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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs BMC Helix ITSM 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 FootPrints Service Core
Ranking in Help Desk Software
29th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 7.5%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix ITSM7.5%
BMC FootPrints Service Core1.3%
Other91.2%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1765752 - PeerSpot reviewer
A flexible, comprehensive, integrated IT service and asset management platform with good technical support
We use BMC FootPrints Service Core to manage network issues, infrastructure issues, software issues, and ERP. We also use it to manage our facility. So, we do some work orders and also use it as an extra ticketing system Technical support is good. It would be better if it were more…
Andrii Dobrovolskyi - PeerSpot reviewer
Though the product's customization capabilities need improvement, it offers high stability
I rate the product's initial setup phase an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup phase, and ten is an easy setup phase. The product's initial setup phase was easy. The solution is deployed on the public cloud services offered by Amazon. The solution can be deployed in a few hours to a week.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"I think the most important feature is the ability to receive valuable ticket status support in a timely manner with little to no downtime interruptions."
"The discovery feature is very flexible."
"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."
"Technical support is good."
"This product solidly handles incident management, problem management, and change management."
"​Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."
"We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing."
"Technical support has been fine."
"The standards and the framework that it follows are most valuable. It has an ITIL and out-of-the-box framework."
"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."
"The solution has good capabilities for analytics."
"This product has helped us to maintain our OLAs (Organisation level Agreements) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) by tracking incidents, requests, problem records, and change requests, all in the form of tickets."
"It has been instrumental in aligning our service desk with the ITIL fundamentals and continuously improving the operating metrics of that area."
"It's a very integrated solution."
 

Cons

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"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 workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."
"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"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."
"It needs a more organic workflow, so every field you create is labeled throughout the stack. BMC has a few products that they try to bundle together. Generally, that solution works. BMC should take a step back and think about the overall solution—not only ITSM but also CTI Integration along with chat. They have all that, but it's not an end-to-end holistic solution with the added reporting analytics."
"The interface isn't that great."
"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."
"The amount of software issues are still too big, even considering the complexity of the tool."
"The search feature and the dashboard could both be improved."
"It needs to be more comfortable for the end-user."
"Support could be more skilled. We are wasting too much of our time debugging.​"
"The dashboard can be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"This solution has good pricing."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"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."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. BMC Helix ITSM and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,209 professionals have used our research since 2012.