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BMC Helix ITSM vs SysAid comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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 Help Desk Software
9th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SysAid
Ranking in Help Desk Software
27th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 4.8%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SysAid is 1.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix ITSM4.8%
SysAid1.8%
Other93.4%
Help Desk Software
 

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.
Todd Blake - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Specialist at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
A solution that streamlines ticket creation for the staff members of a business and enables efficient issue resolution by the IT team
SysAid is similar to Nintex AssureSign. Some of the back-end configurations of the solution are very difficult. So, we always need SysAid's help. Also, there are almost too many features that we are not taking advantage of in our company since we don't even know about them. A little bit of a streamlining or simplification of the main features would be a good improvement. I would like to see SysAid present its solution more easily. There is a lot in the solution, and it is more than what we need in our company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have no further comments; excellent tools."
"The ease of installation and configuration is valuable."
"BMC Smart IT is somewhat rigid, but they have a powerful backend that supports our complex need for extension versus customization."
"Smart IT and the phone app are easily the most valuable features in reporting and tracking ongoing issues."
"The interface is nice and it's simple to use, providing a good user experience."
"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."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes, and the main benefit is providing the right information to our decision-makers."
"BMC products have been built over the years to make them highly stable and scalable, inline with the ITIL best practice."
"The solution provides us with multi-layered service management along with all our support pieces integrated in one system. Our entire system is run on SysAid, from Tier 1 to Tier 3. All the other IT department functionality is captured in SysAid, like development, warehousing, and application. So, it has vertical and horizontal coverage."
"I really like the SysAid self-service portal; it's very customizable and we can customize it to fit our needs rather well."
"The simplicity of the solution is excellent."
"All our service management is integrated into one system. Our response time is much faster because we have a visual into what is going on."
"It's supporting the daily routine of the IT organization, it is the ticketing system, and it's very helpful due to the fact that it provides us with full evidence and full transparency for what we are working on."
"It's really customizable. It's very user-friendly to change very quickly. We've developed lots of custom forms and things, without any need for thousands of accounting consultants which was one of our main aims of it."
"The SysAid team provided excellent service to implement the solution for us. From the very first day, we received a comp manager, and a project manager, to implement the product. They continued to inquire about our business needs and then finalized the best path for us."
"At our agency, people love SysAid."
 

Cons

"Regarding reporting, when sharing information with leadership, we utilize BI support and data or more analytical tools. These tools provide accurate and comprehensive reports, covering various aspects. Reports are either sent directly through email or automated using scripts. It would be beneficial to integrate similar capabilities into BMC for future use. Many applications we work with already have a centralized virtual automation tool, such as Control M, but manual effort is still required. Improvements in automation for accurate and efficient reporting in BMC would be valuable."
"Support could be more skilled. We are wasting too much of our time debugging.​"
"BMC needs to keep improving their support. It is still far from what it was back in the days of Remedy."
"We have experienced outages, because some other customers did something on the same cluster that we share."
"Their customer service catalog (where a customer can order some products) could be improved. This product is not the best, but they are working on it."
"I believe the software can be a little bit more user friendly. It can be a bit busy when using the resources provided."
"Encountered issues with scalability and stability."
"BMC should take a step back and think about the overall solution—not only ITSM but also CTI Integration along with chat. They have all that, but it's not an end-to-end holistic solution with the added reporting analytics."
"This means the facilities people can see every ticket that is in the support queue, which is not great."
"So far, we're very happy with the new integration. The only thing that I would like to see is for them to improve asset management so that it's more usable. We looked at it once and we didn't find it quite usable for us. That's why we didn't use it. We haven't looked into the new one yet but the asset management is something that can be improved even more and patch management is not as good as it could be."
"One of the features that I'm hoping comes at some point is that currently you can only have one Knowledge Base instance within it."
"There is a learning curve for the users."
"The only thing that I would like to see is for them to improve asset management so that it's more usable."
"Currently, SysAid does not have a mobile application."
"The solution needs to improve their mobile product."
"The automation needs improvement. The workflow has some improvements to do. There's some stuff that they are working on like having cascaded fields. For example, we're categorizing tickets by location, by site and by building and then by data room within a data center. At the moment they're all separate fields."
 

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."
"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."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"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 price of BMC Helix ITSM 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."
"Overall, the price is good. It's all about what you get for the base amount. From my perspective, you want to look at what you're getting out-of-the-box. SysAid does a good job of putting key stuff in the box for you."
"The pricing of SysAid is less than its competitors."
"Though I am not really sure about SysAid's prices, I know that it is competitive compared to some of the other products that our company looked at, like ConnectWise and ServiceNow."
"SysAid is a good solution, especially from a pricing perspective."
"We saw our investment back at the end of year one."
"Once you're interested, talk with SysAid. You can have them come in and look at your company and advise you on the best solution. They will tell you what comes with each separate package and also advise you what application to activate. If you want something that they don't have, they have a department that can design something based on your unique requests."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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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Comparisons

 

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
Disney, Sears Holdings Corporation, LAN Airlines, Schneider Electric, On Semiconductors, Toyota, Sky, KPMG, Georgetown University Law Center, Motorola, North York General Hospital, Volksbank, Xerox, Bacardi, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Manpower, Nucor, Ecobank
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix ITSM vs. SysAid and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.