OpenText Service Manager [EOL] vs ServiceNow comparison

OpenText and ServiceNow are both solutions in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category. Additionally, 79% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Read 48 OpenText Service Manager [EOL] reviews

79% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

Read 225 ServiceNow reviews

22,688 Views
7,487 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

ServiceNow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between OpenText Service Manager [EOL] and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM).

To learn more, read our detailed IT Service Management (ITSM) Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 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

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

ServiceNow

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

225

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)

Featured Reviews

MEKKAB Raouf

Information Technology Service Manager & Technology Integration DevOps at Djezzy

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.

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Shafqat Paracha

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its flexibility and ease of customization are its most valuable features."

"Sometimes, customization is simple. The version we are using now has a nice interface."

"Service Manager gives us a single system where everything is centralized in one base."

"It can adapt to any process in the organization."

"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."

"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."

"It helps to register things, to see the changing parts, and to correlate incidents."

"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."

More OpenText Service Manager [EOL] pros

"In the Service Portal, the widget concept - and the way we have developed our widget - is pretty simple. We can leverage a lot on top of it."

"Your time-to-market, or TTM, becomes faster when you use ServiceNow. Even individuals that are not tech savvy can quickly change processes and workflows in it. This can make the organization as a whole more agile."

"The solution is stable, scalable and easy to use."

"The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients."

"I like the reporting aspect of it. It helps us know where we stand regarding the types of issues we're receiving... It also shows us trends. That enables us to possibly predict an issue that might come up in the future as well as what is happening right now. We will like that feature. With it, we can either avoid certain issues or know where we need to focus more regarding the service we provide."

"The Idea Portal and the PPM platform are most valuable. Their out-of-the-box dashboards and reporting are fantastic. I use them almost on a weekly basis. I have developed a couple of PMO dashboards for reporting. It is user-friendly. Everything is done through a navigation bar, and it makes things a lot easier that way."

"We consider the integration capabilities of the solution with other tools to be a valuable feature."

"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."

More ServiceNow pros

Cons

"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."

"The greatest issue for us is to understand the roadmap. We want to know whether we should upgrade now or should we wait three months."

"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."

"I think the best recommendation to Micro Focus would be to increase awareness and the marketing for this product."

"Service Manager is at the end of its life. The architecture, performance, and look are all way behind."

"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."

"I think one area which is the most painful from my point of view is if you need to integrate a lot of the tools, and being able to make that a lot more seamless."

"There should be some front desk provided or some options to let our users serve themselves, because we have about 5000 servers and 400 applications."

More OpenText Service Manager [EOL] cons

"We do a lot of relatively advanced stuff for the size that we are, but ServiceNow itself is so big and to some extent, there is a significant amount of complexity that you have, a big learning curve I would say, in order to really get on board."

"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."

"We can't update bulk tickets using a simple query language. Jira lets us update hundreds of tickets with one command. In ServiceNow, you need to select each task separately to close them. The dashboards could also be more user-friendly. Monday.com has better dashboards."

"I would like to see Advanced Intelligent Automation."

"System deployment and automation capabilities could be within the platform, similar to competitors."

"When we are using the solution on mobile phones on their networks the performance is reduced with a delay of approximately 8 seconds. There is less delay using the desktop computers connected to the WiFi or to the network directly."

"It's a little expensive compared to other tools."

"When it comes to reference fields, there are some limitations where you aren't able to use them, like in relationship queries. In Remedy, when you click a menu, you get options directly, whereas here, if you use a reference field, it points you to a different form. So the UI experience totally changes for the end user."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."

"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."

"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."

"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten. The pricing for ServiceNow is based on a SaaS platform with annual contracts. However, it may not offer much flexibility for adjusting usage in the short term."

"The price could be a little lower for the solution. Many of my customers have issues with the licensing process, they have to make it easier and straightforward."

"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."

"They could be more competitive with their licensing."

"The licensing expenses are excessively high."

"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."

"The CapEx version is great."

"The price of this solution is expensive."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Performing Arts

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

10%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	38

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	166

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...

See all answers

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 ...

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What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

See all answers

Comparisons

SCSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

OpenText Service Management (SMAX) vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 17% of the time

TOPdesk vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

More OpenText Service Manager [EOL] Competitors

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Pega Platform vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]

January 2026

Download OpenText Service Manager [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

January 2026

Download ServiceNow product report

Also Known As

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager

No data available

Overview

Service Manager on SaaS provides you with a cloud-based, industry leading IT Service Management solution.

OpenText

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

resultspositive, Globicon

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

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

December 2025

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