Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC Helix ITSM vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL] 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
6.6
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (6th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (3rd)
OpenText Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

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 feature for our customers using BMC Helix ITSM is change management."
"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 solution's most valuable features are automation and orchestration."
"In general, for incident management, it's okay."
"The digital workplace is appealing."
"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."
"We have seen year over year customer satisfaction improvement for the last five years."
"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."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality. We're using a lot of HPE tools and we can do a lot with it. So, its functionality is the most valuable feature."
"It can adapt to any process in the organization."
"Incident management is the most valuable because we're using it to manage tickets for an accounting system. With the reports that are available, it allows us to track and identify trends at the type and item level. It also helps us in managing the workload better than what we had in Remedy, which is what we were using before 2013."
"The design has been revamped in terms of GUI. The current interface is quite easy to read."
"It's easy to scale."
"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."
"Its flexibility and ease of customization are its most valuable features."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
 

Cons

"BMC Helix ITSM should improve its price."
"The interface is one major complaint about this product."
"Log in process is unnecessarily complicated."
"Its performance can be improved. Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side. It would be beneficial for us if there is a lighter version of this solution. There is also a limitation on the number of columns and memory for extracting a report, and this functionality can be improved. We would like to have better integration and UI in this solution. The user interface should be easy to navigate. Its integration with other tools, such as SharePoint or Jira, can also be improved, which would be beneficial for us. In terms of new features, there should also be a mobile version. The desktop version is available, but the mobile version is not available, which is one of the challenges that our team has. For users who work on Remedy and who raise the ticket, it would also be very beneficial to have some chatbot features."
"The interface is somewhat dated as compared to technologies in use today."
"Adding additional fields does not work very well."
"Some parts of the solutions are using the old interface."
"Helix needs to enhance some of its functionality with the latest technology. For example, Helix could improve its chatbot automation to automate more use cases."
"With the new version moving toward the codeless configuration is good, but it's losing flexibility."
"The user interface is very clunky. It's only now beginning to be a web-based interface, but for now it's still very clunky."
"I think one area which is the most painful from my point of view is if you need to integrate a lot of the tools, and being able to make that a lot more seamless."
"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part. But, I can see that they are working on it, so that's quite good as well."
"We aren't able to take emails that come in and turn them into tickets, especially when it comes to attachments. When an email has an attachment, like a screenshot, it is a very cumbersome process, and it does not work very well. I shouldn't have been paying technicians to cut and paste attachments from an email into the ticketing system. It should do that automatically. Other solutions are able to do that. This is something that needs to be improved. Test manager and knowledge management areas are probably amongst the worst parts of this solution. We try to use this solution for knowledge management, but it is not user-friendly. Therefore, it has limited ROI as you need to spend time to try and fully capitalize on the knowledge management system."
"The interface could be better."
"Service Manager is at the end of its life. The architecture, performance, and look are all way behind."
"Pure cloud-based native functionality is lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There are licenses to use this solution."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"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."
"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."
"BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"The license is not cheap."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions are best for your needs.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
 

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 Micro Focus Service Manager?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Service Manager?
We use the product for infrastructure, profile, and incident management.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
resultspositive, Globicon
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.