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BMC Helix ITSM vs IBM Maximo 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Helix ITSM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (8th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (6th)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Helix ITSM and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Helix ITSM is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 5.7%, down 11.7% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 15.2% mindshare, down 28.9% since last year.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix ITSM5.7%
ServiceNow15.8%
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Other71.2%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Maximo15.2%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management8.5%
IFS Cloud Platform7.3%
Other69.0%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Workflow automation has improved incident handling and now reduces manual effort significantly
Although BMC Helix ITSM is a strong enterprise platform, there are areas where it could be improved. One key area is usability and simplification of configuration, especially for new administrators, because the platform is highly flexible and the learning curve can be steep during initial setup. Improving UI responsiveness and simplifying certain configuration screens would enhance the overall user experience. Additionally, more guided templates or best practice configuration recommendations could help organizations implement processes faster and reduce onboarding time. These improvements would make the platform more intuitive while still maintaining its powerful customizable capabilities. Beyond the usability improvements mentioned earlier, another area that can be enhanced is performance optimization in highly customized environments. While the platform is stable, complex configurations with zero downtime requirements and large data volumes may require tuning. More built-in optimization guidance or diagnostics would be helpful. It would also be beneficial to have more out-of-the-box integration templates and clearer API examples, which could speed up onboarding for customers integrating with monitoring or DevOps tools.
Antony Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Java Software Engineer at GPA
Asset management has become streamlined and decision-making is now driven by lifecycle data
The best features IBM Maximo offers are that it is very simple to deploy on OpenShift using Ansible playbooks. It also has excellent support for integration, is simple to configure, and the asset register is very straightforward. Work management and managing inventory are seamless. In terms of integration support, I have used preventive maintenance, work generation, accurate work execution planning, tracking actuals, and I can easily integrate with other tools and systems. IBM Maximo Suite gives me a single place where service cycles are standardized and tied to compliance. IBM Maximo has positively impacted my organization as it has been a very useful tool. It reduced human error by moving away from pen and paper-based scheduling. It saved cost by minimizing unexpected downtime of assets, with approximately 50% of time being saved. We have also reduced overwork among staff by removing redundant information and smoothing task flows. It helps us scale our team without micromanaging small issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BMC Smart IT is somewhat rigid, but they have a powerful backend that supports our complex need for extension versus customization. Between extension and customization, you can achieve complex business processes. That's one of the main advantages of BMC."
"It's a very integrated solution."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."
"The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most."
"It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world."
"The solution can scale."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the service level management, configuration, and reporting tool."
"The most valuable feature for our customers using BMC Helix ITSM is change management."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
"IBM Maximo is a very strong and powerful tool in the market…Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"IBM Maximo is the best software for assets management."
"Provides great flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is asset management maintenance as well as asset management overall."
"Preventive maintenance management."
 

Cons

"They could be more responsive to feedback from their community board."
"It has created more layers of bureaucracy."
"It's expensive, particularly in the emerging market where you see a lot of customers that have a budget crunch over issues."
"It takes a long-time to plan and deploy the on-premise solution."
"I have customers that always would like to adapt and personalize BMC Helix ITSM more."
"The dashboard can be better."
"BMC Helix ITSM could improve by having a cloud version. They are working on it which is a good thing because their competitors, such as ServiceNow, already provide cloud services."
"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 mobile solution has a lot of room for improvement, especially in geopositioning capabilities, tracking capabilities, and configuration capabilities, in order to let the tech operate online and offline.​"
"Coding can be complex when customization is required."
"Vendor management needs enhancement."
"I feel that the interface is a little too complicated with a large number of fields to enter."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"The latest version is slow due to the power it requires."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If Customer and IT agents are happy, that is one of the greatest ROI. However, one of the major factors is Leadership, because at the end they have to justify the cost."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"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."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"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."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"Just make sure you really sit down and look at what you will be using per user, therefore you will not be surprised with a big bill. You do not want every user having every license, it really is not needed."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
 

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 operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within depart...
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 phase at this point in time. There isn't anything that I would suggest for impr...
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 ITSM supports our IT service management processes primarily for all incident, pr...
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
The only thing that I need from IBM Maximo is more simplicity. The application has been designed in a way that it is serving the enterprises. It needs to be simpler for the SMEs, or for the compani...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
There are different use cases for IBM Maximo that I work with mostly. We use it for complete asset management. Anything that comes into the asset repository, asset management, asset evaluation, any...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Maximo?
AWS is more recommended for IBM Maximo. You can go into Microsoft as well, but AWS is preferred. IBM also has their own cloud as well.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: March 2026.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.