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OpenText Service Manager [EOL] vs ServiceNow 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

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
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
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 - 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.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Service Manager's best features are flexibility and customizability."
"It can adapt to any process in the organization."
"Technical support is pretty good."
"Service Manager gives us a single system where everything is centralized in one base."
"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."
"Sometimes, customization is simple. The version we are using now has a nice interface."
"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."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"It's a very low-code platform, and it's simple. The user experience is also really good."
"We have found change management and CMDB to be very useful."
"Easy to integrate with third-party applications."
"I don't have to look through a whole bunch of other incidents that aren't relevant to me. It's very useful in that sense."
"Makes ticket information easy to access."
"A workflow automation platform that's reliable, performs well, and has good reporting and integration."
"Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money."
"It is a very promising product. They have a new release every six months. They're investing quite a lot, and you can do many creative things with the product. If you know how it works, you can have stricter rules in the product."
 

Cons

"With the new version moving toward the codeless configuration is good, but it's losing flexibility."
"Service Manager would be improved with access to automation."
"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 product's technical support services need improvement."
"I don't see anything lacking."
"The interface could be better."
"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."
"Their end-user interface and technical support features could be improved."
"The solution's user experience could be improved concerning its UI and portals."
"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."
"We don't have a huge amount of password reset requests, but the minimum package of resets that ServiceNow offers is much more than we need."
"Data access is a bit difficult, where you sometimes wish you had a relational database for some queries. The flexibility of data access in general is a bit on the low end. Of course, there is flexibility in some ways, but when I need a certain combination of data for some report, it can become a challenge."
"There is a need to enhance ticket details visibility on the portal, such as displaying SLA information, which currently requires development effort."
"Its stability and pricing need improvement."
"For me, there's a real opportunity, especially within the IT Service Management suite, to give a much better overall view of the workflow that individuals have across the different applications. At the moment, a lot of information is quite siloed in the different tables in ServiceNow."
"The RPA needs improvement. That's a new area for them that they're just entering into now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"The license is not cheap."
"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."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"I would say it is moderately expensive, ranging from six to seven on a scale of ten."
"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."
"The first impact for the customer is that it is expensive, but do not forget that it is a solution that includes infrastructure; a single cost, easy to justify."
"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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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 ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: March 2025.
845,485 professionals have used our research since 2012.