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OpenText Service Manager [EOL] vs ServiceNow comparison

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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

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)
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
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

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.
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.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling
I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has been great for our company in almost every way possible."
"Some of the key features of Automation Anywhere include the simplicity that enables developers to build bots very quickly in a standard delivery fashion."
"Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the back-end process automation."
"The cognitive automation gives us an edge towards intelligence using IQ Bot, and this allows us to integrate and give a combined solution to a customer."
"The automation of data entry is the most valuable feature for us."
"The Automation Anywhere University is a good tool. It goes topic-by-topic with real-time examples."
"Since it can be utilized 24/7, the ROI is pretty high with minimal efforts and resources by using unattended automation."
"The return on investment is unquantifiable; I would have thought we have made our money back now in the way it has streamlined processes."
"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."
"It is a rich content solution and a good and complete solution, along with a lot of functionality."
"The workflow engine that standardizes and globalizes the process steps. It drives people through the process by standardization and automation."
"We think it’s worth switching over to HPE."
"It's easy to scale."
"The application's performance reached a completely different level; so it's quite fast."
"Technical support is pretty good."
"We recently moved to ServiceNow from HP Service Manager about two years ago and it's been leaps and bounds just better than what we had before."
"The flow designer for application development is the most valuable. The newest version of flow designer allows us to develop applications quite fast. We can have custom and mobile applications. It has an interface for mobiles, and it also has a good reputation."
"It helps with how well our applications are compliant with our policies, and that helps with the overall security of our applications."
"Now we have invested the time in the CMDB, we've invested the time in a portal and catalog items and now we're moving towards automation and things, and we're able to stay a lot more current a lot faster because ServiceNow is doing the work to keep the platform updated, whereas we can just continue to provide value that is specific to us and what we're trying to do."
"ServiceNow is a great product because you can do almost anything with it."
"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."
"As a platform approach I would say I really like this vision of saying ServiceNow is an application platform now as a service where we can build any application we want to so we have some applications on the baseline like in sales management, like change management, now customer services, like security operation."
"The solution is very easy to use; now that I've worked with it a little bit, I can find what I need rather quickly, and it was pretty easy to implement the solution."
 

Cons

"Automation Anywhere could be improved by staying more current with Microsoft products through packages."
"We have faced some downtime and crashes with the system, but with the cooperation of the Automation Anywhere team, we have been able to contain that."
"Giving access to our internal websites was not simple during the initial setup."
"They could improve the learning curve."
"While the community provides a platform for interaction and resource sharing, not all training content aligns with the specific needs of developers."
"Automation Anywhere has to improve its technical features."
"The debugging tools need to be included, for where and why it has failed to execute the bot in a clear manner."
"One of the important drawbacks of Automation Anywhere is that it needs to be able to show the automated process as a single flowchart."
"The end-user experience is very key for me. At the moment, that's an area that the product's perhaps a bit weak."
"The stability could be better."
"Technical support is average. It takes too much time to resolve issues in relation to the competency of the technical support engineers."
"It needs good integration with the configuration database, that's lacking at the moment, It's not that good."
"It could have better user control of the user interface."
"Service Manager would be improved with access to automation."
"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."
"The user interface was not really good, but they improved it a little bit."
"There are sometimes challenges with the portal being a bit confusing for new users. The implementation of the portal and workspaces is quite different, and improvements in this area would be beneficial."
"The capital expenditure needed to get the tool up and running is extensive."
"Time to respond from support could definitely be better, as the global support timing sometimes causes delays in interactions."
"If you have advanced questions, technical support often doesn't know the answer."
"This solution needs to be improved for global use. Currently, it's very oriented to the processes and needs of the US customer base, like their compliance solution or GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance), and not so much for customers from other parts of the world. Some users may like the things that ServiceNow is improving, but those are very oriented to users based in the United States and Europe."
"I have enjoyed all the features. There is not any feature that I have missed or didn't have."
"The discovery of assets could be improved; right now they only allow for one domain."
"I feel like there should be perhaps more unit testing before patches are rolled out because every patch has broken our entire catalog."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We save 34,000 hours of time per year and have recouped up to $6000 in lost revenue."
"The current pricing for Automation Anywhere seems a little higher compared to competitors Power Automate or UiPath. Automation Anywhere is perceived as pricey due to the support model charges ranging from 20% to 30% based on the plans."
"We have seen ROI in terms of cost and time with a couple of our projects."
"The setup and licensing cost is affordable, and it is not exaggerated like UiPath."
"Additional costs will be for the machines and the number of machines that you are using. You can deploy virtually as well as on physical machines. In both the situations, you do need to allocate a certain budget for securing the machines and where the software will be installed and running. The machines cannot be used for anything else, because only a certain bot can run at a certain time. You need to be very particular about your scheduling of running the bots, and while the bot is running nobody can use the machine. You cannot have an agent working on a machine and the bot running in the background. It has to be completely dedicated. Then there are the network bandwidth requirements and space requirements, which are additional costs apart from the licensing and software costs. The developer is also going to charge you for their coding time too."
"My understanding is that the license cost of Automation Anywhere is more reasonable than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"It's an ideal pricing model to customize the components based on everyone's needs."
"It is one of the most affordable RPA solutions, and as for licensing, they offer a community edition that greatly helps anyone who aspires to learn about the product before buying the enterprise solution."
"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."
"The license is not cheap."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"ServiceNow is an expensive solution."
"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."
"ServiceNow's pricing is comparatively higher than Helix's."
"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."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten. The pricing for ServiceNow is based on a SaaS platform with annual contracts. However, it may not offer much flexibility for adjusting usage in the short term."
"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise560
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise179
 

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.
Ask a question
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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow?
ServiceNow operates on a subscription-based pricing model with custom pricing based on modules, users, and business r...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
resultspositive, Globicon
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    
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: September 2026.
914,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.