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BMC Helix ITSM vs IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow 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

IT Service Management (ITSM)
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
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.
Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.
Nikhil Gohil - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility
I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use this tool for managing tickets, other employee related services, and reporting purposes."
"It's a very integrated solution."
"The solution is already aligned with the framework, so it is easy for us to proceed with any ISO 27K certification."
"The solution has good capabilities for analytics."
"Our Change Management and Incident Management​ processes have been greatly improved."
"We use the solution's Discovery tool to discover our assets, and we've used the ticketing tool for years."
"Improved our organization with better customer experience and reporting abilities."
"With service requests, we have been able to give visibility to the business users."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
"Reliable, very configurable, and it's all integrated in the same database."
"The most valuable features are the ability to create work orders and preventative maintenance."
"IBM Maximo is a very strong and powerful tool in the market…Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"​Maximo is very stable. We really do not have problem with stability.​"
"The most valuable feature is the ability to correct maintenance."
"Its capabilities let us organize our work."
"​The workflow capability for easy setup is powerful."
"The feature that I have found most valuable from ServiceNow is the ability to assign sub-tasks to different teams, including problem tickets and the regular and chain tasks."
"The most valuable features of ServiceNow for me are its ticketing and reporting capabilities."
"This solution is a single-storage for our user community to submit help desk tickets."
"I recommend ServiceNow due to its stability and good security."
"I like ServiceNow's Workspace feature. With Jira, we had to edit a ticket by going into it. We couldn't perform edits from within the project plan. ServiceNow allows you to edit everything from one screen. It's like an Excel spreadsheet, but Jira requires you to drill down into the ticket. ServiceNow is more convenient if you are working on multiple projects and workflows."
"The features of ServiceNow that I find most valuable include its ability to easily access ticket details if you know the ticket number, monitor the timeline of when the ticket was created, and see the current status, which makes ServiceNow the best tool I have ever used."
"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."
 

Cons

"Needs to make customizable/configurable article templates in the Knowledge Management."
"Whenever you start exploring some new product features, you run into defects. It has been like this for the last six years."
"I have customers that always would like to adapt and personalize BMC Helix ITSM more."
"The notifications that the solution is providing are very helpful, they should keep improving them for the future."
"Adding additional fields does not work very well."
"The interface is one major complaint about this product."
"We found that there was numerous issues upgrading from 8.1 to 9.1 in that all our licenses were broken for almost a year and a half. We chased down a total of 14 hotfixes, patches, and service packs before things were finally resolved. During that time, said "fixes" also broke other things, so it was quite the sore spot with management for some time."
"It has created more layers of bureaucracy."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"Areas for improvement include: an enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile; Agent intelligence; better dashboards for KPIs."
"The interface is not very easy or user-friendly and is in need of improvement."
"The pricing model of the solution has room for improvement as well as the after-sales support."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"The latest version is slow due to the power it requires."
"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"ServiceNow's mobile app should be seamless and it is not right now."
"We find it good in general. Obviously, there are areas of improvement for every capability. As they evolve more, if they keep on adding more intelligence into the capabilities, it will improve. The improvement areas are more integration across the landscape and more intelligence for the overall capability of the solution."
"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."
"The visuals are the one area where there is opportunity for improvement."
"HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module."
"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."
"For healthcare, which is a pretty audited environment, there are no concrete solutions for digital signatures, apart from our license with Adobe, so it requires orchestration."
"One thing I don't care for is the reporting and the way it functions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"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."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"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."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"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."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"$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.​"
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"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."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"I have found the solution very expensive."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are happy with the pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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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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 t...
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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
Maximo
No data available
 

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
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, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: June 2025.
862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.