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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs ServiceNow 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
30th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
223
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.0%, down from 26.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow21.0%
BMC FootPrints Service Core1.2%
Other77.8%
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…
Nikhil Gohil - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility
I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product solidly handles incident management, problem management, and change management."
"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."
"​Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."
"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."
"The discovery feature is very flexible."
"Having a one stop shop for linked assets and tickets has improved end user adoption and led to a reduction in phone/email tickets."
"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."
"ServiceNow provides quite good insights about what is happening in the organization."
"The solution has a user-friendly interface."
"We consider the integration capabilities of the solution with other tools to be a valuable feature."
"ServiceNow is one of the few easiest platforms you can integrate with products like Ansible to automate your workflows."
"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."
"The most valuable features of ServiceNow for me are its ticketing and reporting capabilities."
"I have definitely seen a positive impact of ServiceNow on our company and customer processes, including time savings and money savings."
"The solution has very good automation tools."
 

Cons

"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."
"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."
"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."
"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 would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."
"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 workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"There is a need to enhance ticket details visibility on the portal, such as displaying SLA information, which currently requires development effort."
"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."
"The reporting, which also includes dashboards, needs to be improved, and there should also be the ability to turn on and off portions of Project Management. Currently, as soon as you install the new version, you've got to go back there and make all the tweaks. There should be just a configuration file that goes to the new version.  The Project Management module does not leverage the knowledge base the way it should, and there is no built-in ability to get to the articles. Resource management should be easier. It would be amazing if they can make resource management a little bit more graphical. There are other solutions that I've seen where resource management was a more visual experience."
"I find the way you need to attach things like screenshots and stuff is a bit gimmicky. I'm a casual user. I'll use it once every two months and only when I have an incident that I need to report. You don't get a lot of experience with it when you're just using it once in a while like that. Therefore, it needs to be more intuitive so that you don't have to re-learn how to do simple tasks as the way to do certain things just isn't obvious."
"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."
"The standard UI is very restricted. It doesn't look as good, compared to Remedy. Building your own UI requires some additional coding..."
"Their cloud management is also not that great compared to other products."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"This solution has good pricing."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."
"There are licensing fees."
"The cost is quite high."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"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."
"It is very expensive because it is a big organization. You have to pay for additional things."
"It is fairly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

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 Business54
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise163
 

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...
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.
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
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 BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.