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OpenText Service Manager [EOL] 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

OpenText Service Manager [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

MEKKAB Raouf - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent pricing with great change management and service management capabilities
We started with version 9.3, and now we're on 9.6 with the full solution, including the CMS. They have lots of options. They propose a full solution for technology and IT service management. We are a telecom company. We are a leader in the market, and therefore, we need to have all details about our own environment and assets. So far, Micro Focus answers all our needs. I'd advise new users to go directly to the SMAX solution, the last, last version of Service Manager. If they are a technical company or information technology company with engineers and developers, they can use it on-premise. If they don't have such competence in the company, they can ask for the solution on the cloud. It is easily available on Microsoft, Amazon, or Google clouds. I'd rate the product nine out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution is simple to set up."
"The solution will streamline productivity and also improve automation. That would bring efficiency as well the ability to handle a big number of enterprise-wide service needs. Productivity and collaborative capabilities are some of the key benefits."
"It can adapt to any process in the organization."
"Service Manager's best features are flexibility and customizability."
"It's pretty well-structured in modules."
"It's mostly so reliable and has a lot of functionality. We're using a lot of HPE tools and we can do a lot with it. So, its functionality is the most valuable feature."
"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."
"ServiceNow is a cloud solution. That fact was very important for us, that it is not an on-prem solution, as it reduces our internal cost of support."
"The solution has a user-friendly interface."
"It provides internal clients with greater transparency about their projects and deliverables."
"Within our organization, we're not finding really any major issues with scalability and things of that nature."
"ServiceNow is easy to use."
"You can have it installed and up and running within hours if you know what you're doing. Time to market would be one of the main things to consider."
"There are lots of modules around IT service management such as IT business management and human resource management (HRC)."
"I really like what they've done with their common service data model because now I can make a connection between the business process and technology."
 

Cons

"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"Pure cloud-based native functionality is lacking."
"The greatest issue for us is to understand the roadmap. We want to know whether we should upgrade now or should we wait three months."
"The user interface is very clunky. It's only now beginning to be a web-based interface, but for now it's still very clunky."
"It needs good integration with the configuration database, that's lacking at the moment, It's not that good."
"I don't see anything lacking."
"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."
"We aren't able to take emails that come in and turn them into tickets, especially when it comes to attachments. When an email has an attachment, like a screenshot, it is a very cumbersome process, and it does not work very well. I shouldn't have been paying technicians to cut and paste attachments from an email into the ticketing system. It should do that automatically. Other solutions are able to do that. This is something that needs to be improved. Test manager and knowledge management areas are probably amongst the worst parts of this solution. We try to use this solution for knowledge management, but it is not user-friendly. Therefore, it has limited ROI as you need to spend time to try and fully capitalize on the knowledge management system."
"Its stability and pricing need improvement."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"Loads slower than expected, and its user interface needs improvement. Support for this product also needs to improve on their response time."
"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow."
"The interface requires an upgrade."
"The discovery of assets could be improved; right now they only allow for one domain."
"I am interested to see the firm's strategic plans for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), and how the particular areas it will expand on from its existing investments (that feature, for example, in its ITSM Pro and CSM Pro modules)."
"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would say that identify your requirements and pay for the support to implement and test those requirements, and then hope that you did a good job because the cost of their service is fairly expensive."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"The license is not cheap."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"The licensing cost is based on your partnership with ServiceNow and what you have selected for implementation. There is an annual license cost which is calculated based on your number of devices."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."
"The licenses are expensive."
"The price is okay for us. It's reasonable."
"$230 per user."
"ServiceNow is an expensive solution."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
28%
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 needs improvement with Micro Focus Service Manager?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Service Manager?
We use the product for infrastructure, profile, and incident management.
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 that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
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 ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Service Manager, HPE ITSM, HPE Service Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

resultspositive, Globicon
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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.