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BMC Helix ITSM vs SolarWinds Service Desk 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
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (6th)
SolarWinds Service Desk
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 8.1%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Service Desk is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix ITSM8.1%
SolarWinds Service Desk0.5%
Other91.4%
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.
Rajendra Karad - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides superior visibility and efficiency with excellent analytics capabilities
What I appreciate the most about the product is that, as per the name given, it brings better visibility to the client in terms of their infrastructure, application, and performance. SolarWinds Service Desk is a quite matured product now, making it one of the best options on the market. The incident management feature is aligned to the ITIL framework. The asset management feature is also a very thoughtful framework they have implemented. Right from onboarding an asset till scrapping it, the complete lifecycle is cleanly maintained within the system itself. All the approval chains, their logs, and even the contract information have been made very easy for the users to maintain. The knowledge base feature is an out-of-the-box knowledge base, and additionally, we can integrate our own DMS. Machine learning is something that they have been following, and we can integrate an external DMS with that, which helps in searching SOPs and even the global knowledge base over the internet, allowing it to be searched within the same single window itself. Change management in SolarWinds Service Desk is linked with the service catalog, and since it also has a service portal, a self-service portal for users, introducing a service catalog that's integrated with the change management actually completes the flow and makes life easier for IT administrators.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities."
"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."
"Improved our organization with better customer experience and reporting abilities."
"The MyIT product has given our end users a much better perception of Remedy and made the product look more fluid. This has made people more likely to log calls rather than do work offline."
"The solution can perform well for large-sized companies."
"It's a very integrated solution."
"Provides a clean front-end for our users to log requests and has rich ITSM functionality."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"Needs less infrastructure requirements."
"There are some limitations or restrictions to using BMC Helix. For example, when we do some reporting, the reporting interface should be more user-friendly from my point of view."
"The interface isn't that great."
"When BMC Helix ITSM did some upgrades it caused some issues. They have fixed some of the problems but more improvement is needed."
"Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy."
"The reports need improvement, it is not a good functioning tool."
"Support could be more skilled. We are wasting too much of our time debugging.​"
"The documentation could improve in BMC Helix ITSM."
"The integration with other applications can use improvement because, for example, it was nearly impossible to integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with monday.com because we had to get an add-on from Zapier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is too expensive for a small business."
"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."
"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."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"Please always get the latest quote from a BMC partner or from BMC. Check for the latest offerings."
"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 Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
No data available
 

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 SolarWinds Service Desk?
The industry standard practices that this product is already certified for show that there will always be room for improvement since it is a service-led product, so we'll keep on giving feedback wh...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Service Desk?
Instead of Traverse, we are now using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, as we have replaced Kaseya Traverse with that. I recommend it to my customers. We are now dealing with SolarWinds Servic...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Service Desk?
I think the pricing of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is now comparative and suited to our business model, which is the reason we have moved to that. It has actually helped my customers' tec...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix ITSM vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.