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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
30th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
26th
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
228
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 14.2%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow14.2%
BMC FootPrints Service Core1.6%
Other84.2%
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…
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling
I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is certainly a solution that I recommend for big enterprise."
"Having a one stop shop for linked assets and tickets has improved end user adoption and led to a reduction in phone/email tickets."
"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."
"I feel confident in saying that BMC FootPrints Service Core is definitely one of the best products in the market."
"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"It is stable and its technical support is good and quick."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"The discovery feature is very flexible."
"If you are looking for something that you can bring into your organization to be more than just a single purpose, if you are looking to truly transform your organization with the tools that you are using, ServiceNow is the go-to."
"I have been on four or five separate ITSM systems and ServiceNow has been the best."
"Will give us better control over asset management and technical debt once we can centralize all contract information."
"Easy to implement and consolidate different platforms and users with useful functionalities."
"In 12 years, I've rarely seen a failure of their cloud hosting, if ever."
"Great that it's knowledge-based and you can use the flows in ServiceNow."
"It has an excellent capability to integrate different access points."
"Primarily, we use it for incident management and change across the landscape; it is the virtual repository for our incident management processes and gives us visibility about what's happening from the change management perspective across our CABs, including our enterprise CABs."
 

Cons

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"To improve the product for our usage, the pricing maybe could be a bit lower."
"There are still a few odd issues in FootPrints 12.x, which are frustrating."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"The high price is a huge barrier in Portugal."
"The Software Asset Management feature can be improved. We would like to see more features for the Software Asset Management functionality."
"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."
"A new user does need training or time to learn the solution before jumping in. It was very hard in the beginning to understand everything. I couldn't find the models I needed at the time."
"Some enhancements to the self-service platform would be helpful. That part is still a little barebone."
"Discovery is not immediate, and there is a lag."
"If you have a lot of users, a lot of developers on a single platform, probably not everybody knows what the other ones do and you have, of course, different quality and experience of the developers."
"We would like to have an Asset Management and/or Project Management feature enabled in this version and in the IT Service Management edition."
 

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."
"This solution has good pricing."
"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"ServiceNow is a leader and its pricing is quite good, quite competitive... Sometimes some plugins are not priced reasonably but, generally, the platform itself, its modules, are priced reasonably."
"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."
"There are licensing fees."
"Some time ago it was expensive, but large companies have special contracts. It's enterprise prices, and we're talking about millions per year."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"ServiceNow's pricing is comparatively higher than Helix's."
"The licenses are expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Enterprise171
 

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: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.