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BMC Helix ITSM vs Cherwell Service Management vs JIRA Service Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 9.7%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 9.1%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ameet Darole - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for user ticket management, incident management, and event management
We had a manual event management process and a separate monitoring tool called Dynatrace. The alerts generated did not flow to the ITSM tool. With BMC Helix ITSM, the alerts flow and auto-route to respective technical support. If the alerts are resolved, the ticket will be automatically closed. So, the workload and automation are much better now. BMC Helix ITSM is a fast platform, so it is quite manageable. I would recommend BMC Helix ITSM to other users because it is a good solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
Karim Yousef - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently track and document projects with seamless tool integration
We are a management warehouse that provides services to different customers in different sectors. Primarily, we serve the banking sector and the military sector. We manage all the software delivery projects through tools such as JIRA Service Management or TFS Confluence is a great tool for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world."
"Helix is more lightweight than these tools. It's a traditional tool that was developed more than 10 years ago. Ease of use is the operative word."
"It is suitable for the present circumstances, providing reliability and adhering to the necessary procedures. Having ITSM and proper knowledge is essential for our work to be acknowledged and effectively contribute to the team's efforts. Utilizing ITSM ensures that our work, especially in chat windows and events from application support, is duly acknowledged. This is crucial for handling high-level events (HLEs) and maintaining accurate records. The system facilitates easy tracking, enabling managers and higher-ups to gather data for appraisals and other purposes efficientl"
"We use this tool for managing tickets, other employee related services, and reporting purposes."
"We have seen year over year customer satisfaction improvement for the last five years."
"Improved our organization with better customer experience and reporting abilities."
"Smart Reporting makes it easy to create/publish views for tables, so our customers can easily create their own reports."
"The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs and the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"It is 100% stable."
"The most valuable features of this solution are Incident and Request Management."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of JIRA Service Management are the service level agreement or management, and the ticketing system. Additionally, there are frequent updates that provide improvements."
"Developing processes is easy and user-friendly."
"The product is not lacking anything that a QA will want to use."
"We have an Agile environment and using Jira makes it easy to adhere to Agile best practices."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its SLA, which everybody wants when it comes to a service-based offering."
 

Cons

"The Approval Central system needs to be refreshed."
"Integration could be better. If something doesn't work well with some tools and operations, then management becomes difficult, so you have to integrate other tools."
"It would also be beneficial if there was a text-based editor for the workflow rules instead of using the developer studio, which adds a lot of time when developing quick solutions to problems."
"Some parts of the solutions are using the old interface."
"The search feature and the dashboard could both be improved."
"Needs to make customizable/configurable article templates in the Knowledge Management."
"The user experience could be better."
"In User Group sessions held by BMC in India, I mentioned the challenges with vast documentation, making it difficult to find the right information quickly. However, we lack access to a sandbox for in-house development, which was very helpful for hands-on work with new features."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"I would like to see improvement in the ability to filter completed tasks."
"JIRA Service Management could improve the forms. When you complete the form for the ticket, for example, to have more information given to the team. If they needed this information, you can give it to them. They need to add additional information for a better understanding of the whole picture of the issue or problem."
"JIRA Service Management could include more AI features."
"The platform should be more user-friendly. JIRA's user interface needs training to understand and utilize."
"Jira Service Management should be more user-friendly."
"I am not familiar if there's an integration with Visual Studio from Jira."
"It should be easier to log in."
"This solution lacks features for project management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is relatively high, especially for the BMC Controller application. However, the expense is justified by the standard and reliable features it offers. This product's reputation in the market is strong, providing assurance in terms of data and other considerations."
"It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"Please always get the latest quote from a BMC partner or from BMC. Check for the latest offerings."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The solution is expensive."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM could improve their price."
"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"The cost has recently increased. It might be around $20 to $25 per user license."
"This is pricey solution. Should we move to using all cloud solutions in our business, we may move to different tools that have multiple functionality versus having a solution for each area. This would be too pricey and we would need to replace Jira with a different solution that also offers other features."
"Costs are about $50 per user per year. JIRA is sold in user tiers of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 2000, 10,000, and unlimited users. It is bad when you have 51 users then the price is based on that 100 user tier. Users at 100 will be the most cost effective."
"Right now, there are only two of us who are both agents on the help desk and developers. We might be on the free version because we're less than three agents or users. I'm looking at Zephyr tests, which have a $10 a month flat rate, so right now, it is $10 a month. There are lots of add-ons. They do a free version, a standard version, and a premium version. In the last company, we started on $50 a month. By the time I left, we were paying $4,500 a month. That was mainly because we had 100 users on Confluence. I bought an add-on for Jira software for which we had 10 users, and that was $5 per user per month. It was costing me $500 a month, whereas it should only be $50 a month. I don't know if licensing fee has changed. I'd like our whole company to use it, but the big problem is the licensing because the Confluence side is what is really useful, but if I add 30 users to Confluence and then buy an extension for Jira software, I've got to pay for 30 licenses, even though I've only got two users in Jira software. It is the one big disadvantage of cloud software. You always have to pay for the number of seats regardless of which product you are on. This will probably severely limit how many people would use it because I'm not going to start paying $10 per user per month for a Jira software add-on when there are only two people using it."
"Jira Service Management has affordable license fees. It's $12 a month per person."
"I rate Service Management four out of 10 for affordability. The price could be better, especially for companies using more than one Atlassian product. It's suitable for SMBs that can afford it. I don't think there's another tool that's both better and cheaper. All help desk tools are relatively expensive."
"But about the plugins, I found one plug-in — its name is Actionable Metric I think — and it is $3000. That is very expensive for users in Iran."
"On a scale of one to five, where five is a good price and one is high, I would rate this solution as a three. It isn't cheap but it's not ridiculous."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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 ...
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Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
No data available
JIRA Service Desk
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: June 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.