GLPI vs ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
GLPI and ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus are both IT service management software. GLPI is open source under GPL-3.0, with 6.5k GitHub stars. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a commercial product from Zoho Corporation.
Which to pick
- Pick GLPI when
- An IT department wants a free, self-hosted helpdesk and asset register and is comfortable with a PHP application.
- Pick ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus when
- An IT department wants a full-featured service desk it can host on its own servers at moderate cost.
Side by side
IT asset management and ITIL service desk in one: inventory of computers and software, licences, contracts, tickets, changes and a knowledge base.
ITIL service desk with incident, problem, change, asset and project management, available on-premise or in the cloud.
Configuration is deep and the interface takes training; some plugins and hosted options are sold by Teclib.
The interface is dated and on-premise installs need timely security patching.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service (both)
PHP, Symfony, Vue and MySQL
Java
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Zoho Corporation
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
6.5k GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 11 years ago, latest release 12.0.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More IT service management (ITSM) and PSA tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.