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BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow vs Splunk On-Call 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) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix ITSM5.7%
ServiceNow15.8%
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Other71.2%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow15.8%
JIRA Service Management7.3%
BMC Helix ITSM5.7%
Other71.2%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
IT Alerting and Incident Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk On-Call3.7%
PagerDuty Operations Cloud13.1%
Opsgenie9.1%
Other74.1%
IT Alerting and Incident Management
 

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.
MT
Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency
I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.
Venda E - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Option Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Automated alert routing has improved incident response and now enables faster on-call collaboration
Some of the features of Splunk On-Call include automated alert routing and escalation that will ensure the right people get notified immediately. Also, on-call scheduling and rotation management. This feature makes managing shifts and coverage very easy. Another feature is real-time incident collaboration and communication. This will help bring the right team together fast. Another feature is alert de-duplication and suppression. This will reduce the noise, so only meaningful alerts reach the on-call staff. The feature I rely on the most in my daily work is automated alert routing and escalation. It ensures that critical issues go directly to the right engineer without delay, which saves time and prevents the incident from being missed. This has been the biggest contributor to improving our response times. The noise reduction feature is also very helpful. By filtering out non-critical or duplicate alerts, Splunk On-Call keeps our team focused on what actually matters and prevents alert fatigue. Splunk On-Call has helped my organization to improve response times, reduce missed alerts, and coordinate teams more efficiently during incidents. It also reduced alert fatigue and made our on-call process more reliable and predictable. Our average incident response time dropped by around 20% to 25%, mainly because alerts reached the right people faster. We also noticed fewer unnecessary escalations, and missed alerts almost completely stopped after we implemented automated routing and escalation policies.

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 are the service level management, configuration, and reporting tool."
"It has centralized all work orders and help desk ticket tracking."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM for us are CMDB and discovery."
"In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything."
"It provides a good user experience."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It was a full-featured product. Based on my experience where I was responsible for Remedy, and for a later project where I worked on a very sophisticated implementation of BMC Remedy, it is full-featured and could do almost anything that you can think of in the ITIL portfolio."
"The solution can scale."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the possibility of the application development cap so that we can digitize workflows."
"The stability is excellent, there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze, and I find it to be reliable."
"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."
"It enables us to meet SLAs, track issues across the environment, and report those issues."
"There are many expansions available."
"The most recent addition of SAM Premium is a game changer for many organizations."
"ServiceNow reduces drastically the time to value and it is possible to completely get rid of flat files such as spreadsheets and powerpoints in less than a month for any Organizational process."
"ServiceNow offers a range of ITSM, IT incident management, and PRCPs."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is helpdesk escalation."
"The alert calling feature is the best because notifications are delivered via phone messages."
"The flexible schedule is the most valuable feature. It was very easy to set out a rotation."
"I would recommend VictorOps for global distributed support teams."
"My VP of Operations is ecstatic about the VictorOps product."
"Its the best solution of its type out there, you should go for it."
"VictorOps has decreased the meantime to acknowledge an incident management process, our developers can be on-call faster when we are using this solution, and we can fix our incidents much quicker."
"Splunk On-Call has helped my organization to improve response times, reduce missed alerts, and coordinate teams more efficiently during incidents."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Integration could be better. If something doesn't work well with some tools and operations, then management becomes difficult, so you have to integrate other tools."
"The tool needs greater customization flexibility, particularly concerning notifications and the progressive view web page. This is significant because it encompasses various aspects like incident management, problem management, change management, work orders, and tasks. Aligning the GUI interface with these functionalities requires more flexibility."
"The User Interface still has the appearance of being clunky and not user friendly."
"I would like to see the BMC add advanced DWP features and customization to the standard package. Furthermore, BMC does not have any leverage for non-IT services, so it would be nice if BMC could integrate something like HR Change Management into ITSM itself."
"This is a complex product that is quite expensive and there are other solutions out there at a lower cost, or you could work a trouble ticket system by using a Microsoft 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."
"Transparency in the pricing model needs to be improved."
"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."
"ServiceNow is not meeting our expectations. The contract module is quite rudimentary and doesn't support contract line items, which are subdivisions of contracts in VA."
"The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."
"There was an outage at the ServiceNow data center servers, especially on the eastern site. Two weeks later we found out about it through some other call, not to the engineer and it was not notified anywhere on the system."
"There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box."
"You can make the tool do anything, which may not always be a good thing."
"All the screens are similar. It's the same platform for everything and you need to familiarize yourself with it."
"The solution can be improved by including a wider list of permissions."
"There could be improvements with communicating an incident or alert."
"Should have more YouTube webinars."
"One area for improvement would be enhancing the mobile app experience."
"Should have more YouTube webinars."
"Many years ago, when VictorOps was a standalone company, when it was not part of Splunk, their support was more dedicated for us."
"The only feature that we are currently waiting on right now is really kind of an annoyance factor: when we get on the timeline on the main dashboard, there’s an ACK All button."
"The third-party configuration tool could be easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."
"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"The licensing cost is based on your partnership with ServiceNow and what you have selected for implementation. There is an annual license cost which is calculated based on your number of devices."
"It is an expensive platform."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
13%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise169
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

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?
Although BMC Helix ITSM is a strong enterprise platform, there are areas where it could be improved. One key area is ...
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 s...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VictorOps?
My experience with Splunk On-Call pricing and licensing has been straightforward. The setup cost was minimal since it...
What needs improvement with VictorOps?
One area for improvement would be enhancing the mobile app experience. While it works well, smoother navigation and f...
What is your primary use case for VictorOps?
I have been using Splunk On-Call for the last three years. My main use case for Splunk On-Call is incident alerting a...
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
No data available
VictorOps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
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    
NVIDIA, Cisco, NBC, Rackspace, Intuit, DirectTV, NASCAR, Arrow Electronics, Alliance Health, NetApp, Edmunds, New York Times, Return Path, Sony Playstation, CA Technologies, Sphero, Symantic, HBO, Weatherford, Blackboard, Epic Games
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: March 2026.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.