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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC FootPrints Service Core
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 15.9%, down from 24.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow15.9%
BMC FootPrints Service Core1.5%
Other82.6%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1765752 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
A flexible, comprehensive, integrated IT service and asset management platform with good technical support
We use BMC FootPrints Service Core to manage network issues, infrastructure issues, software issues, and ERP. We also use it to manage our facility. So, we do some work orders and also use it as an extra ticketing system Technical support is good. It would be better if it were more…
SP
General Manager at sPerception IT
Adopting flexible workflows with customized automation delivers measurable benefits
There are things that I would like to see improved in ServiceNow, such as the pricing, as it is a very costly solution compared to other tools. Additionally, its presence in the local market is very limited; in Pakistan, for example, I don't see any vendor or distributor of ServiceNow available. They need to increase their sales spectrum globally so people can easily access them and engage them for client meetings and more. From a functionality perspective, the features in ServiceNow are acceptable as, at the moment, the ITSM modules rank highly, being 13 plus Pink Elephant certified, which is a good aspect to have. When providing advice to users, I would suggest they consider making strategic decisions about their per user pricing since it is very high. In our region, people normally start with 5 to 10 users, but the per user price is quite steep. Moreover, ServiceNow does not charge based on data uploaded or downloaded, so they should reconsider their pricing and data policies to align better with the financial capabilities of the region.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."
"I like the fact that FootPrints is a relational database, so every item in the database can be linked to another. This helps create history and audit trails for each CI."
"Technical support is good."
"It is stable and its technical support is good and quick."
"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"It has helped the help desk team. We get our tickets in and are able to support our customers, the end-users, with this solution."
"The discovery feature is very flexible."
"There are lots of modules around IT service management such as IT business management and human resource management (HRC)."
"I have definitely seen a positive impact of ServiceNow on our company and customer processes, including time savings and money savings."
"Great that it's knowledge-based and you can use the flows in ServiceNow."
"The pricing of the product is quite good. It's not too expensive."
"The solution is easy to use, simple to make queries, flexible to configure, integrates well, and supports all of our companies needs."
"If it is a high priority, they will respond very quickly. If it is a low priority issue, it might take some time, some three or four days. I would rate the technical support as a 10 out of 10."
"It offers ready-built automation and simpler configuration for workflows."
"Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money."
 

Cons

"It is pretty clunky and not very intuitive. Even though I have used it for many years, I don't think it is a very good ITSM platform in general. In the telecom space, a lot of telco providers use this solution, but from my perspective, it is not very user friendly. It is a bit more laborious. There are still too many human touchpoints. There can be a little bit more automation. It would also be good to integrate it with other tools. Integration is quite difficult, especially in the telco space."
"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."
"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."
"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"We need more customizable reporting functionality. We could also use more collaboration of service desk tickets. This will allow for two departments to share the same information, track the progress of the total task scope no matter how complex the request is."
"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."
"The utilization of AI in ServiceNow needs enhancement."
"The RPA needs improvement. That's a new area for them that they're just entering into now."
"It's too complicated and there are too many options."
"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."
"There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great."
"The solution could improve by being more stable."
"When it comes to changing some of the features, I would like a little more leeway."
"It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"This solution has good pricing."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"$230 per user."
"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."
"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"For the modules we use, we found it competitive. I can't think of any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise166
 

Questions from the Community

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Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.