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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
6.5
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (8th)
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

KN
Senior Application Developer BMC at Balfour Beatty
Self-service portal significantly reduces resolution time and transforms service process with advanced features
We initially had a lot of tickets generated via the service desk through calls and emails. Now, we have almost moved out of email creations by introducing the DWP features on the Studio pages, with about 90% of the tickets coming in via our self-service portal. Recent upgrades offer different types of views for particular business lines, which was missing earlier. The new landing pages have allowed us to add banners, images, and internal videos, encouraging most customers to use these DWP self-service features. Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal. Additionally, the availability of knowledge articles, chatbots, and the new Helix GPT feature has improved service processes.
DL
Senior Consultant Project Management & Transition at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It does what it should, but it's quite outdated.
I rate Micro Focus Service Manager four out of 10. I wouldn't recommend it. I would suggest ServiceNow. There may be solutions better suited for smaller companies. There are always alternatives because the architecture isn't terribly complex. The architecture is the same across solutions, and everything is linked. There are no modules to be bought from some other company in the past and integrated. ServiceNow also its disadvantages, but if you compare it to Service Manager, I can safely say ServiceNow is the future and Service Manager is the past.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, for incident management, it's okay."
"It holds us accountable for IT services, leading to a reduction in IT service outages, and it's also given us a tight and streamlined management of services and reduction in resource utilization."
"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."
"Our Change Management and Incident Management processes have been greatly improved by using Remedy."
"In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything."
"The ease of use and integration made it a worthwhile investment, since we did some integrations with other tools making our lives easier."
"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."
"From what I've read BMC Helix ITSM has a lot of features and far more than the CA Service Desk."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality."
"The initial setup is easy."
"A valuable feature for us is that we have an ordered way to handle all the cases that we can handle with the infrastructure."
"Service Manager's best features are flexibility and customizability."
"Sometimes, customization is simple. The version we are using now has a nice interface."
"This is now completely organized and standardized in one workflow, and people work on one ticket, so there's full transparency, no confusion anymore, time to market is much faster, and the email traffic is less."
"Its flexibility and ease of customization are its most valuable features."
"The design has been revamped in terms of GUI. The current interface is quite easy to read."
 

Cons

"Smart Reporting was added, then was purchased from another vendor. We have little ability to customize and correct issues due to this."
"They could be more responsive to feedback from their community board."
"I would also love to see consistency across all consoles."
"To raise any ticket, there are too many fields to be filled and it makes generating tickets very time-consuming."
"BMC needs to keep improving their support. It is still far from what it was back in the days of Remedy."
"The amount of software issues are still too big, even considering the complexity of the tool."
"Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side."
"BMC Helix ITSM is difficult for us to customize, and most customizations require vendor support, which leads to extra costs."
"Room for improvement is the speed with which you're able to access it and where it isn't as slow and draggy. It is really draggy."
"I think the best recommendation to Micro Focus would be to increase awareness and the marketing for this product."
"My big concern is that HPE made a decision in its last dot release to change the way that these improvements and enhancements are done by the end user."
"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is not very great. It would be better if it had more features."
"The user interface is very clunky."
"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."
"It's not user friendly (too complex), and it gives limited guidance documentation of how to filter all the logs detected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is too expensive for a small business."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"The license is not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
7%
 

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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?
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...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
My main use case for BMC Helix ITSM is validating and automating core ITSM workflows, such as incident, change, and service request management. I focus on ensuring that these workflows function cor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix ITSM?
My thoughts on the pricing and licensing cost of BMC Helix ITSM are that it is flexible.
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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
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