BMC Helix ITSM vs xMatters comparison

The compared BMC and Everbridge solutions aren't in the same category. BMC is ranked #3 in ISM , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 9.7% mindshare in the category. Everbridge is ranked #10 in IMS , and holds a 6.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Everbridge users who would recommend it.

BMC Helix ITSM

Read 79 BMC Helix ITSM reviews

5,113 Views
4,499 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

xMatters

Read 31 xMatters reviews

1,032 Views
805 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

BMC Helix ITSM

xMatters

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BMC Helix ITSM and xMatters based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM).

To learn more, read our detailed IT Service Management (ITSM) Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

June 2025

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Helped 861,524 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (6th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (3rd)

xMatters

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Alerting and Incident Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. BMC Helix ITSM is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 9.7%, down 13.4% compared to last year.
xMatters, on the other hand, focuses on IT Alerting and Incident Management, holds 6.8% mindshare, down 8.5% since last year.

IT Service Management (ITSM)

IT Alerting and Incident Management

Featured Reviews

Ameet Darole

IT Service Delivery at Abcl

Used for user ticket management, incident management, and event management

We had a manual event management process and a separate monitoring tool called Dynatrace. The alerts generated did not flow to the ITSM tool. With BMC Helix ITSM, the alerts flow and auto-route to respective technical support. If the alerts are resolved, the ticket will be automatically closed. So, the workload and automation are much better now. BMC Helix ITSM is a fast platform, so it is quite manageable. I would recommend BMC Helix ITSM to other users because it is a good solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Dean-Robinson

Sr. Developer at a media company with 10,001+ employees

A versatile solution with excellent logging capabilities that reduced our time to resolve

The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes. There are a couple of improvements that xMatters could make to the incident hub, where we can manage high-priority incidents. More sharing capability between collaborating incident managers would be good to see, including the ability to whiteboard. That would allow them to share and sketch out ideas while looking for a solution. Those two features are essential, and that's why we want to use the solution in conjunction with Everbridge because xMatters doesn't have them.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"We reduced many paper processes to electronic driven forms. It helps us a lot in tracking and managing."

"Customer support is always fantastic and willing to help. No matter what time of day we have a problem."

"Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers."

"We have seen year over year customer satisfaction improvement for the last five years."

"The solution can perform well for large-sized companies."

"The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the service level management, configuration, and reporting tool."

"Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems."

More BMC Helix ITSM pros

"One of the things that really attracted me is in workflows, you can write your own custom steps in JavaScript. You are not restricted to the steps that they provide. If you can write it in JavaScript, you can pretty much do anything. It gives me flexibility in ways that other platforms don't. For example, the online dashboard system we use is not a widely used one, but they have an API. So, I'm able to write the JavaScript steps to do things like check if a system's in the maintenance window or create an instant on the dashboard or change the status of an instant. I'm not dependent on the dashboard provider or xMatters creating steps for me."

"We haven't evaluated any product recently, but from what I can tell, looking around online, what xMatters has that others don't have are the custom forms. That's the big differentiator at the moment because that's something that we heavily use."

"The automated callouts, without a doubt, are most valuable. They have been a huge gain for our company. Previous to xMatters, there was no real management of the on-call resources or rotas. So, having that centralized and automated has been a huge gain."

"It has improved our time to respond. Prior to the use of xMatters, it might take hours or even a day to get someone involved on a problem. Now, it's down to minutes."

"The automatic logging that's built into xMatters, especially the timeline of events, is very helpful because we can figure out why a particular person got a call... Having that level of detail built-in makes it really easy for me or the managers to prove that's what happened, and we can self-serve that information. It gives people the autonomy to know why they got a call."

"The most valuable feature is getting alerts out to my user base. xMatters is the only solution that I know that has robust scheduling, calendaring for groups, and that provides very good delineation of who gets alerted and on which devices they receive their alerts."

"The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the entire alert notification configuration, having an external system to trigger events that will process the alert to the supporting team. If a system is down, then you need to get it attention. Sometimes, it cannot wait until the next day. Therefore, how xMatters provides this type of integration is critical."

"Through one tool, we're able to generate email notifications, voice notifications, mobile push notifications, Slack channel notifications, all managed from one place, simple and easy to use. People are able to join the conference bridge directly from the phone call by pressing one button instead of having to dial into a bridge and remember a conference code."

More xMatters pros

Cons

"The product's customization capabilities, price, and technical support are areas of concern where improvements are needed."

"The interface should be more user-friendly, and the customization should be easier."

"Smart Reporting was added, then was purchased from another vendor. We have little ability to customize and correct issues due to this."

"The interface is somewhat dated as compared to technologies in use today."

"SmartIT could include PR. This would help us greatly in bridging the gap between Remedy's views and SmartIT."

"It can have more features for hardware discovery and hardware information. The integration with IQ operations management should be streamlined. ITSM and ITOM should be more integrated, and there should be better integration from Helix Discovery to Helix CMDB. There were some issues regarding this integration, and they were difficult to resolve in big environments. We have a lot of devices and users to manage. Therefore, the integration should be better."

"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."

"Its performance can be improved. Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side. It would be beneficial for us if there is a lighter version of this solution. There is also a limitation on the number of columns and memory for extracting a report, and this functionality can be improved. We would like to have better integration and UI in this solution. The user interface should be easy to navigate. Its integration with other tools, such as SharePoint or Jira, can also be improved, which would be beneficial for us. In terms of new features, there should also be a mobile version. The desktop version is available, but the mobile version is not available, which is one of the challenges that our team has. For users who work on Remedy and who raise the ticket, it would also be very beneficial to have some chatbot features."

More BMC Helix ITSM cons

"Support may take longer than desired to resolve some issues."

"The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes."

"As an agent, as someone who is on call, I can mark an absence time and I can optionally put somebody in my place, but once you've done that, you can't edit it. You have to delete it and create a new absence, which is annoying, but it's not a massive issue. It's a minor annoyance. That's probably about the only thing I can come up with because I absolutely love the product. It's met our needs so well."

"It has not improved our organization."

"Additional built-in integrations with other applications would be an area of improvement."

"The data validation and verification need to be enhanced so that when data is changed, it reviews it in an automated manner and catches all of the anomalies."

"We cannot go back in time to check out the previous schedules that we had. We can only see them moving forward. I wish we were able to go back and see the previous schedules that we had. That's the biggest thing."

"Reporting is the weakest point of xMatters. Since xMatters has very limited reporting and only maintains logs of events for a short period of time, we export event and conference logs to our ITSM solution."

More xMatters cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of BMC Helix ITSM could improve their 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."

"It is too expensive for a small business."

"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 costly, but it is well worth it."

"If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."

"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."

More BMC Helix ITSM pricing and cost advice

"If you are willing to pay for the licensing of it, it is able to scale out."

"xMatters is pricey, but you have to consider what a critical incident costs your organization."

"I'm not really involved with the cost standpoint. I've only heard rumors of how much it costs, and if it costs what I think it costs, its cost is very high as compared to a lot of other tools that we're using here. It seems on the higher end from a cost standpoint."

"There's a significant difference between a full license, which allows people to respond to and acknowledge receipt of messages, and a more scaled-down license, which just allows people to see the notification. So we need to evaluate what license they need when onboarding new users because the full license is significantly more expensive."

"If the licensing were cheaper, our customer might buy more."

"I am not really privy to how much my client is paying for this service. They just tell me the number of licenses that they have. Every time that I say, "I need extra licenses to make sure that all Level 1 and 2s have their own xMatters account," they keep telling me that it is too expensive. If the only purpose is to call people, it doesn't justify the cost of paying more than the number of licenses that they already have."

"The pricing and licensing are okay. I wish that the user licenses were cheaper but the stakeholder licenses are at a reasonable cost."

"We're currently per license. We're paying around $44,000 per year for 80 full users and 300 standard users. For a new implementation, we also need to pay for an expert."

More xMatters pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

30%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

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...

See all answers

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 to find the right information quickly. The recent move to a new platform is bene...

See all answers

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 company uses BMC Helix ITSM for IT service management processes.

See all answers

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Compared 46% of the time

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

OnSolve Platform for Critical Event Management vs xMatters

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix ITSM

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

xMatters

June 2025

Download xMatters product report

Also Known As

Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy

xMatters IT Management

Overview

BMC Helix ITSM is a cutting-edge IT service management platform that leads the service management industry. It is built natively for mobile with an intuitive, beautiful, people-centric user experience that makes your whole organization more productive. This platform leverages artificial intelligence to automate and streamline various service management processes. In doing so, it will ultimately make your organization more efficient. This simple-to-use platform is capable of handling even your organization’s most advanced management requirements.

BMC Helix ITSM is a predictive platform that does not simply wait for problems to occur. The advanced analytics software aims to improve your organization’s efficiency by spotting weak areas and then proposing solutions. This platform can improve your resource deployment efficiency by as much as 45% .This is why it is trusted by corporations across a variety of industries.

Key Features

Some of BMC Helix ITSM’s key features include:

Solves service issues in a way that makes you more efficient. BMC Helix ITSM employs advanced analytic software that searches for areas where your organization can drive efficiencies to provide the best possible service.
Groups issues that recur in a way that streamlines both analysis and incident management. It uses artificial intelligence to identify and solve groups of incidents in real time. The AI automates these processes, which can prove both tedious and time-consuming.
Securely and seamlessly provides services across multi-cloud environments with “a single pane of glass” interface. This allows you to be highly flexible. You can configure your services in a number of different ways without having to worry that your multi-cloud environment won’t be able to support your service management.
The ability to view all of your management data in a way that provides you with clear insights into your system’s management. BMC Helix ITSM enables you to create custom reports and dashboards. This makes it possible for you to see any and all significant trends in your operations and services data.

Reviews from Real Users

BMC Helix ITSM’s software stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two of these are the robust activity tracking features and the lightweight nature of the solution.

A PeerSpot user who is a technical Program Manager and Site Lead at a computer software company notes the nature of Helix’s task tracking when they write, “The most valuable features I have found are the activity logs. Additionally, the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer. The customer can read the notes and are able to know where you are in the procedures and process of fixing the problem for them. It has a good interactive piece for dialogue with customers where you do not have to interact with them personally, but they can do it on their own just by going into that activity log. This is great for the customer to have the ability to find out how things are being progressively taken care of.”

Another PeerSpot user, who is a Practice Director of Global Infrastructure Services at a computer software company, notes, “Many other tools are similar. I've used these tools and find that they meet my requirements. 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.”

BMC

xMatters, an Everbridge company, is a service reliability platform that helps DevOps, SREs, and operations teams rapidly deliver products at scale by automating workflows and ensuring infrastructure and applications are always working. The xMatters code-free workflow builder, adaptive approach to incident management, and real-time performance analytics all support a single goal: deliver customer happiness.

To learn more, request a demo.

Reliable services, rapid innovation: Automate operations workflows, ensure applications are always working, and deliver remarkable products at scale with the xMatters service reliability platform.

Automate on the xMatters service reliability platform: Move faster with confidence. Our no-code and low-code integrations let you build flexible workflows to address issues proactively—even during deployments.

Frictionless on-call: Manage on-call seamlessly. Automatically escalate to the right people, schedule with ease, and act on detailed alerts from anywhere.

Adaptive Incident Management: Stay resilient in any scenario with our adaptive approach to incident management. Automate resolution, protect customers from disruptions, and learn from each event.

Signal Intelligence: Put situations in context and cut through the noise of multiple monitoring tools with filtering and suppression, alert correlation, enriched notifications, and routing based on role or function.

Actionable Analytics: Get quick insights into key metrics to understand inefficiencies, boosting collaboration and productivity across engineering and operations teams.

Everbridge

Sample Customers

Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University

Over 2.7 million users trust xMatters daily at successful startups and global giants including athenahealth, BMC Software, Box, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Experian, NVIDIA, ViaSat and Vodafone. xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, California and has offices worldwide. Visit our website to see how business like yours found solutions with xMatters.

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

June 2025

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