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BMC Helix ITSM vs N-able MSP Manager 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 Helix ITSM
Ranking in Help Desk Software
6th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N-able MSP Manager
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
30th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 7.1%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able MSP Manager is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix ITSM7.1%
N-able MSP Manager1.2%
Other91.7%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ameet Darole - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for user ticket management, incident management, and event management
We had a manual event management process and a separate monitoring tool called Dynatrace. The alerts generated did not flow to the ITSM tool. With BMC Helix ITSM, the alerts flow and auto-route to respective technical support. If the alerts are resolved, the ticket will be automatically closed. So, the workload and automation are much better now. BMC Helix ITSM is a fast platform, so it is quite manageable. I would recommend BMC Helix ITSM to other users because it is a good solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Yazan Albaw - PeerSpot reviewer
N-able MSP Manager centralizes service management, automates ticketing, and enhances client communication for streamlined IT operations.
For improvement, there's a feature I've already requested from N-able that I'd love to see in future releases. When adding a client, there should be a way to add multiple contacts under each client. Currently, we have to manually enter each contact’s details one by one, including their name, last name, password, and other information. It would be much more efficient if we could import contacts in bulk, perhaps using an Excel sheet or another import method. Additionally, it would be highly beneficial if MSP Manager could integrate with multiple RMM solutions. At the moment, we're limited to integrating with just one RMM, Expanding this capability would greatly enhance the versatility and value of MSP Manager.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Helix is more lightweight than these tools. It's a traditional tool that was developed more than 10 years ago. Ease of use is the operative word."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."
"The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs and the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the collaboration, integrated with the help of another solution called Entity. We can do all the integration and receive an automatic ticket with the help of email. We are able to receive SMS alerts to clients and end users. Every step of the ticket is generated and we are able to resolve and close them. It's very helpful to have the ability to inform the user with detailed information."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM for us are CMDB and discovery."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a good product out-of-box, with a lot of functionalities built-in, so there is no need to worry—just plug and play."
"We have seen year over year customer satisfaction improvement for the last five years."
"With service requests, we have been able to give visibility to the business users."
"I am impressed with the tool's integration with our mail system."
"This is a premier product and it has been around for a long time."
"I like that you can do all the things with it. You can patch, and you can run the scheduled tasks. You can remote in, upload files, and download files. You can log onto a computer PowerShell, or command prompt, without having to log into RDP. I also like its ease of use."
"The best advantage for us, since we use all N-able products, is that the MSP portal centralizes everything."
 

Cons

"I would also love to see consistency across all consoles."
"If I'm working with a client who wants to expand and move into other areas - they want to expand their workflow and other parts of the organization, they want to do some work with project management, they want to do some work with HR - I'm not sure that BMC Remedy is doing that. And it's because of their platform. Any software has a lifecycle. To me, BMC is a dated architecture."
"Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy."
"Smart Reporting was added, then was purchased from another vendor. We have little ability to customize and correct issues due to this."
"In the next release, I would like to see AI used for classification or categorization."
"The interface should be more user-friendly, and the customization should be easier."
"It needs to be more comfortable for the end-user."
"We found that there was numerous issues upgrading from 8.1 to 9.1 in that all our licenses were broken for almost a year and a half. We chased down a total of 14 hotfixes, patches, and service packs before things were finally resolved. During that time, said "fixes" also broke other things, so it was quite the sore spot with management for some time."
"I'd like to see a way to import contacts in bulk using an Excel sheet or another import method."
"Its reporting is lousy and bad. It is not as good as it should be. There is too much work involved to get what you want. Most times, you have to call them to customize some stuff. I just don't like that part. They need to work on their reporting. They have a way to go."
"What I would like to see is a simplified solution that is packaged better, where you can easily implement or turn on the functionality that you need."
"The tool needs to improve its customization of the user interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are licenses to use this solution."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The solution is expensive."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"The cost is relatively high, especially for the BMC Controller application. However, the expense is justified by the standard and reliable features it offers. This product's reputation in the market is strong, providing assurance in terms of data and other considerations."
"While purchasing, try to negotiate on per user licensing costs, associated maintenance, and purchase 20% more then what you think you should have. Bulk is always cheaper."
"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten since it's not the cheapest one in the market."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I know it's reasonable. Its cost of entry is not bad. I've had other organizations sign up for it. I don't know how much they paid, but it wasn't bad. You charge for every object. You charge for AV, and you charge for servers. There is a charge for everything or every object in that. I know we make money from it, but I don't know what it is."
"Don't get scared of the price tag because it's definitely worth it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix ITSM?
If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within depart...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?
Currently, we are not utilizing the AI functionality in BMC Helix ITSM as we are still in the roadmap and development phase at this point in time. There isn't anything that I would suggest for impr...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
We use BMC Helix ITSM for the complete end-to-end ITSM suite, mainly for ticketing and service management. BMC Helix ITSM supports our IT service management processes primarily for all incident, pr...
What needs improvement with N-able MSP Manager?
For improvement, there's a feature I've already requested from N-able that I'd love to see in future releases. When adding a client, there should be a way to add multiple contacts under each client...
What is your primary use case for N-able MSP Manager?
At We Cybers, we utilize multiple N-able products, including RMM, EDR, and Passportal. N-able MSP Manager seamlessly integrates our ticketing system with both RMM Insight and N-central, enabling au...
What advice do you have for others considering N-able MSP Manager?
N-able MSP Manager also shines with its robust automation and workflow capabilities, which I find truly impressive. Users can automate the conversion of RMM triggers and alarms into tickets, automa...
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
SolarWinds LOGICnow, SolarWinds MSP Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Longleaf Systems, ITproMedia, Choice Technology, Halski Systems, Allixo Technologies, Nettech, Concept Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix ITSM vs. N-able MSP Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.