BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Spiceworks comparison

BMC Helix and Spiceworks are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC Helix is ranked #30, while Spiceworks is ranked #14 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 90% of BMC Helix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Spiceworks users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Spiceworks and BMC FootPrints Service Core are both IT service management tools designed to enhance ticket management and infrastructure efficiency. While Spiceworks offers competitive pricing and support options attractive to budget-conscious organizations, BMC FootPrints Service Core provides a comprehensive set of features that appeal to businesses seeking robust capabilities.

Features: Spiceworks is favored for its network monitoring, help desk capabilities, and integrated knowledge base, which are ideal for small to medium enterprises. It offers a simple ticketing system and effective network scanning. BMC FootPrints Service Core stands out with its ITIL compliance, detailed project management tools, and robust automation capabilities, addressing the needs of larger organizations with more intricate requirements.

Room for Improvement: Spiceworks could enhance its inventory accuracy and reporting features, while users note that its user interface could be more intuitive. Integration capabilities with external systems also present an opportunity for improvement. BMC FootPrints Service Core might improve its deployment complexity and provide more straightforward customization options. Additionally, its user interface could benefit from being more streamlined.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Spiceworks is applauded for its easy and rapid deployment, supported by a large, active user community. This setup is advantageous for businesses looking for minimal setup time. BMC FootPrints Service Core, although it involves a more complex installation process, benefits from professional customer service that provides guidance and support during the setup phase.

Pricing and ROI: Spiceworks is notable for being a cost-effective solution, offering significant ROI for smaller businesses with virtually no cost barriers. BMC FootPrints Service Core, despite its higher initial cost, provides extensive ROI through its comprehensive feature set, which is valuable to enterprises prepared to invest in enhanced functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks

June 2026

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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

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

Management Consultant at Accenture

Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions

Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.

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reviewer1765752

System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

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…

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Rohit Samel

Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd

Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports

The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Automation Anywhere software has improved our organization by moving us into the RPA climate and allowing us to save on our overhead."

"Overall, Automation Anywhere is a very user-friendly and easy-to-use tool, and if clients are looking to implement automation into their business, I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere over other tools because it is well-suited for their purposes and can be easily utilized."

"It is highly accurate and gets up and running in a very short period of time."

"Automation Anywhere is a great tool."

"Tasks now don't depend upon the unavailability of certain employees/colleagues to be completed. Also, bots can run all day long which also affects the overall budgets."

"We used to do many daily routine checks and jobs. We have implemented the automation knowledge which resulted in good productivity, time-saving, and extra efforts being reduced."

"The advantage of Automation Anywhere is that you don't necessarily have to come from a programming background."

"We have seen more efficient processing and less number of errors due to quality control."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"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."

"This is certainly a solution that I recommend for big enterprise."

"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."

"Now all IT related issues, problems, changes and even projects are more controlled using Footprints."

"Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."

"It has helped the help desk team. We get our tickets in and are able to support our customers, the end-users, with this solution."

"I feel confident in saying that BMC FootPrints Service Core is definitely one of the best products in the market."

"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros

"The customization of the service desk; we set it up for use by different departments that had specific tracking needs and were able to meet those needs."

"It’s fantastic because its free to use and easy to set-up in house, but it’s quite sluggish on the administrator end, but considering its free you cannot complain."

"If you are a small – medium sized business you cannot go wrong with using Spiceworks to help you provide an A+ IT support as it is free."

"Spiceworks is a great, free product, and any IT department that doesn't have a solid help-desk/knowledge-base solution would be amiss not to implement it."

"This product is definitely a great start for a ticketing system at an organization, particular for small to medium size teams."

"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space."

"Spiceworks provides a centralized system through which all IT requests are funnelled, with requests being auto-assigned a ticket number, thus streamlining organization and prioritization of requests."

"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free."

More Spiceworks pros

Cons

"The setup process is not easy compared to the competition, and this can be a barrier to entry."

"Even though the product is easy to use, there are some challenges when we move across different environments; there's a lot of setup needed."

"To improve the product, one aspect that Automation Anywhere can work on is archiving legacy data effectively. Currently, data older than current versions remains on the server, slowing the system down."

"Regarding the pricing, I think it's high, and it's the same for the setup cost and licensing."

"There could be more training provided by Automation Anywhere."

"20 percent of the bots need to supervised because sometimes errors occur during the run. Most of the errors that I have encountered have been because the object cloning did not capture the buttons properly."

"The bot scaling process was painful, when you go beyond a few bots, and because we had stability issues. We had to work through the issues, and they took us a long time."

"The overall product in Automation Anywhere is good, but they need to improve a little bit on the overall architecture side."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."

"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 nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."

"Sometimes it is difficult to make the application do exactly what you need."

"There are still a few odd issues in FootPrints 12.x, which are frustrating."

"We need more customizable reporting functionality."

"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core cons

"I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves."

"The main issue we had with the Spiceworks was always performance related."

"I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging. When I click a note or a device, I should be able to see more details about the router and modem. For example, I want to see the version, downtime, availability, latency, etc. I should have easy access to everything about our assets at a glance."

"Spiceworks could improve the upgrade procedure. It regularly fails and we have to use the workaround to get a new version installed."

"I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment."

"The devices keep showing offline in the dashboard, but when we check it, it's already online."

"I think troubleshooting errors became the most frustrating part since it is free; you can’t complain."

"One of the biggest ways in which Spiceworks could improve is by developing better and more automated workflows. For example, in another solution called ServiceDesk by ManageEngine, you can have levels of approval in the event that there is a request for new software, or when someone requests a VPN or WiFi connection. This kind of multi-stage approval feature provided by ServiceDesk does not appear to exist in Spiceworks, and it is one of their main shortcomings for me."

More Spiceworks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not involved in the pricing, but based on what I hear from our central RPA team, it is not very expensive; it is also not cheap. Its price is in the midrange."

"We're paying a monthly subscription fee for the bot and for services. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."

"The setup cost for this is onetime and licensing is based on your choice of product."

"With the rebate processing automation that we did, it has provided us a savings of around an hour or two a person on a daily basis, which is quite a lot of savings."

"If it is saving FTE and Generating a good ROI then it is Worth Investing."

"Because it reduced the time duration of our processes, our costs went down."

"It's a bit expensive compared to other RPA tools on the market."

"We are currently negotiating a contract. Depending upon that, we will definitely look at increasing usage."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."

"This solution has good pricing."

"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."

"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."

"The tool is cheap."

"The product is free! Get it now."

"It's free."

"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Construction Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	159
Midsize Enterprise	81
Large Enterprise	554

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.

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What needs improvement with Spiceworks?

I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, ...

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What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?

If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?

It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially ...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

July 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

July 2026

Download BMC FootPrints Service Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Spiceworks

July 2026

Download Spiceworks product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

FootPrints Service Core

No data available

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

BMC Helix

Demo not available

Spiceworks

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

BMC FootPrints Service Core is a comprehensive tool that aids in incident, problem, and change management while offering customizable views and integration options.

Valued for its customizable home views and flexible database relations, BMC FootPrints Service Core excels in stability and responsive technical support. With capabilities for email automation, survey integration, and report creation, it enhances IT service management and business process efficiency. The solution supports ticket status updates with minimal downtime and accommodates multiple administrators across workspaces. Pink Elephant certification and smart IT features broaden its appeal for IT departments.

What are the key features of BMC FootPrints Service Core?

Incident Management: Tracks and resolves service desk tickets efficiently.
Problem Management: Identifies and mitigates underlying issues to prevent recurrence.
Change Management: Helps assess and handle changes seamlessly in the environment.
Customizable Views: Offers tailored dashboards for user-specific information.
Email Automation: Facilitates swift communication and response handling.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Stable Performance: Ensures reliable operation for consistent IT services.
Responsive Support: Provides timely technical assistance to resolve issues.
Administrative Flexibility: Allows versatile control across different workspaces.

In industries like IT services and HR, BMC FootPrints Service Core supports managing service desk tickets, tracking assets, and resolving issues in network, infrastructure, and software areas. Its functionalities also extend to HR issue tracking, service requests, and contract management, facilitating both on-premises deployments and ITIL process implementations such as Service Request and Service Catalog Management.

BMC Helix

Spiceworks is a freeware IT management tool offering efficient ticketing systems and inventory management with Active Directory integration, making it user-friendly and effective for network monitoring.

Spiceworks supports IT teams with device management and network visibility through strong community backing, ease of use, and comprehensive features like reporting and asset tracking. Its cost-effectiveness is attractive, though users seek improvements such as more customization, better ticketing, enhanced stability, and improved integration capabilities. Security, performance, and scalability are key focuses for enhancement.

What are the key features of Spiceworks?

Ticketing System: Simplifies incident logging and service requests.
Inventory Management: Tracks IT assets efficiently.
Network Monitoring: Offers reliable network oversight.
Active Directory Integration: Seamless integration for user management.
Community Support: Access to troubleshooting and insights.
Reporting: Facilitates in-depth analysis through reports.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Cost-Effectiveness: Lowers expenses for IT management.
Ease of Integration: Fits smoothly into existing systems.
Improved IT Support: Enhances incident response and monitoring.
Global Collaboration: Facilitates network management across locations.
Resource Efficiency: Streamlines operational tasks for IT teams.

In many industries, Spiceworks is utilized for managing infrastructure, facilitating network oversight, and documenting IT services. Teams efficiently manage networks globally, monitor devices like routers and switches, and provide IT support without reliance on managed service vendors, making integration straightforward.

Spiceworks

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

Cast & Crew

Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks

June 2026

Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks

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