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BMC Helix ITSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (6th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (3rd)
OpenText Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Helix chatbot is helpful, and we can use its workflow features to automate some of the use cases for our clients."
"Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems."
"It has centralized all work orders and help desk ticket tracking."
"The most valuable feature for our customers using BMC Helix ITSM is change management."
"BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product."
"In general, for incident management, it's okay."
"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 can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality. We're using a lot of HPE tools and we can do a lot with it. So, its functionality is the most valuable feature."
"The solution will streamline productivity and also improve automation. That would bring efficiency as well the ability to handle a big number of enterprise-wide service needs. Productivity and collaborative capabilities are some of the key benefits."
"Incident management is the most valuable because we're using it to manage tickets for an accounting system. With the reports that are available, it allows us to track and identify trends at the type and item level. It also helps us in managing the workload better than what we had in Remedy, which is what we were using before 2013."
"Sometimes, customization is simple. The version we are using now has a nice interface."
"It helps to register things, to see the changing parts, and to correlate incidents."
"The design has been revamped in terms of GUI. The current interface is quite easy to read."
"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."
 

Cons

"To raise any ticket, there are too many fields to be filled and it makes generating tickets very time-consuming."
"Adding additional fields does not work very well."
"Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution."
"Provide documentation on the content of the REST API interfaces. Right now, it is pretty much non-existent."
"We have experienced outages, because some other customers did something on the same cluster that we share."
"The product's customization capabilities, price, and technical support are areas of concern where improvements are needed."
"The amount of software issues are still too big, even considering the complexity of the tool."
"There are plugins to the solution that have come onto the market, so the solution should also be updated in terms of administration to increase efficiency."
"The user interface is very clunky. It's only now beginning to be a web-based interface, but for now it's still very clunky."
"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part. But, I can see that they are working on it, so that's quite good as well."
"I think the best recommendation to Micro Focus would be to increase awareness and the marketing for this product."
"Customization can be difficult at times because scripting is often required."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is not very great. It would be better if it had more features. When it comes to features, BMC tops the chart. When it comes to usage, people use BMC more."
"There's a lot of manual work, which is error prone and time consuming, in how the code gets transported from one system to the other."
"It needs to be easier to use for the end users because one problem we had was that we are handling different kinds of cases."
"We aren't able to take emails that come in and turn them into tickets, especially when it comes to attachments. When an email has an attachment, like a screenshot, it is a very cumbersome process, and it does not work very well. I shouldn't have been paying technicians to cut and paste attachments from an email into the ticketing system. It should do that automatically. Other solutions are able to do that. This is something that needs to be improved. Test manager and knowledge management areas are probably amongst the worst parts of this solution. We try to use this solution for knowledge management, but it is not user-friendly. Therefore, it has limited ROI as you need to spend time to try and fully capitalize on the knowledge management system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is too expensive for a small business."
"If Customer and IT agents are happy, that is one of the greatest ROI. However, one of the major factors is Leadership, because at the end they have to justify the cost."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."
"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."
"Just make sure you really sit down and look at what you will be using per user, therefore you will not be surprised with a big bill. You do not want every user having every license, it really is not needed."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."
"The license is not cheap."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Performing Arts
10%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
 

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 Micro Focus Service Manager?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Service Manager?
We use the product for infrastructure, profile, and incident management.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
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Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC Helix and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: September 2025.
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