BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Spiceworks comparison

Why PeerSpot?

BMC Helix and Spiceworks are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC Helix is ranked #29, while Spiceworks is ranked #15 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.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks

September 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

"It is very self-explanatory, making it easy for non-technical users to develop."

"This tool provides us with easy accessibility for adopting the new process, as it is more user-friendly, and many new resources are able to grasp the tool and start doing the automation with ease, which is basically missing in the other vendors' tools."

"The most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the ease with which it integrates with our existing APIs."

"The product has improved our organization cost-wise and bank savings in transactions. Everything has been changed for the better."

"We have almost 27 use cases in production and, as of now, we have saved almost eight FTEs per annum."

"When it comes to financials, Automation Anywhere has done amazing work in ensuring not only the speed and accuracy of the bot, but also the compliance and error controls through which the bot executes the job at very high satisfaction and tolerance levels."

"We are using all of the features and all are important and valuable but the automation and flexibility are the things which make the product work as a solution for us."

"We've saved a lot of time. How much time we save depends on the process. It's likely at least 50%. Sometimes, it's up to 70%."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"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."

"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."

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

"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 have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."

"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."

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

More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros

"Well at the end if you are new to the field of IT, and have a small to medium sized company, do not hesitate to give Spiceworks a shot, its real easy (with no steep learning curve as Nagios), with excellent features and support."

"It's easy to understand."

"SpiceWorks is an easy to install and maintain inventory and help desk system for SMBs and it's free!"

"Since it's free, and only takes about two hours to setup, it's got a 100% ROI."

"It shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know up front."

"The capabilities, ease of use and price point (free) made Spiceworks the obvious choice for us."

"Ticketing works really well."

"ROI is great as the software is free."

More Spiceworks pros

Cons

"The Excel command has some limitations that they are working on."

"However, it does not work as well with retrieving data from images."

"For people who don't have technical skills, Automation Anywhere may take time when it comes to browsing or loading time, and sometimes becomes very buggy with unwanted failures."

"In the age of AARI and Automation Anywhere 2019 IQ Bot, the biggest challenges for me and my company are understanding the product and implementing it at the right place."

"When you are hosting the application, that is when it is a little more complicated to set up. You need to talk to the IT department, as you are actually outside of their firewall, then you are coming back inside their cloud."

"Automation Anywhere could be improved by staying more current with Microsoft products through packages."

"We have found that the passwords are not very stable in terms of their accuracy. We could only get 70 percent accuracy in these cases. Our clients require more accurate results. We are working toward this."

"They are already working on this: The boom of generative AI, the next-gen technologies, including advanced AI and ML technologies, are in the roadmap. I would like to see more and more AI integration and a bit more analytics. That would be great."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core cons

"I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging."

"Right now, if you have >2000 endpoints in Spiceworks, you will probably hate using it just because it's so bogged down."

"I would like to see the help desk product be more stable."

"It's got great potential, but too many security and resource issues."

"There are a lot of disadvantages to Spiceworks because it's not an agent-based solution."

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

"I would not recommend running Spiceworks on a desktop machine for long, I have had to reboot the services more often than I would like."

"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

"In most of the cases, the product value is very good. If the infrastructure, implementation, and framework are good, then generally, the client can get a good return on investment."

"We have saved time and money using this solution."

"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."

"Roughly, as of today, it is around $250,000 annually."

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are about $80,000. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"One of the key features that we chose, the bot as a service or the BotFarm, when they launched version 11.3, they decided not to have the BotFarm anymore. This put us in a situation because we expected to have bots on demand, just like our cloud software. This would have been cost efficient for us to use. We hope to see this again being realized with A2019. I hope the scalability from an on demand basis improves."

"The price for Automation Anywhere is reasonable."

"On a scale of one to ten with ten being the most expensive, I rate the price of Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."

"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."

"It's free."

"The product is free! Get it now."

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

"The tool is cheap."

"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."

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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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

14%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	161
Midsize Enterprise	85
Large Enterprise	561

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

October 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

September 2026

Download BMC FootPrints Service Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Spiceworks

September 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

September 2026

Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Spiceworks and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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