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BMC Helix ITSM vs IBM Maximo 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

BMC Helix ITSM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (8th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th)
IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Helix ITSM and IBM Maximo aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Helix ITSM is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 6.0%, down 12.5% compared to last year.
IBM Maximo, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 16.0% mindshare, down 27.4% since last year.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Helix ITSM6.0%
ServiceNow16.6%
JIRA Service Management7.6%
Other69.8%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Maximo16.0%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management7.8%
IFS Cloud Platform7.4%
Other68.8%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

KN
Senior Application Developer BMC at Balfour Beatty
Self-service portal significantly reduces resolution time and transforms service process with advanced features
We initially had a lot of tickets generated via the service desk through calls and emails. Now, we have almost moved out of email creations by introducing the DWP features on the Studio pages, with about 90% of the tickets coming in via our self-service portal. Recent upgrades offer different types of views for particular business lines, which was missing earlier. The new landing pages have allowed us to add banners, images, and internal videos, encouraging most customers to use these DWP self-service features. Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal. Additionally, the availability of knowledge articles, chatbots, and the new Helix GPT feature has improved service processes.
reviewer2796087 - PeerSpot reviewer
Développement Fullstack at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Asset workflows have become highly customizable and have delivered significant downtime savings
IBM Maximo can be improved by providing developers with more documentation. I think IBM lacks a lot of documentation and hopefully the community who uses IBM Maximo can help if other developers have questions, but we really need official documentation because what is available on the internet is not official and we don't have strong documentation from IBM. I would also note that around usability, we see some lack of real custom needs in the applications of IBM Maximo Mobile. For example, in applications such as inspections, we cannot really sort by specific field and the search or filtering methods are not very clear, making it difficult to easily find what we are looking for.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is already aligned with the framework, so it is easy for us to proceed with any ISO 27K certification."
"The solution's most valuable features are automation and orchestration."
"We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing."
"Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems."
"In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything."
"The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most."
"BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product."
"We use the solution's Discovery tool to discover our assets, and we've used the ticketing tool for years."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"The most powerful features are the database and integration with CMDB."
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"Reliable, very configurable, and it's all integrated in the same database."
"Provides great flexibility."
"We can manage, organize, and track incidents, claims, jobs, tasks, preventive and corrective maintenance, locations, and assets."
"They have a real strength of tracking the asset itself along with the condition of the asset, the maintenance of the asset and who has access to the asset, etc."
 

Cons

"It needs a more organic workflow, so every field you create is labeled throughout the stack. BMC has a few products that they try to bundle together. Generally, that solution works. BMC should take a step back and think about the overall solution—not only ITSM but also CTI Integration along with chat. They have all that, but it's not an end-to-end holistic solution with the added reporting analytics."
"It takes a long-time to plan and deploy the on-premise solution."
"It has created more layers of bureaucracy."
"Maybe it could be more simplified and easier to change the reporting point of view, like from a different vendor to another."
"Some parts of the solutions are using the old interface."
"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. However, we lack access to a sandbox for in-house development, which was very helpful for hands-on work with new features."
"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."
"The user experience could be better."
"Initial setup is a longer process because Maximo is bigger and has more processes."
"IBM is a big company and they have a lot of products. Level One, the first level of tech support, is the one that is used to stop the tsunami. For everyone, it's always work to get past that."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"Areas for improvement include: an enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile; Agent intelligence; better dashboards for KPIs."
"The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections."
"Vendor management needs enhancement."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is too expensive for a small business."
"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
"The price of BMC Helix ITSM is expensive."
"BMC Helix ITSM is a very cost-effective solution."
"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."
"It's a yearly subscription but there are a couple of customers who go for the monthly subscription."
"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."
"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
 

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?
Currently, we are not utilizing the AI functionality in BMC Helix ITSM as we are still in the roadmap and development phase at this point in time. There isn't anything that I would suggest for impr...
What is your primary use case for BMC Helix ITSM?
We use BMC Helix ITSM for the complete end-to-end ITSM suite, mainly for ticketing and service management. BMC Helix ITSM supports our IT service management processes primarily for all incident, pr...
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
IBM Maximo could be improved if they added a comprehensive finance module, as that would make it a more complete standalone application. Currently, if you need specific finance software, you need t...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
My main use case for IBM Maximo is managing maintenance. I used it first as an end user, and later joined the implementation team. Now I'm administrating and implementing IBM Maximo. The transition...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Maximo?
There are many good implemented functions in IBM Maximo, but I see these two functions as the most valuable ones from my point of view. My advice to others considering IBM Maximo is that top manage...
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy, BMC Helix IT Service Management
Maximo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: December 2025.
879,927 professionals have used our research since 2012.