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BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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 Helix Enterprise Servic...
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi ShankarSundarasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Cloud Architect at Blue Yonder
Integrated multi‑cloud discovery has improved incident control and change workflows
The best features BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management offers include scalability, robust ITIL service management, and excellent discovery for the multi-cloud infrastructure, particularly excelling in change problem management. In terms of features, particularly around change management, the product works very well, allowing me to create multiple kinds of changes such as normal change, expedited change, emergency change, and I can track the changes by logging into the respective portals. BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management has a positive impact on my organization by greatly improving workforce productivity; it creates dashboards for different personas within the organization, including the IT service management leadership team and the infrastructure operations engineering team, which is very useful for the day-to-day ITSM process. Specific metrics showing productivity improvement include our ability to reduce the number of incidents; since cloud workloads are always dynamic, BMC Discovery discovers the products every 24 hours, allowing me to get newly provisioned resources in any cloud platform used in Blue Yonder, which truly helps the infrastructure operations and engineering teams to easily track incidents and the recently provisioned resources.
SP
General Manager at sPerception IT
Adopting flexible workflows with customized automation delivers measurable benefits
There are things that I would like to see improved in ServiceNow, such as the pricing, as it is a very costly solution compared to other tools. Additionally, its presence in the local market is very limited; in Pakistan, for example, I don't see any vendor or distributor of ServiceNow available. They need to increase their sales spectrum globally so people can easily access them and engage them for client meetings and more. From a functionality perspective, the features in ServiceNow are acceptable as, at the moment, the ITSM modules rank highly, being 13 plus Pink Elephant certified, which is a good aspect to have. When providing advice to users, I would suggest they consider making strategic decisions about their per user pricing since it is very high. In our region, people normally start with 5 to 10 users, but the per user price is quite steep. Moreover, ServiceNow does not charge based on data uploaded or downloaded, so they should reconsider their pricing and data policies to align better with the financial capabilities of the region.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The support of BMC is generally good and better compared to some competitors."
"BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management has positively impacted my organization by sending event alerts."
"Overall, I find BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management to be a powerful and comprehensive platform that has significantly improved incident resolution, team coordination, and service delivery in our organization."
"We had fewer breaches, ninety-nine percent service uptime, and all these features were very good."
"BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management has really shaped Mahle, my last company, and their IT operations support system in a very formal way."
"BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is truly an enterprise-class product that assists global enterprises in day-to-day incident, change, and problem management, improving workforce productivity while being scalable and resilient, supporting all multi-cloud infrastructure platforms."
"It's a very low-code platform, and it's simple. The user experience is also really good."
"For our work, ServiceNow's service catalogs and SDK integrations are the most valuable features."
"I recommend ServiceNow due to its stability and good security."
"I have found many features that are important and that are easier when compared to Remedy; for example, the Scripted REST APIs and the Flow Designer... The Client scripts are simpler when you compare with Remedy."
"ServiceNow has been implemented to streamline team workflows across different departments in our company. Users, including traveling leaders, were able to approve requests and authorize additional rights through the mobile platform."
"I find the incident management part to be the most valuable. That's how the service desk tracks tickets."
"ServiceNow offers a range of ITSM, IT incident management, and PRCPs."
"ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI."
 

Cons

"For me, there was only one thing that could improve BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management."
"BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management could use improvements on the dashboard; having a ready-to-use dashboard that just needs asset information instead of building one from scratch would be helpful."
"Regarding my main use case or how BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management works with cloud environments, I believe it needs more interoperability and integration with data platforms such as Salesforce, Snowflake, and Databricks, which requires improvement."
"There are several areas where BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management could be improved. Currently, ServiceNow has an edge when it comes to the ease of discovering Configuration Items (CIs)."
"BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management is powerful, but there are areas where I think it could be improved, such as user interface simplification, faster AI learning, and context awareness."
"The capital expenditure neeed to get the tool up and running is extensive."
"The setup was time-consuming and required a lot of internal resources."
"The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."
"The solution could improve by being more stable."
"There are sometimes challenges with the portal being a bit confusing for new users. The implementation of the portal and workspaces is quite different, and improvements in this area would be beneficial."
"Vulnerability management could be improved. Also, integration with tools such as Microsoft Defender ATP needs improvement."
"There are Virtual Task Boards in the tool in the latest releases. There are many of them in the Scaled Agile Framework. There is some room there for improvement. It's really quite promising but, at the same time, it could be improved and I believe it will be improved soon."
"It should have more artificial intelligence for business and work capabilities. The community is not so active. There must be initiatives to make the community talk more and share more information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"ServiceNow is a leader and its pricing is quite good, quite competitive... Sometimes some plugins are not priced reasonably but, generally, the platform itself, its modules, are priced reasonably."
"The solution is priced for medium to enterprises sized businesses. However, it is expensive compared to competitors."
"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."
"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"The licensing expenses are excessively high."
"ServiceNow's pricing is comparatively higher than Helix's."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise166
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management?
While I am not very sure about the pricing, I have heard that the license cost of BMC is relatively lower than its competitors.
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management?
There are several areas where BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management could be improved. Currently, ServiceNow has an edge when it comes to the ease of discovering Configuration Items (CIs). In BMC...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management?
I use BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management ( /products/bmc-helix-enterprise-service-management-reviews ) primarily for IT service management. It supports modules like incident management, change...
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
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.