Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC Helix ITSM vs JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Challenges in assessing ROI exist, but stability, automation, and improved processes offer value despite licensing and integration concerns.
Sentiment score
7.6
JIRA Service Management boosts efficiency and ROI, especially for large teams, despite its complex interface, surpassing competitors.
Sentiment score
6.9
ServiceNow enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and improves ROI with automation and streamlined processes, providing long-term organizational value.
The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
BMC Helix ITSM support varies by tier, with premium offering quick service, while others face delays and inconsistency.
Sentiment score
6.9
Atlassian's customer service is praised for expertise and responsiveness despite occasional time zone delays, with diverse support options.
Sentiment score
7.0
ServiceNow's customer service is generally praised, but technical support experiences vary and rely on community resources.
There are issues with misrouting and a preference for email rather than direct communication via phone calls.
The support is exemplary and deserves a perfect rating.
Most of the support comes from partners, and customers heavily rely on them.
I have contacted them four to five times over the past two years, and they have been quite helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
BMC Helix ITSM efficiently scales for large enterprises, offering flexibility and robust performance with some complexity in customization.
Sentiment score
7.7
JIRA Service Management is flexible and scalable, though challenges in advanced scenarios depend on organizational configurations.
Sentiment score
7.4
ServiceNow is highly scalable, integrates well with systems, and offers flexibility, making it ideal for diverse organizations.
The product's scalability is adequate for us, yet its complex customization sometimes restricts extensive adaptability.
It supports introducing new features or levels efficiently across our global locations, helping everyone stay informed.
It is capable of vertical scaling with no issues.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
BMC Helix ITSM is generally stable and reliable, with high user ratings despite occasional architecture-dependent issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
JIRA Service Management is highly stable, with users rating it highly despite minor glitches or occasional sluggishness.
Sentiment score
7.7
ServiceNow is highly stable with minimal disruptions, often due to external factors, offering reliable SaaS performance and support.
Over the past five years, we have experienced no major issues or downtime during upgrades.
There should be more governance for permissions and more options for customized access without frequently involving the admin.
ServiceNow is already a stable tool.
ServiceNow is stable enough.
 

Room For Improvement

BMC Helix ITSM needs enhanced user-friendliness, customization, performance, integration, and support to address complexity and user concerns.
JIRA Service Management faces challenges with integration, customization, high costs, and needs improvements in usability, communication, and asset management.
ServiceNow users seek improvements in interface, navigation, pricing, documentation, mobile functionality, support, updates, and third-party integrations.
BMC Helix ITSM is difficult for us to customize, and most customizations require vendor support, which leads to extra costs.
We lack access to a sandbox for in-house development, which was very helpful for hands-on work with new features.
JIRA's user interface needs training to understand and utilize.
It remains one of the main barriers to using JIRA Service Management across our entire company.
The interface could be made easier to use.
The official support is often distant, and many partners are not up to standard, which harms the product's reputation.
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow.
There are sometimes challenges with the portal being a bit confusing for new users.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find BMC Helix ITSM costly, yet its robust features provide value, suggesting analysis and negotiation for cost efficiency.
JIRA Service Management provides tiered pricing with agent-based and user options, offering competitive rates and discounts for larger tiers.
ServiceNow's pricing is higher than competitors, suited for large enterprises but challenging for smaller companies due to cost complexity.
The pricing of BMC Helix ITSM and its implementation costs are quite high, including subscription and maintenance costs per year.
We used Jira's free version for some time.
ServiceNow's pricing can be justified if more functionality is required.
ServiceNow is expensive for all regions.
 

Valuable Features

BMC Helix ITSM excels in flexibility, integration, automation, and reporting, enabling efficient IT service management and reduced resolution times.
JIRA Service Management excels in customization, integration, and flexible workflow management with valued dashboards, ticketing, and SLA features.
ServiceNow excels in customization, integration, and user-friendliness, offering versatile workflows, ITIL processes, and strong community support.
Resolution time has decreased significantly since implementing the self-service portal.
These features are crucial as we complete the implementation and maintain data accuracy in the CMDB.
JIRA itself is valuable for managing tickets, user stories, and pipeline.
For every task we are working on, the project manager can see the status once we update the stories mentioned.
The query language and the ability to create views of the data are very useful.
ServiceNow provides a wide range of functionality, covering all the necessary modules, unlike Jira which is primarily for IT.
Automation capabilities are impressive, bolstered by a vast repository of out-of-the-box connectors and plugins that facilitate integration with various applications worldwide.
The most valuable features of ServiceNow for me are its ticketing and reporting capabilities.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of BMC Helix ITSM is 11.4%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 10.2%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 24.2%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

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.
Karim Yousef - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently track and document projects with seamless tool integration
We are a management warehouse that provides services to different customers in different sectors. Primarily, we serve the banking sector and the military sector. We manage all the software delivery projects through tools such as JIRA Service Management or TFS Confluence is a great tool for…
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions are best for your needs.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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...
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 ...
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 comp...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into t...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
JIRA Service Desk
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.