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OpenText Service Manager [EOL] vs ServiceNow 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

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
232
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

DL
Senior Consultant Project Management & Transition at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It does what it should, but it's quite outdated.
I rate Micro Focus Service Manager four out of 10. I wouldn't recommend it. I would suggest ServiceNow. There may be solutions better suited for smaller companies. There are always alternatives because the architecture isn't terribly complex. The architecture is the same across solutions, and everything is linked. There are no modules to be bought from some other company in the past and integrated. ServiceNow also its disadvantages, but if you compare it to Service Manager, I can safely say ServiceNow is the future and Service Manager is the past.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"It is easy to use, cost effective, and ITIL based."
"It is a rich content solution and a good and complete solution, along with a lot of functionality."
"The return on investment is unquantifiable; I would have thought we have made our money back now in the way it has streamlined processes."
"While the tool works, what makes it work better is I can make it do whatever they need; it's a completely customizable solution to fit with the specific needs of our organization and it does it really easily and really dependably."
"HP products generally have always been stable, and this is no different."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"Customer Service: Hmm, let's see, that functions pretty well."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality."
"I think the technical support is pretty good."
"Improved the globalization of processes and around the clock service delivery to our customers Automated repetitive tasks and shifted left simple tasks to the service desk"
"It's a great tool."
"If you are looking for something that you can bring into your organization to be more than just a single purpose, if you are looking to truly transform your organization with the tools that you are using, ServiceNow is the go-to."
"As an end user, I would rate it a seven out of ten."
"I think ServiceNow is highly stable. These kinds of tools are used in a big company, and I haven't seen any issues in terms of the core platform."
"The solution has very good automation tools."
"ServiceNow reduces drastically the time to value and it is possible to completely get rid of flat files such as spreadsheets and powerpoints in less than a month for any Organizational process."
 

Cons

"In general, we were not satisfied with technical support."
"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."
"In the release that we currently have, the biggest challenge was reporting."
"The licensing model could be made more flexible."
"Service Manager is at the end of its life. The architecture, performance, and look are all way behind."
"It could have better user control of the user interface."
"It needs to be a lot more flexible, a lot more user friendly, and a lot lighter, not so heavy."
"It's not so easy to move to the next version. It's not quick to upgrade."
"Creating service catalog forms could be made easier."
"With scalability, we have grown quite significantly in the last two years and the performance of our instance has really taken a hit."
"Calendar views - there are no nice calendar views and I think I'm just starting to learn about resource management but it would be nice for them to have the roadmaps so you can see an actual calendar view to see where, from a project, you are."
"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined."
"Once a change request has been created once it's been approved and been submitted, there is no way to go in on that particular change request and submit an additional task."
"It's a great platform, but there's still room for improvement. As the solutions stands now, you do need a lot of previous experience to use it. It would be great if they could develop some use case templates. This would be beneficial for a small and medium-sized businesses."
"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."
"The user interface could be much improved, and the developer tools and sets can be improved greatly, they are lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"The pricing is reasonable and affordable, making it suitable for businesses ranging from small to large scale."
"For the modules we use, we found it competitive. I can't think of any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."
"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise179
 

Questions from the Community

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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 that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
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 ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow?
ServiceNow's pricing is fine. We have accounting for each headcount for ServiceNow, and the pricing is actually good.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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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: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.