CDW Reviews 2026: Scores From Seven Review Sites, Sorted by Buyer Type

CDW reviews tell two stories, and which one you read depends on the site you open. As of October 2026, the G2 profile for CDW Hardware shows 4.2 from 27 reviews, while CDW's Trustpilot page shows a TrustScore of 1.2 from 111. A buyer who checks only one of them gets half the picture.

The gap has a cause, and the reviews state it plainly. This guide counts the scores on every site that carries them, sorts the praise from the complaints, and shows which kind of buyer each group describes. Then it prices the alternative.

The table explains most of the gap. CDW was built as a value-added reseller for large office-based accounts, and those accounts write most of its good reviews.

Who Is CDW Best For?

CDW is a public company founded in 1984, with revenue of about $21 billion in 2024 and roughly 90% of its sales in the United States. The reviews that praise it come from three kinds of buyer:

• Teams buying the whole IT stack in one place: switches, Microsoft licences, a storage array and laptops can sit on one purchase order. A G2 reviewer calls CDW "a one stop shop for everything IT", in a 2014 review.
• US, UK and Canadian organisations with office-based staff: CDW's distribution centres and Configuration Centers sit in its core regions, and fast domestic shipping is a repeat theme on G2.
• Public sector and large institutions: schools, hospitals and government bodies that need contract vehicles and big one-time rollouts, such as 14,000 Chromebooks placed into classroom charging cabinets in Texas.

The same reviews say where the fit ends. A sysadmin who stopped buying from CDW wrote that "once they went private equity their service towards businesses under 500 employees tanked to nothing", in a r/sysadmin post titled "Goodbye CDW". If your company is a few hundred people spread across many countries, that sentence describes your tier.

Tequipy: An Alternative

Tequipy began with an IT problem its co-founder had already solved once. As Head of IT at Revolut, he scaled device logistics from 100 employees to 5,000 across 17 offices, and the platform is that process turned into a product. Against a reseller like CDW, five things matter:

• Retail-price hardware. An $1,800 MacBook costs $1,800, with delivery included in the price shown.
• Sourcing inside each country. Through global device procurement in 180+ countries, a laptop for a hire in Mexico is bought from a Mexican reseller, one of 600+ partners.
• Delivery in 3 business days on average, 10 at most. Next day is available across the UK and Europe.
• One platform for every country. Orders, tracking, offboarding and storage run from the same account, whether the employee sits in Lisbon or Lagos.
• ISO 27001 certified, with Blancco certified wipes and a chain of custody on every device.

Want your own number rather than ours? The Tequipy pricing calculator asks how many employees have devices, whether you connect an HRIS, and how many new hires, offboardings, servicing jobs, redeployments, stored devices and sellbacks you expect in a year. Then you enter your current vendor's hardware markup and its monthly platform and per-device fees, and it sets the two annual totals side by side.

Every rate above also sits on the Tequipy pricing page, so you can total a year without a sales call.

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CDW Key Features

CDW's review record rests on three capabilities. Reviewers rate each one well when it works, and the complaints about each one explain the low public scores.

Stand Out Feature #1: The Named Account Rep

Every CDW customer, even a small one, gets an assigned rep who can pull in engineers and specialists. About nine G2 reviews name the rep as the best part of buying from CDW. An IT director summed it up as "Large company with a personal touch!" in his December 2021 G2 review.

The rep is also the weak point. Reddit threads describe rep quality rising and falling with account size. "The higher the spend, the more juice you have", one sysadmin wrote in a thread about CDW service. A good rep makes CDW one of the easiest vendors to work with, and a missing one leaves you with the general support queue.

Stand Out Feature #2: A Catalogue of 100,000+ Products

CDW lists more than 100,000 products from over 1,000 brands, including Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Cisco and Microsoft. It also sells software licensing, cloud, networking, data-centre hardware and managed services. Roughly five G2 reviewers name this breadth as the thing they value, among them a partner who listed "managed services, networking, mobility, security" alongside professional services, leasing and telecom in a 2013 review.

For an IT team that runs servers, a network and an office fleet, one account for all of it removes a lot of vendor management. For a team that mainly needs laptops for people in many countries, most of that catalogue goes unused.

Stand Out Feature #3: Configuration Centers and Zero-Touch Enrolment

CDW runs two US Configuration Centers and a 40,000 square foot UK centre. They image devices, set BIOS and firmware, apply asset tags and laser etching, and enrol devices into Apple Business Manager, DEP and Windows Autopilot. Education and enterprise reviewers confirm this works for large institutional rollouts.

The complaints are about execution. A Trustpilot reviewer said CDW "Shipped laptops without attaching autopilot causing a HUGE technology headache", in a February 2024 review. An Intune admin posted that "CDW Sent us laptops destined for another tenant" in a r/Intune thread.

CDW Pricing

CDW sells devices outright. Small orders use web-store list prices, and larger orders and managed accounts get a quote from the rep. Services are priced per device, and CDW's own terms allow the price to change after you order.

CDW does not publish a full rate card for its configuration services, so ask the rep for a per-device quote on your exact setup before you compare.

CDW Positives

• The rep relationship: when the rep is strong, reviewers describe fast answers and real help. "Shipping is fast and my sales rep is both knowledgeable and courteous", wrote Joe N. in a 2020 G2 review.
• Engineers on the call: for complex purchases, a rep can bring in technical staff. On expensive core switches, "my account rep will always put a CDW engineer on the call", per a G2 reviewer from 2019.
• Breadth on one purchase order: hardware, licences and services from one vendor, which suits a central IT team with a wide remit.

CDW Negatives

• Support without a strong rep: this is the largest complaint theme, with more than 30 mentions across G2, Trustpilot, BBB and Reddit. "The support team does not reply to any type of email/ticket", reads a December 2025 Trustpilot review.
• Stock that is not there: about 28 complaints describe backorders on items listed as available, or ship dates that move on every call.
• Prices that rise after the order: several 2025 and 2026 Trustpilot reviews describe increases between order and shipment, and CDW's terms allow it.
• Returns that cost money: buyers report restocking fees of 15% to 25% on returned or cancelled orders.

Customer Reviews

One positive and two negative reviews show the range. On the positive side, a G2 reviewer from education management wrote "Great customer service and support. Reasonable prices and quick turn around", in a 2019 review. That is the managed-account experience at its best.

The negatives are recent. A buyer ordered a server rack listed as in stock, "only to find out the item was actually on backorder despite their website still claiming 19+ units were available", in a February 2026 Trustpilot review. Another paid for next-day delivery on a Mac mini in May 2026 and "Called more than 8 times, on hold for over 25 minutes, disconnected, twice promised call backs with no reply", per his Trustpilot review.

Both negatives are about a delivery date the buyer could not plan around. For a new hire's first day, that is the failure that matters most, and it is why remote equipment management starts with a delivery promise.

CDW Overall

Put every score side by side and a clear pattern appears. As of October 2026:

Sources: Sitejabber / SmartCustomer, ResellerRatings, PissedConsumer, TrustRadius and the BBB profile, with G2 and Trustpilot linked above.

The one high score comes from the profile where large managed accounts post, and its sub-scores are about people: professionalism 9.4, expertise 9.2. Every site where smaller buyers post sits at 2.1 out of 5 or lower. The BBB also lists 45 complaints in three years, and CDW's own written replies there confirm several of the problems reviewers describe.

So CDW reviews do not contradict each other. They describe two different customers. If you spend enough to get a strong rep, the 4.2 is your likely experience. If you buy in smaller amounts, the public sites are the better guide. A team that evaluated CDW in Europe told us CDW could not ship outside the EU and quoted 4 to 6 weeks for delivery inside it.

If you are already weighing replacements, our list of CDW alternatives for distributed teams compares several vendors in depth. The rest of this page stays on what the reviews teach about choosing one.

Pro tip: put three questions to CDW in writing before your next order. Ask whether the quoted price is fixed until the item ships, what restocking fee applies if you cancel, and who covers your account if your rep moves. Each of these went wrong for a reviewer above, and a written answer turns a surprise into a known cost.

How to Choose a Device Lifecycle Platform

The CDW reviews point to three tests that apply to any supplier. Each one maps to a complaint that shows up again and again.

Feature Consideration #1: A Price That Holds After You Order

CDW's own terms, quoted in one of its BBB replies, state that "CDW reserves the right to make pricing adjustments due to manufacturer or supplier changes, availability issues, or errors in advertisements", as recorded in BBB complaint #24608993. Trustpilot reviewers describe increases of $30, $700 and 24% after they had paid.

Ask any supplier whether the price at checkout is the price on the invoice. On Tequipy, the price shown in the platform is the maximum you pay, with delivery and ABM or Autopilot assignment included.

Feature Consideration #2: Delivery You Can Plan a Start Date Around

Backorders are the second largest complaint theme. One reviewer waited seven weeks, with a ship date that changed on every call, in a December 2025 Trustpilot review. A sysadmin on Reddit put it this way: "CDW drop ships everything from manufacturer - you never know when 98% of the stuff will arrive", in a r/sysadmin comment.

Ask for a maximum delivery time per country, in business days, and what happens when it is missed. Tequipy delivers in 3 business days on average and 10 at most, and discounts the laptop when it runs late. Booksy received 99% of its devices before the employee's start date, per the Booksy case study.

Feature Consideration #3: Offboarding From an Employee's Home

CDW's end-of-life service is IT asset disposition run through partners such as Procurri and AnythingIT. It suits a bulk clear-out of an office. The card evidence shows no per-employee courier pickup from a remote worker's home, and buyback value comes back as CDW account credit.

When staff work remotely, ask how a laptop gets back from a leaver's flat. Tequipy's laptop retrieval service handles the courier, box, label and data wipe for $70 to $150 per device, and pays sellback in cash.

Alternative To CDW: Tequipy

Tequipy covers one part of what CDW sells, and covers it in more countries: the laptops, monitors and peripherals your employees use, from purchase to recovery. It works for companies whose people are spread across many countries and who want one system for all of them.

Tequipy Key Features

Three features matter most to a team moving away from a reseller model.

Stand Out Feature #1: Local Sourcing in 180+ Countries

Tequipy buys through 600+ authorised resellers inside each country, with reserved stock arrangements to hit its delivery times. Because devices are sourced locally, customs and import duties do not appear on the bill. Only Russia, Belarus and North Korea are excluded. China is supported, and Ukraine is fully supported through local partners.

Stand Out Feature #2: One Platform for Every Country

Every order, device and service sits in one account. HiBob, BambooHR and Workday sync new hires and leavers automatically, and equipment groups decide which laptop each role can order. Devices bought elsewhere can be uploaded by CSV and managed the same way, so you can run Tequipy alongside CDW rather than replacing it. Zero-touch deployment registers each Mac in ABM, or each Windows hash in Autopilot, before it ships.

Stand Out Feature #3: A Shared Slack Channel

Each customer gets a shared Slack channel with the Tequipy team, and replies come within 2 to 24 hours. There is no rep to lose in a reorganisation, and the channel does not change with your order size. Gigs saved more than 100 hours a month and skipped a logistics hire, per the Gigs case study.

Tequipy Pricing

There is no setup fee and no contract to start.

Where Tequipy Shines

• Countries outside CDW's core: 180+ countries through one platform, including Latin America, Central Asia and Africa.
• One committed price: the platform price is the maximum, with delivery and enrolment inside it.
• Recovery from remote staff: courier pickup from the employee's home, storage in the same country, and redeployment or cash sellback.

Where Tequipy Falls Short

• Narrower catalogue: Tequipy focuses on employee hardware. It does not sell software licences or data-centre gear, and servers depend on the country. Send the team your specification and they will check what they can source.
• SOC 2 in progress: Tequipy is ISO 27001 certified and shares penetration test reports, and SOC 2 is not yet complete. If your security review requires it, ask the team for the current date.
• A smaller review footprint: Tequipy started in 2022 and serves about 160 companies, so it has far fewer public reviews than a 40-year-old reseller.

Tequipy Customer Reviews

Tequipy's strongest evidence sits in its published case studies. Booksy tested Tequipy on its hardest region first, Latin America, and received 99% of devices before day one. TapTap Send saved about $6,500 a month after moving its device work to Tequipy, per the TapTap Send case study.

Who Tequipy Is Best For

• IT leads hiring in five or more countries: one platform and one price list instead of a regional entity per market.
• People in HR or operations for whom laptops are one duty among many: a HiBob, BambooHR or Workday sync opens the order on the hire date and the collection on the leaving date.
• Teams already on CDW: keep CDW for servers and licences, and test Tequipy on the country or hire where delivery has been slowest.
• A company making its first hire abroad: when there is no local entity, no reseller account and nobody in the office to hand over a laptop, one platform covers that gap from the first order.

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Is CDW a Legitimate Company?

Yes. CDW is a Nasdaq-listed reseller founded in 1984, with revenue of about $21 billion in 2024. Its low public scores come from service complaints, not fraud.

Why Is CDW Rated So Low on Trustpilot?

Most Trustpilot reviewers are smaller buyers without a strong rep. Their complaints centre on unanswered support, backorders on listed stock and price increases after ordering.

Does CDW Charge a Restocking Fee?

Yes. Reviewers report 15% on an unopened device, and a CDW BBB reply confirms a 25% fee "automatically applied at the time the credit was processed" on one cancellation.

Can We Keep Using CDW and Still Use Tequipy?

Yes. Tequipy manages devices bought elsewhere, so you can keep CDW for servers and licences and use Tequipy for laptops in specific countries.

Which Countries Does Tequipy Cover?

More than 180. Tequipy delivers everywhere except Russia, Belarus and North Korea, sourcing locally through 600+ authorised resellers in global laptop procurement.