management that is easy to implement and configure.

Similar to: Freshservice, Zendesk.

Jira Service Management solution enables IT teams to receive, track, manage, and resolve customer or internal employee requests.

The platform is a solid Startly alternative to large tech-savvy teams looking for an ITSM solution that is easy to implement and configure.

Features

• Manage work across various channels; this way, your employees and customers will receive the help they need quickly.
• Empowers development and IT operations teams to respond rapidly to incidents, resolve them, and continuously learn from them.
• A good variety of plugins for additional integrations, workflow enhancements, reporting, and automation.

Standout Feature: Ready-To-Use ITSM Templates

Jira Service Management helps IT teams get started quickly with pre-built customizable ITSM templates.

Pricing 

Jira Service Management offers four pricing plans for IT teams:

• Free: $0, for up to 3 agents, with access to basic features.
• Standard: $21.50 per agent/month, includes custom-branded help center, alerts, on-call schedules, unlimited email notifications, and 9/5 support.
• Premium: $55.28 per agent/month, adds AI-powered services, virtual agent, asset and configuration management, advanced alert integrations, and 24/7 support.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, adds advanced analytics, security, and unlimited automations, with up to 150 instances and 24/7 dedicated support.

Pros and Cons 

✅ Centralized incident ticketing system that provides full visibility into ongoing issues.

✅ Advanced automation capabilities to establish predefined workflows and triggers.

✅ Ready-to-use ITSM templates that you can start with.

❌ Dependence on plugins for certain features, which some users find inconvenient.

❌ Non-technical users might find Jira’s interface confusing at first, which is why some people have been looking for Jira SM alternatives.

#4: Who is SolarWinds Service Desk best for?

Best for: Organizations looking for an ITSM solution that focuses on incident and asset management.

Similar to: Freshservice, Zendesk.

SolarWinds’s Service Desk offers an AI-powered knowledge base to help your team with the resources they need to solve problems efficiently for end users.

The platform is a solid Startly alternative for large IT teams looking to set up the solution in a few days, and not months.

Features

• Automates ticket routing, prioritization, and reporting to help your team track and resolve IT incidents.
• A structured approach to managing changes, which ensures compliance with your organizational policies.
• Visibility into IT assets, including hardware, software, and licenses, enabling effective lifecycle management and cost optimization. 

Standout Feature: SolarWinds AI

SolarWinds’ AI capabilities let you build support agents that can resolve or troubleshoot problems based on the initial request and comments within the ticket.

Pricing

SolarWinds Service Desk offers three pricing plans:

• Essentials: $39 per technician/month, includes incident management, knowledge base, service portal, asset management, and SLA management.
• Advanced: $99 per technician/month, adds custom fields, advanced automations, virtual agent, network discovery, and API access.
• Premier: $124 per technician/month, includes visual CMDB, advanced support, and up to 1,500 API calls per user per minute.

Pros and Cons

✅ Easy and quick implementation of the software.

✅ Advanced automation capabilities, covering the weakness of Startly.

✅ Build an AI-powered agent to answer common questions.

❌ The platform’s navigation can sometimes be confusing.

❌ Similar to Startly, the platform has been reported to have an outdated interface.

#5: Freshservice

Best for: IT leads looking to automate and streamline service desk operations for end users.

Similar to: Jira Service Management, Zendesk.

Freshservice has an ITSM solution that can help your team streamline IT operations and service delivery with its ticketing system, self-service portal, and asset management.

Unlike Startly, the software provides IT teams with a less technical and cost-effective platform for improved productivity.

Features

• A centralized platform to track and manage IT support requests efficiently, ensuring timely resolutions.
• Self-service portal that helps you independently find solutions and submit requests.
• Monitors and manages IT assets, including hardware and software.

Standout Feature: Automations

What stood out to me about Freshservice is its automation functionality that helps you automate tasks like:

• Ticket assignments.
• Repetitive responses.
• Workflow management.

Pricing

Freshservice offers 4 paid plans with no free version, all of which have a free trial: 

• Starter: $19/agent/month billed annually, or $29 billed monthly, which includes workspaces, incident management, and a self-service portal.
• Growth: $49/agent/month billed annually, or $59 billed monthly, which adds asset management, purchase order management, and business rules.
• Pro: $99/agent/month billed annually, which adds problem management, change management, and release management. 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, which adds a sandbox, audit logs, and access to beta features.

Pros and Cons 

✅ The platform’s interface is easy to set up and use daily, unlike Startly.

✅ Advanced automation capabilities that are easy to set up.

✅ Native integrations with other Freshworks products and third-party tools.

❌ Fewer native integrations when compared to alternatives.

❌ The customer support has been reported to be slow by verified users on G2.

#6: ClickUp

Best for: IT teams looking for an affordable ITSM solution for project management, team collaboration, and task management.

Similar to: Monday, SmartSuite.

ClickUp provides an all-in-one project management platform that combines features like tasks, documents, goals, and chat in one place.

Even though the platform is not a direct alternative to Startly, ClickUp offers a highly customizable and flexible interface that you can tweak to suit the needs of your IT team. 

Features

• A range of task management features like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and custom automation to help teams plan, track, and deliver IT projects.
• Collaboration tools like real-time editing, comments, and mentions.
• Customizable dashboards, workload views, and goal tracking to provide IT teams with better visibility of project progress. 

Standout Feature: Advanced ITSM Templates

ClickUp stood out to me with its advanced ITSM templates that your team can get started with right away.

Pricing

ClickUp offers the following pricing plans:

• Free Forever: $0, which is ideal for personal use, includes 100MB storage and essential features.
• Core: $9 per user/month billed yearly, ideal for small teams, offers unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards, and more.
• Business: $17 per user/month billed yearly, best for mid-sized teams, adds advanced time tracking, automations, and more.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, designed for large teams, includes white labeling, advanced permissions, and dedicated support.

Pros and Cons

✅ Offers good flexibility and customization options to fit different team needs.

✅ Effective for monitoring jobs and projects, especially for smaller teams.

✅ Affordable when compared to other competitors in this list.

❌ Some users have reported challenges with the desktop app and integrations.

❌ Doesn’t support complex automations, which is why some teams have been looking for ClickUp alternatives.

#7: SysAid

Best for: Organizations looking for automated ticketing, asset management, and workflow automation.

Similar to: Atera, SolarWinds Service Desk.

SysAid offers an IT service management solution that helps organizations deliver an AI-powered automated service. 

The tool helps you deliver a knowledge base to help users find answers to common questions and a conversational AI chatbot to provide instant support. 

Features 

• Automated help desk and ticketing system that lets you create and monitor support tickets, with features like automatic ticket creation from emails.
• Tracking and management of hardware, software, and other IT assets across the organization.
• The platform can automate various IT processes like employee onboarding, patch management, and more.

Standout Feature: Agentic Service Management

SysAid offers an agentic AI solution that helps you automatically detect and resolve issues.

What stood out to me about its agentic AI capabilities is that it’s also capable of routing, fulfilling, and tracking requests with service-level agreement awareness.

Pricing

SysAid now publishes two plans:

• Professional AI: $89 per agent/month, including request, incident, change and problem management, asset management, a Copilot for agents and end users, pre-built AI agents, SLA management, dashboards, and BI analytics.
• Enterprise AI: Custom pricing from 20 agents, adding a sandbox environment, tailor-made AI agents, advanced BI analytics, and a Gold Service Package with P1 support.

Pros and Cons

✅ Advanced help desk functionality for managing incidents, requests, and problems.

✅ The tool lets you customize workflows and reports to meet your needs, covering the weaknesses of Startly.

✅ Enterprise-grade ITSM solution that is similar to tools like BMC Helix.

❌ Outdated user interface, according to users of the software.

❌ There’s a reported long implementation process.

#8: Monday.com

Best for: Teams looking to speed up
IT response time by reducing manual work with automatic assignment to a relevant agent.

Similar to: ClickUp, SmartSuite.

Monday, similar to SmartSuite and ClickUp, is another project management platform that offers a good range of features for ITSM, such as dashboards and automations.

Features

• Use a drag-and-drop workflow builder to automate any workflow, including replies, notifications, follow‑ups, actions, and approvals.
• Quickly solve any type of issue or request with AI suggestions and one-click replies.
• Categorize customer support tickets by type, urgency, sentiment, department and more for accuracy and consistency.

➡️ Learn more about Monday and its other project management features in our in-depth Monday review.

Standout Feature: Smart Routing

Monday helps you speed up
IT response time by streamlining ticket handling and reducing manual work with automatic assignment to a relevant agent.

Pricing

Monday.com offers a free tier for up to 2 seats, where you can test out the tool’s basic project management features.

💡 In our guide on Monday’s pricing, I dive deeper into whether the platform has good value-for-money plans.

To access the tool’s advanced features, you’d need to be on one of their four paid plans:

• Basic: Starts at $9 per seat/month billed annually and adds Kanban board view and unlimited users with view-only access.
• Standard: Starts at $12 per seat/month billed annually and adds 250 automated actions/month, 3+ dashboard views, and Zoom integration.
• Pro: Starts at $19 per seat/month billed annually, and adds all five dashboard views, time tracking, and 2-factor authentication.
• Enterprise: Custom price, which adds a dedicated customer success manager, enterprise-level reporting, and administration control.

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced reporting and analysis at the project and portfolio level, which is ideal for large teams looking to switch from Startly.

✅ 200+ integrations across apps, including communication and productivity.

✅ You can build custom dashboards to monitor risks in real-time.

❌ Plan upgrade available in set increments of 5 and 10 users, which smaller teams find to be an issue.

❌ Automation features are gated to the more expensive plans, which is why some teams have been looking for alternatives to Monday.

#9: HelpScout

Best for: Customer support teams looking to use AI to help support reps handle more tickets.

Similar to: Zendesk, Freshdesk.

HelpScout helps you deliver efficient, personal support to users through a shared inbox platform that uses AI to let your support reps handle more tickets.

It’s a viable Startly alternative for support teams that want to handle simple support tickets without getting too complicated.

Features

• Automates tasks like ticket assignments, repetitive responses, and workflow management to improve efficiency.
• Provides a knowledge base and community forums to enable customers to find answers independently.
• Highly customizable to fit the specific needs of your team.

Standout Feature: Analytics & Reporting Capabilities

HelpScout stood out to me with its strong analytics and reporting capabilities that dive deeper into each conversation of your reps and AI chatbot and evaluate responses from end users.

Pricing

HelpScout offers four paid plans that teams can choose from:

• Free: $0/month, which includes an Inbox with all channels, a Docs knowledge base, and a help widget with AI answers.
• Standard: $25 per user/month billed annually, which includes 2 shared inboxes, 1 knowledge base, automated workflows, and reporting.
• Plus: $45 per user/month billed annually, which adds 5 shared inboxes, 2 knowledge bases, 25 light users, advanced permissions, and custom reporting.
• Pro: $75 per user/month billed annually, which adds 25 shared inboxes, 10 knowledge bases, 50 light users, enterprise security, HIPAA compliance, and dedicated support.

Like Startly, HelpScout bills per user; its Free plan covers up to 5 users.

Pros and Cons 

✅ Easy to learn and use, with a simple and intuitive interface.

✅ Useful workflows to automate actions like sending notifications for bad customer ratings.

✅ Good reporting capabilities, covering the weaknesses of Startly.

❌ The tool can get quite expensive if your platform is handling thousands of customer requests.

❌ Does not support live technical support features like screen control and risk identification, unlike some other alternatives on the market.

#10: Ivanti

Best for: Large enterprises looking for a scalable ITSM solution that has no-code automation.

Similar to: SysAid, ServiceNow.

Ivanti offers an ITSM solution that helps large teams automate IT workflows, optimize assets, and improve user experiences. 

Its drag-and-drop configuration lets you start small and add capabilities as your IT maturity grows, which will help you more confidently switch from Startly.

Features

• Configure and adapt service management processes through an intuitive drag-and-drop workflow and UI design.
• Deploy intelligent AI-powered chatbots and service portals that guide end users, surface knowledge articles, and resolve common issues.
• Monitor service delivery, quality, and SLA commitments with customizable, role-specific dashboards for executives, managers, and technicians.

Standout Feature: Ivanti’s Modular, Maturity-Driven Scalability

Ivanti’s modular architecture lets you add advanced capabilities, such as shift-left automation and proactive AI remediation, to support your growth from foundational help-desk ticketing to comprehensive, predictive IT operations.

Pricing

Ivanti does not disclose its pricing, so you’d have to contact their team for a demo and a quote.

Pros & Cons

✅ Enterprise-grade no-code ITSM solution.

✅ Drag-and-drop configuration that lets you start small.

✅ Good asset management capabilities.

❌ Customer support can be slow to respond, which is why some brands have been looking for Ivanti alternatives.

❌ The platform is complex to learn how to best use due to its comprehensive range of features.

Get Started With SmartSuite & Our ITSM Templates For Free

That was it from our comprehensive list of the 10 best Startly alternatives on the market in 2026 for ITSM.

If you’re an IT manager looking to build IT service management workstreams, you can give SmartSuite a chance with our 14-day free trial and pre-built ITSM templates.

SmartSuite’s platform offers just the right customization, native collaboration capabilities and a library of 200+ project management templates to help teams create and maintain a project management workflow.

Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:

• A 14-day free trial of the Professional plan with multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), automations, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
• No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
• Built-in productivity tools, including time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
• Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs.
• Resource management across projects and teams.
• 40+ field types, including the option to add your custom fields.

Start a 14-day free trial to explore all its features.

Or, if you’d like to talk to our team of experts, schedule a demo.

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