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BMC Helix ITSM vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
661
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
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) (9th)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (30th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
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.
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having a cloud-based deployment provides more flexibility because we just need an internet connection for connecting the agent into the AA cloud."
"We have more than 50 bots in the company, the FTE and ROI are very good, and in the future we have many projects in pipeline that we are about to implement, so definitely there is a good ROI and FTE savings for us."
"Automation Anywhere has surely helped our organization to shape its Digital Journey - It was our first RPA tool which helped us to perform basic automation which created Point solutions but has added tremendous value at the early stage. We were able to scale-up fast using Automation Anywhere due to its user-friendly AI and later on IQ Bots provided the required edge to handle the unstructured data."
"Overall, Automation Anywhere is a very user-friendly and easy-to-use tool, and if clients are looking to implement automation into their business, I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere over other tools because it is well-suited for their purposes and can be easily utilized."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation of manual tasks, which save us time."
"Automation Anywhere has been a boon for our organization because the tedious task that used to be hectic and made us remain seated for hours is now done with a single click."
"It doesn't require any coding knowledge. Any business person can automate this process."
"Automate Anywhere can just mimic what a human does."
"BMC products have been built over the years to make them highly stable and scalable, inline with the ITIL best practice."
"It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities."
"The mobile features are the best part of the new version, as it is easy to be notified and update your work from a mobile, which is great."
"Helix is stable."
"The ease of installation and configuration is valuable."
"We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing."
"From what I've read BMC Helix ITSM has a lot of features and far more than the CA Service Desk."
"It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world."
"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."
"A person who is not in IT, but has some good ITSM knowledge will be able to configure it directly on SolarWinds, and Manage Engine."
"It is easy to use."
"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."
"SolarWinds is a very good application that provides you with a detailed monitoring capability of your network and assets."
"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."
 

Cons

"With our current version, we are experiencing issues with the access of the Control Room. Therefore, at the moment, we cannot really scale."
"One thing I dislike about Automation Anywhere is that our process is time-consuming. Since the bot is utilized by that machine and if a long-running task is happening, then another bot may not run and the machine is locked."
"We are still looking into some of its current capabilities, like IT Bot."
"As a developer, I would like to have copy commands available from one bot to another."
"If I build a bot today and don't use it, however, in several months, someone tries to use it, there's a 30-40% change the bot will fail in one or two areas."
"Technical support needs to be much faster. I also had the project delivery. I had six clients whom I looked after. Whenever we got stuck, it was all about sprinting. There was a two or three week sprint. Within that, if you just wait for two to three days, it doesn't make sense. The support needs to implode, because I was just talking to a customer now who came directly and asked us, "Can you give us a dedicated support team?" It's feedback from our customer that support takes too long."
"For future prospects, this tool should 80 percent deal with neural networks, deep learning, and artificial intelligence and that has to be integrated a lot. As these are future skills, these integrations will help us take the tool to take to the next level."
"The platform has good capabilities, but it could improve by providing more development options."
"It has created more layers of bureaucracy."
"Any software has a lifecycle. To me, BMC is a dated architecture."
"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."
"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 doesn't allow a person logging a call to assign the ticket to a specific department, but only to update it."
"Maybe it could be more simplified and easier to change the reporting point of view, like from a different vendor to another."
"Upgrading to a new ARS version in a complex environment remains a challenge."
"Customer service is average."
"The technical team is not competent, or available, and they do not know the product."
"This is a good solution, but the GUI is really old-fashion and needs to be updated."
"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."
"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk."
"The working part, the deployment part, and the configuration part was a little bit complex."
"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."
"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."
"However, it's a little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Approximately, for a developer, it is around $750 for a license a year. For Bot Runners, it is about $550."
"We're on a license package with Automation Anywhere (AA), paid yearly. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization."
"I don't deal have cost specifics but I can say it is a tool that provides value for the money."
"It saves on the quality of work, because the quality can be bad when somebody's doing it. If a bot does the work, it's faster and comes with good quality. These are two important things along with the cost saving in the long run. That's where the value is."
"If you look at the capital expenditure, Automation Anywhere is number two to UiPath. But if you take a long-term view, on a scalable model of a large number of bots coming out, it slowly goes on to become the costliest tool. There is something they can do about that. The capital expenditure goes out right at the point of buying the tool. For Automation Anywhere, I would need to spend $20,000. UiPath can give me something for $6,000, while Blue Prism will come in at $300,000."
"In terms of pricing, this is a good product."
"I find the license pricing to be competitive and reflective of the pricing models throughout the RPA space, and I believe there is a lot of value in continuing to maintain the free community edition platform."
"I would rate the cost of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"There are licenses to use this solution."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"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."
"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 am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually."
"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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...
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.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of us...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are ...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does i...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Instacart
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix ITSM vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.