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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
217
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

"Service Manager does what it should, but it's quite outdated."
"Service Manager's best features are flexibility and customizability."
"Incident management is the most valuable because we're using it to manage tickets for an accounting system. With the reports that are available, it allows us to track and identify trends at the type and item level. It also helps us in managing the workload better than what we had in Remedy, which is what we were using before 2013."
"It's easy to scale."
"We can have all our requests and incidents registered in one system."
"Service Manager gives us a single system where everything is centralized in one base."
"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."
"It can adapt to any process in the organization."
"Overall, I rate ServiceNow 10 out of 10."
"Your time-to-market, or TTM, becomes faster when you use ServiceNow. Even individuals that are not tech savvy can quickly change processes and workflows in it. This can make the organization as a whole more agile."
"The biggest feature is that it is cloud-based, so it's always updated, it's always current. We don't have to worry about patches, revisions. We're always working with the latest version."
"I like the incident module, which is useful for tracking your incidents and other things. It is a reliable solution."
"The solution integrates well with other products."
"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."
"I find the incident management part to be the most valuable. That's how the service desk tracks tickets."
"ServiceNow is great. You can download the data into Excel and you can basically create reports. It's very flexible."
 

Cons

"Service Manager would be improved with access to automation."
"There's a lot of manual work, which is error prone and time consuming, in how the code gets transported from one system to the other."
"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."
"It needs to be easier to use for the end users because one problem we had was that we are handling different kinds of cases."
"The solution does not interface well with other products and is difficult to implement."
"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."
"There should be some front desk provided or some options to let our users serve themselves, because we have about 5000 servers and 400 applications."
"The interface could be better."
"The solution could improve by making the CMDB integrate with a CI better to allow it to be seen across multiple platforms."
"The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."
"It's a great platform, but there's still room for improvement. As the solutions stands now, you do need a lot of previous experience to use it. It would be great if they could develop some use case templates. This would be beneficial for a small and medium-sized businesses."
"There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow."
"HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
"It's too complicated and there are too many options."
"The user interface could be much improved, and the developer tools and sets can be improved greatly, they are lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is not cheap."
"Micro Focus Service Manager is a little cheaper than other options. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee."
"I pay for Service Manager on a yearly basis, and the price is reasonable - I would rate it five out of ten."
"HP Service Manager has moderate pricing."
"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."
"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."
"For large-scale companies, the cost of ServiceNow is not expensive, but for small and mid-scale companies, it is higher."
"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."
"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."
"It is very expensive because it is a big organization. You have to pay for additional things."
"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."
"It is fairly expensive."
"The first impact for the customer is that it is expensive, but do not forget that it is a solution that includes infrastructure; a single cost, easy to justify."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
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 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

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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.