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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

"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM for us are CMDB and discovery."
"The Helix chatbot is helpful, and we can use its workflow features to automate some of the use cases for our clients."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are its customization ability and the addition of new features. As a built-in Suite, it covers all that is needed in the IT guidelines, which is good. Each customer has their own needs, and the customization the solution provides is beneficial."
"The mobile features are the best part of the new version. It is easy to be notified and update your work from a mobile, which is great."
"The way you can customize this product to adapt to the process the customer is already using is what sets this apart from other ITSM products out there. This helps customers to adapt to the tool pretty quickly."
"Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal."
"What I have found to be the most valuable is that it offers the radius deployment package not only to the BMC cloud but also to the public cloud such as Azure."
"With service requests, we have been able to give visibility to the business users."
"They have a real strength of tracking the asset itself along with the condition of the asset, the maintenance of the asset and who has access to the asset, etc."
"The large range of configurability of the product is great, since everyone has a different way of doing things."
"The Preventive Maintenance feature, especially in its inspection routines and KPI abilities, is valuable."
"I have found Work Order management the most valuable feature. Additionally, it is a very robust and powerful solution."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"We can manage, organize, and track incidents, claims, jobs, tasks, preventive and corrective maintenance, locations, and assets."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
 

Cons

"They could be more responsive to feedback from their community board."
"Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution."
"The user experience could be better."
"Whenever you start exploring some new product features, you run into defects. It has been like this for the last six years."
"It can have more features for hardware discovery and hardware information. The integration with IQ operations management should be streamlined. ITSM and ITOM should be more integrated, and there should be better integration from Helix Discovery to Helix CMDB. There were some issues regarding this integration, and they were difficult to resolve in big environments. We have a lot of devices and users to manage. Therefore, the integration should be better."
"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."
"To raise any ticket, there are too many fields to be filled and it makes generating tickets very time-consuming."
"Smart Reporting was added, then was purchased from another vendor. We have little ability to customize and correct issues due to this."
"Areas for improvement include: an enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile; Agent intelligence; better dashboards for KPIs."
"It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is easy and one is difficult, I rate the setup process a two since it is very complicated."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
"This solution could improve by integrating or embedding finances, charts of accounts, and invoicing."
 

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."
"While purchasing, try to negotiate on per user licensing costs, associated maintenance, and purchase 20% more then what you think you should have. Bulk is always cheaper."
"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."
"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 too expensive for a small business."
"Please always get the latest quote from a BMC partner or from BMC. Check for the latest offerings."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"​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.​"
"$USD700 per agent user."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"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."
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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.
884,266 professionals have used our research since 2012.