Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
225
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 (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
MT
Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency
I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has features such as integration with Skype for Business, smart analytics, and smart ticketing."
"It helped us conform with ITIL service management requirements."
"Fast, responsive and modern design."
"Technical support is excellent. They really bend over backwards for us."
"The flexibility and the integrity of the product allow me to have a rock-solid platform for change, problem, and incident control."
"This is our “go-to” application for all ITIL processes globally."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"Technical support is pretty good."
"The main features of ServiceNow that I use are incident approval management and the ability to link all the information we receive from the finance bureau service."
"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."
"ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform, so people won't need to worry about investing on hardware to host it. Being on the cloud, it is available 24x7. It's scalable, stable, and multifeatured, with a straightforward setup and good technical support."
"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."
"It helped me save time—it would be more than 30% in time savings, with fewer man-hours and improved service delivery through automation capabilities."
"It's ease of use, extensibility and just the ability to take it out of the box and use it with minimal custom configuration."
"What I like the most is the functionality, it's features are rich, and there is a high degree of compliance with IT standards."
"We have found the service easy to use, although, we have ended up customising a lot of parameters."
 

Cons

"Room for improvement is the speed with which you're able to access it and where it isn't as slow and draggy. It is really draggy."
"My only concern is the flexibility of the product in smaller environments."
"It, still, has a bit of more of improvement possibilities in the codeless part. But, I can see that they are working on it, so that's quite good as well."
"The user interface was not really good, but they improved it a little bit."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is not very great. It would be better if it had more features. When it comes to features, BMC tops the chart. When it comes to usage, people use BMC more."
"We had quite a lot of issues with stability and the quality of the product so far."
"The support and functionality of the portal could be improved. There was an old portal and they stopped it in the last version."
"On the downside, it cannot really operate in the cloud; but other than that, everything is good."
"A duplicate ticket option should be enabled - this feature can help to take the same information from a close incident thus decreasing manual time."
"ServiceNow's customization is not too agile in those cases; it takes a little bit of time."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
"Vulnerability management could be improved."
"They're inconsistent. Depending on who you get, they may or may not be able to immediately provide the kind of response you need and sometimes they take a while to do it."
"There is a need to learn scripting because as in the case of all the ITSM tools, scripting is needed for customization. If you're not very comfortable with scripting, then you may feel that you cannot do everything in ServiceNow without learning scripting."
"The licensing needs to be divided into tiers in order to attract lower-level users."
"They could be more competitive with their licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is not cheap."
"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."
"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."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"It is fairly expensive."
"The CapEx version is great."
"ServiceNow is an expensive solution."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"The pricing is reasonable and affordable, making it suitable for businesses ranging from small to large scale."
"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."
"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions are best for your needs.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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 Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise168
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.