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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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (5th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 12.1%, up from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.7%, 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

"Technical support has been fine."
"The solution can perform well for large-sized companies."
"Smart IT and the phone app are easily the most valuable features in reporting and tracking ongoing issues."
"BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product."
"Helix is more lightweight than these tools. It's a traditional tool that was developed more than 10 years ago. Ease of use is the operative word."
"The most valuable features are the simplicity and the in-duty features."
"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."
"I like the single sign-on and that administrators can customize."
"It generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests."
"It's easy to use and integrates with other tools. We can embed Jira into it, link Jira tickets with Freshdesk tickets, and use it for our knowledge base."
"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."
"Omnichannel is one of the most valuable features of the solution."
"The ticketing system is smooth, but since we use a free version, we do not have many facilities available."
"The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy."
"Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great."
"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
 

Cons

"Our middleman provider limits the available functionality so we cannot even do our own analytics."
"BMC Helix ITSM could improve by having a cloud version. They are working on it which is a good thing because their competitors, such as ServiceNow, already provide cloud services."
"I would also love to see consistency across all consoles."
"Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution."
"There is a text editor that we use to enter our incident description or service request description, and it should be richer in terms of features."
"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."
"Encountered issues with scalability and stability."
"Support could be better."
"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."
"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities."
"There are some restrictions where you need automation and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need."
"Freshdesk could improve its capabilities. It's missing the article formatting, and the overall look and feel make it not easy to use. The administration instructions on how to manage the automation, capability, and integration with third parties, such as chat or bots, are very important in these types of solutions."
"Sometimes our requirements are not matched with Freshdesk's free version as most of the advanced features are not available to us."
"I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets."
"Technical support is not the best. It could be much, much better and offer better support to users."
"The dashboards are useful but could be so much better. As a product manager, and data scientist, we couldn't use the dashboard for analytics and had to move the data in Power BI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We did not compare the price of BMC Helix ITSM to other vendors. However, it has a mid-range price."
"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."
"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."
"It is costly, but it is well worth it."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"The solution's pricing should come down."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"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."
"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 pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"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."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"It is costly."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
23%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services 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
 

Learn More

 

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.
831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.