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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Zendesk 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
27th
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
Zendesk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
10th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (20th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Community Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 4.1%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

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.
Ahmed Nassar - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup
It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."
"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."
"This product solidly handles incident management, problem management, and change management."
"​Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."
"Technical support is good."
"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."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
"It's very convenient to use."
"It has good management, the ability to sign tickets based on content, the multi-channel support, the self service portal, the integration with Salesforce, the setup process, and the product features as we are currently using them."
"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."
"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."
"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"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 nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."
"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"It is pretty clunky and not very intuitive. Even though I have used it for many years, I don't think it is a very good ITSM platform in general. In the telecom space, a lot of telco providers use this solution, but from my perspective, it is not very user friendly. It is a bit more laborious. There are still too many human touchpoints. There can be a little bit more automation. It would also be good to integrate it with other tools. Integration is quite difficult, especially in the telco space."
"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."
"As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"This solution has good pricing."
"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."
"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."
"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."
"The price is very competitive."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
17%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
22%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Zendesk Support?
I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
I am not currently aware of the exact pricing, but since we are still using Zendesk, it appears to be at a reasonable price point.
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries. It would be advantageous to have an AI layer that can analyze incoming requests and generate summaries, as ...
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.