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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs BMC Helix ITSM 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 FootPrints Service Core
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BMC Helix ITSM
Ranking in Help Desk Software
4th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 11.4%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

CW
Supports the convergence of ticket management, IT, and customer services
I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10 because it's a good system and it meets most of our requirements. It still has a lot of space to improve because the service desk function is changing all the time. This solution has to continually be innovative. It should also generate more user-friendly reports utilizing a collaborative framework. Additionally, I would tell anyone looking at similar solutions to first figure out their most important requirements. Then compare their requirements with the function of the ITMS to ensure compatibility. While at the same time they should look ahead at future requirements such as the cloud configuration, along with other vendor capabilities before making a decision.
Fairoz Gadad - PeerSpot reviewer
Development team is quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product
BMC's technical support team needs to improve. Right now, the problem over here is we are not getting the exact answers on time. Their engineers are mainly based in the US or Israel, and we get comprehensive dedicated support. Some of the Indian customer service representatives are also outstanding. Unfortunately, in the past six months or seven months, I've been getting brand-new engineers. Either they're not entirely aware of most cases, or they don't know how to troubleshoot further. So for any product to be stable and work correctly, BMC must ensure that customer service is excellent. Even though if your product is a hundred percent, we'll have problems marketing it to our customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having a one stop shop for linked assets and tickets has improved end user adoption and led to a reduction in phone/email tickets."
"I think the most important feature is the ability to receive valuable ticket status support in a timely manner with little to no downtime interruptions."
"I like the fact that FootPrints is a relational database, so every item in the database can be linked to another. This helps create history and audit trails for each CI."
"​Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"This product solidly handles incident management, problem management, and change management."
"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."
"The discovery feature is very flexible."
"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the collaboration, integrated with the help of another solution called Entity. We can do all the integration and receive an automatic ticket with the help of email. We are able to receive SMS alerts to clients and end users. Every step of the ticket is generated and we are able to resolve and close them. It's very helpful to have the ability to inform the user with detailed information."
"The solution's most valuable features are automation and orchestration."
"The digital workplace is appealing."
"The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs and the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer."
"The solution can perform well for large-sized companies."
"The mobile features are the best part of the new version. It is easy to be notified and update your work from a mobile, which is great."
"What I have found to be the most valuable is that it offers the radius deployment package not only to the BMC cloud but also to the public cloud such as Azure."
"The way you can customize this product to adapt to the process the customer is already using is what sets this apart from other ITSM products out there. This helps customers to adapt to the tool pretty quickly."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."
"We need more customizable reporting functionality. We could also use more collaboration of service desk tickets. This will allow for two departments to share the same information, track the progress of the total task scope no matter how complex the request is."
"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."
"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"Hyphens are not allowed in the quick search bar. This has created a problem in our environment where we use hyphens in our asset names."
"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."
"Its performance can be improved. Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side. It would be beneficial for us if there is a lighter version of this solution. There is also a limitation on the number of columns and memory for extracting a report, and this functionality can be improved. We would like to have better integration and UI in this solution. The user interface should be easy to navigate. Its integration with other tools, such as SharePoint or Jira, can also be improved, which would be beneficial for us. In terms of new features, there should also be a mobile version. The desktop version is available, but the mobile version is not available, which is one of the challenges that our team has. For users who work on Remedy and who raise the ticket, it would also be very beneficial to have some chatbot features."
"The interface is somewhat dated as compared to technologies in use today."
"Integration could be better. If something doesn't work well with some tools and operations, then management becomes difficult, so you have to integrate other tools."
"It can have more features for hardware discovery and hardware information. The integration with IQ operations management should be streamlined. ITSM and ITOM should be more integrated, and there should be better integration from Helix Discovery to Helix CMDB. There were some issues regarding this integration, and they were difficult to resolve in big environments. We have a lot of devices and users to manage. Therefore, the integration should be better."
"Whenever you start exploring some new product features, you run into defects. It has been like this for the last six years."
"The search feature and the dashboard could both be improved."
"BMC Helix ITSM should improve its price."
"We found that there was numerous issues upgrading from 8.1 to 9.1 in that all our licenses were broken for almost a year and a half. We chased down a total of 14 hotfixes, patches, and service packs before things were finally resolved. During that time, said "fixes" also broke other things, so it was quite the sore spot with management for some time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"This solution has good pricing."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"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."
"BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting."
"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."
"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."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about BMC Helix ITSM?
If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth operations, any arising issues, be it security concerns or issues within depart...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix ITSM?
In User Group sessions held by BMC in India, I mentioned the challenges with vast documentation, making it difficult to find the right information quickly. The recent move to a new platform is bene...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
I am currently working as a BMC Remedy developer. I have been working for over ten years on the BMC platform. My company uses BMC Helix ITSM for IT service management processes.
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. BMC Helix ITSM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.