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BMC Helix ITSM vs Freshdesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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 Helix ITSM
Ranking in Help Desk Software
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th)
Freshdesk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 11.1%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Alexey Timchenko - PeerSpot reviewer
Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable
Automation and ticket routing rules in Freshdesk save us daily by streamlining routine tasks. We use reports to identify issues, allocate resources, and continuously improve our processes. It is a vital part of our daily operations, helping us stay proactive and efficient in handling various types of tickets. The reporting and analytics tools in Freshdesk are effective for measuring customer service performance. While our current subscription level has some limitations in terms of reporting, the next level provides more options. Budget constraints currently prevent us from upgrading, but the available reporting features still meet our basic needs. I highly recommend Freshdesk, especially for companies in their early stages. It is user-friendly, easy to configure, and great for those with a moderate volume of customer requests. The cost is reasonable, making it a quick and efficient solution to implement. Overall, I would rate Freshdesk as an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The digital workplace is appealing."
"The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request."
"Provides a clean front-end for our users to log requests and has rich ITSM functionality."
"It has been instrumental in aligning our service desk with the ITIL fundamentals and continuously improving the operating metrics of that area."
"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."
"Automatic orchestration is the most valuable. The feature for designating some cases or incidents to the right PM for resolution, first call resolution, and change management are also important. The self-service feature and knowledge base resolutions are helping the customers in resolving issues rather than opening tickets."
"In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything."
"Smart Reporting makes it easy to create/publish views for tables, so our customers can easily create their own reports."
"The organization that is possible with other departments is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system."
"The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well."
"We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources."
"I used Freshdesk for communication with the clients, such as real-time chats."
"The ticketing system is smooth, but since we use a free version, we do not have many facilities available."
 

Cons

"BMC Helix ITSM should improve its price."
"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 takes a long-time to plan and deploy the on-premise solution."
"There are some limitations or restrictions to using BMC Helix. For example, when we do some reporting, the reporting interface should be more user-friendly from my point of view."
"They could be more responsive to feedback from their community board."
"The initial setup of BMC Helix ITSM is complex because it has different integrations with other tools. Additionally, it needs to be integrated with the active directory and have different databases. The environment will dictate how difficult the process is."
"Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy."
"The user experience could be better."
"I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution."
"There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."
"We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."
"I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."
"Sometimes our requirements are not matched with Freshdesk's free version as most of the advanced features are not available to us."
"For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."
"There are some restrictions where you need automation and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need."
"Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM could improve their price."
"There are licenses to use this solution."
"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."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"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."
"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"It is costly."
"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
"The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
BMC Helix ITSM is difficult for us to customize, and most customizations require vendor support, which leads to extra costs. The interface should be more user-friendly, and the customization should...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
We are currently using BMC Helix ITSM in our organization. We are in the process of implementing new modules like CMDB and discovery.
What do you like most about Freshdesk?
Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs. Despite having third-part...
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
The customer's primary use case for Freshdesk is handling emails and social media queries. It is mostly used for managing transactional queries such as deposits and withdrawals. Our support team is...
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix ITSM vs. Freshdesk and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.