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Freshservice vs OpenText Service Manager [EOL] comparison

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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

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)
Freshservice
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (8th), Project Management Software (12th), Cloud Management (16th), IT Asset Management (7th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (8th), Configuration Management Databases (5th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (14th), AI IT Support (5th)
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

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.
Raja Farrar - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Delivery Manager at Symposiam
Automation and AI have transformed our service delivery and have made IT support faster and more efficient
I always keep up with Freshservice's roadmaps and new features. Freshservice has been very good at listening to feedback and adding those feature requests into their next iterations. I wish they would offer more granular data export options for utilizing in Power BI, along with predictive analytics for capacity planning and SLA breaches to enable more proactive support management and reduce firefighting. While the dashboards are effective, some users find custom reporting limited compared to ServiceNow or Jira. I would also appreciate deeper integrations, especially for niche apps requiring development coding work to enable advanced orchestration. Native integrations for DevOps pipelines such as GitHub Actions and Jenkins, along with stronger API flexibility for complex workflows, would enhance functionality. Although the CMDB and asset management are solid, they do lack advanced dependency mapping compared to other enterprise tools. My wishlist includes automated impact analysis for changes and improved visualization of asset relationships, enabling quicker resolutions from an agent's perspective when alerts come in. I acknowledge that Device42 may enhance this, but it is an extra cost beyond what we already pay. While Freddy AI is excellent for triage and suggestions, some users desire more proactive automation, such as predictive ticket routing based on historical patterns and AI-driven capacity forecasting. Lastly, the pricing tiers might seem rigid for mid-sized teams, so a more granular add-on option for features such as Device42 or pay-per-use for orchestration workflows could be beneficial.
MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Service Manager & Technology Integration DevOps at Djezzy
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AA has improved our efficiency and saved on manual hours because no manual interaction is required."
"AA allows you to create processes using 3 types of robots: Task Bot, Meta Bot, and IQ Bot. Instead of rewriting redundant code for processes, a meta bot can be used instead. This type of robot is best used for complex scalable processes. IQ Bot: The most powerful of the 3 types of robots is the IQ Bot."
"Automation Anywhere (AA) is really fast on the development side. It's an efficient and intelligent RPA tool, with a good engine and good connectors."
"Automation Anywhere provides the best application to use for RPA and other automation requirements. It's very easy to use and easy to understand. It's UI(user interface) which is so friendly and easily understand by the user, it is very easy to install automation anywhere product simply click on next to install, it is easy to develop bot and no coding knowledge is required to develop"
"The main thing is the simple UI, easy to use commands, and it's very easy to learn compared to other tools in the market."
"It gives us the capability of leveraging our investments in different applications. I can use Automation Anywhere to tie a number of applications or processes together, without having to do in-depth coding to automate something."
"Automation Anywhere has helped us in many ways and is one of the best RPA tools."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation of manual tasks, which save us time."
"Freshservice is very user-friendly and easy to customize."
"The solution facilitates a transition from an organizational structure that is function-based to a process-oriented approach."
"We like the mail tickets on offer; it is something we love, and there are workflows that are working quite well, with multiple queues and resolution groups, and the solution has been stable."
"We really like the Freshchat widget that allows people to engage with our FAQs on any kind of webpage or web property."
"It is a stable solution. My company hasn't faced any problems with the solution."
"You can just register and within five to minute minutes, you are ready to go."
"What it's allowed us to do is bring everyone in our department into the journey of customer experience and customer service."
"The most valuable features of Freshservice are the notifications, customization, and flexibility."
"A valuable feature for us is that we have an ordered way to handle all the cases that we can handle with the infrastructure."
"The application's performance reached a completely different level; so it's quite fast."
"Fast, responsive and modern design."
"Technical support is excellent. They really bend over backwards for us."
"We think it’s worth switching over to HPE."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"The flexibility and the integrity of the product allow me to have a rock-solid platform for change, problem, and incident control."
"It integrates well with multiple Management Information Bases (MIB's)."
 

Cons

"I would like it to have AI and ML capabilities."
"Getting buy-in was a major challenge because of the various people not aware of the technologies moving and getting buy-in from top management is a challenge."
"There are a lot of issues in the tool. There are a lot of breakdowns."
"Currently, while working on the SAP part, I encounter some challenges, particularly not being able to extract the tree structure."
"They should make the product smarter. The bot we use right now is kind of fundamentally basic loop-based. We really want to see a little bit more advanced capability, that way we can undertake more comprehensive tasks."
"The original setup was easy. What was difficult was adding licenses. I went a month where I was paying for licenses that I couldn't use, for various reasons. That was painful."
"There's a loss of overhead on the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something which Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100 percent."
"I could not say it's a stable product, because when you move in the market, there are many companies are there."
"The automation workflows are powerful, but the UI can feel limited; once the workflows get complex, it becomes hard to visualize them."
"You can't implement a complicated delivery workflow."
"This product is very good for small and mid-level markets; however, I'm not sure about expanding to a 100,000 to 200,000 user base or more."
"While the dashboards are effective, some users find custom reporting limited compared to ServiceNow or Jira."
"In hindsight, Freshservice isn't the solution we should have chosen, as it's just not customisable enough."
"We'd like to see a CMDB, a Configuration Management Database, in the future."
"Freshservice automation capabilities are improving the way we respond to a few customers. There is a bit of delay when we must respond to the customer."
"The most significant area for improvement is consistency across the different modules, as they are inconsistent. It makes me think the modules have different development teams with no consistent approach. From an end-user perspective, I can do certain operations in one module, such as instant management, but not in problem management, for example, and I don't see why that should be the case. It would be good to see more consistency in the development process."
"Service Manager is at the end of its life. The architecture, performance, and look are all way behind."
"We still find ourselves wrapping customizations around it more than we would like, and we still find the upgrade path more costly and time consuming than we would hope."
"Life cycle management is a drama."
"Part of our reason for moving away from Service Manager is that HP was not on the leading edge of the technology and was consequently being surpassed by SaaS offerings."
"Customization can be difficult at times because scripting is often required."
"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."
"Pure cloud-based native functionality is lacking."
"There's a lot of manual work, which is error prone and time consuming, in how the code gets transported from one system to the other."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We would like to use Citrix going forward. We use Bot Runners to scale up, and it gets to be expensive. Using Citrix, it can mitigate costs."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive."
"Although the initial implementation cost of Automation Anywhere is relatively high compared to other options, its annual subscription cost is lower than UiPath's, which has the opposite pricing structure."
"In most of the cases, the product value is very good. If the infrastructure, implementation, and framework are good, then generally, the client can get a good return on investment."
"It saves me around $100,000 a year."
"The cost is affordable, which makes an easy barrier to entry for the RPA market."
"There are a lot of savings in terms of effort and time as well as costs. Automation Anywhere automates a lot of processes. It allows an organization to save the efforts of a lot people. It saves a lot of time because people can't work a whole day (24/7), but Automation Anywhere bots can."
"I am not sure about the costs, but two Bot Runners and four Bot Creators may cost approximately 1CR."
"Its price is great. Its pricing is supposedly a lot less than ServiceNow and other alternatives."
"We're basically paying about $100 USD per agent per month."
"The price of Freshservice could improve, it is expensive."
"There are some additional costs but not that many. For example, we have unlimited assets, which is something for which we pay extra. We also paid for additional orchestration. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. They are right in the middle."
"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management. Asset management has the possibility to keep track of licenses and that's very useful. The price of the solution is very good."
"I don't think it's expensive for the US or some European markets. Still, when I used Freshservice in Mexico, some customers found it a bit pricey, especially considering the platform's features. I think the pricing is fair for use in the European market, but it might be perceived differently in Latin America."
"The cost at the current timing is very reasonable but as the product gains popularity, I anticipate it might become expensive. Fortunately my customers have been offered a generous discount making it more affordable for me and satisfying both my needs and customers requirement."
"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
"The license is not cheap."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
University
8%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise559
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
I cannot comment much on the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Freshservice as it was already preset up in my co...
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
I believe Freshservice can be improved by offering more advanced features and customizability. In terms of improvemen...
What is your primary use case for Freshservice?
In Freshservice, I typically use it for day-to-day tasks. A quick, specific example of how I use Freshservice in my d...
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Flint
Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
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Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: September 2026.
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