BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Zendesk comparison

BMC and Zendesk are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC is ranked #28, while Zendesk is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.7. BMC holds a 0.6% mindshare in HDS, compared to Zendesk’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Zendesk users who would recommend it.

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Read 10 BMC FootPrints Service Core reviews

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134 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Zendesk

Read 59 Zendesk reviews

1,602 Views
1,273 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Zendesk

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

BMC FootPrints Service Core and Zendesk are service management solutions. BMC FootPrints is preferred for flexibility and customizability, while Zendesk has an advantage in features and overall satisfaction, justifying its pricing.

Features: BMC FootPrints Service Core offers extensive customization for workflows, automation, and a relational database for linking items. It provides detailed audit trails and history creation, benefiting organizations needing personalized setups. Zendesk provides advanced reporting tools, integration with third-party applications, and seamless chat and social media support. Its ticket management and multi-channel integrations deliver a comprehensive service experience.

Room for Improvement: BMC FootPrints could enhance its deployment process to reduce complexity and time consumption. Its user interface might require simplification for easier navigation. Additionally, technical support response times could be improved. Zendesk costs can be prohibitive for smaller organizations. Customization options might be limited without additional expenses, and some users find its reporting features complex to utilize fully.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BMC FootPrints Service Core involves a complex deployment needing considerable time for setup but allows thorough customization afterward. Zendesk ensures a streamlined deployment process with faster installation and ongoing support. Its setup is simplified, making the system easier to get up and running quickly.

Pricing and ROI: BMC FootPrints Service Core demands a significant initial investment, promising strong ROI through tailored solutions for complex needs. Zendesk has a higher ongoing cost but provides robust ROI by enhancing productivity and delivering efficient customer support. Both platforms have pricing models reflecting their strengths in adaptability and comprehensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Zendesk

February 2025

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Helped 845,406 peers since 2012

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)

30th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

9th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (7th), CRM (20th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), Community Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 4.1%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Carrie Wu

Sr. Systems Analyst at Vancouver Fraser Port Authority

Supports the convergence of ticket management, IT, and customer services

I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10 because it's a good system and it meets most of our requirements. It still has a lot of space to improve because the service desk function is changing all the time. This solution has to continually be innovative. It should also generate more user-friendly reports utilizing a collaborative framework. Additionally, I would tell anyone looking at similar solutions to first figure out their most important requirements. Then compare their requirements with the function of the ITMS to ensure compatibility. While at the same time they should look ahead at future requirements such as the cloud configuration, along with other vendor capabilities before making a decision.

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Ahmed Nassar

Technical Consultant at Spectrum Group

Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup

It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The discovery feature is very flexible."

"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."

"Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."

"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."

"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 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."

"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros

"The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."

"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."

"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."

"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."

"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."

"It is a scalable solution."

"I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to use, and I haven't encountered any issues with delays or communication gaps in ticket resolutions."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."

"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 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."

"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."

"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."

"Hyphens are not allowed in the quick search bar. This has created a problem in our environment where we use hyphens in our asset names."

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core cons

"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."

"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."

"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."

"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."

"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."

"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data. So, we usually use a secure SharePoint folder link. We put that in the Zendesk ticket so that the requester has a secure way of getting to their data."

"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."

"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."

"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."

"This solution has good pricing."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

"The price is very competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

23%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

I am not currently aware of the exact pricing, but since we are still using Zendesk, it appears to be at a reasonable price point.

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What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries. It would be advantageous to have an AI layer that can analyze incoming requests and generate summaries, as ...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

March 2025

Download BMC FootPrints Service Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Zendesk

March 2025

Download Zendesk product report

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

FootPrints Service Core integrates IT service and asset management for end-to-end business services, and it's easy to install, use, and support. With configurable capabilities that streamline service delivery, FootPrints improves customer satisfaction and IT's reputation with your business users.

BMC

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Zendesk

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Zendesk

February 2025

Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Zendesk

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