BMC Helix ITSM vs N-able MSP Manager vs Spiceworks comparison

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BMC Logo
8,391 views|4,725 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
N-able Logo
533 views|408 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Spiceworks Logo
1,183 views|617 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BMC Helix ITSM, N-able MSP Manager, and Spiceworks based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software.
To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: April 2024).
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We find the incident management module the best. The reporting part is also useful. We use a feature called smart reporting, and it is very beneficial for us.""BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product.""Reports have helped us to improve our IT processes. The main benefit is providing the right information to our decision makers.""Technical support has been fine.""The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request.""The standards and the framework that it follows are most valuable. It has an ITIL and out-of-the-box framework.""Smart IT and the phone app are easily the most valuable features in reporting and tracking ongoing issues.""Automatic orchestration is the most valuable. The feature for designating some cases or incidents to the right PM for resolution, first call resolution, and change management are also important. The self-service feature and knowledge base resolutions are helping the customers in resolving issues rather than opening tickets."

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"This is a premier product and it has been around for a long time.""I am impressed with the tool's integration with our mail system.""I like that you can do all the things with it. You can patch, and you can run the scheduled tasks. You can remote in, upload files, and download files. You can log onto a computer PowerShell, or command prompt, without having to log into RDP. I also like its ease of use."

More N-able MSP Manager Pros →

"It lets us know whether devices are getting out of date and tracked warranties. Spiceworks also gave me visibility in terms of what software was installed on each device and its status.""The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space.""Spiceworks is generic and free.""It's easy to understand.""If you're in the market for a low-cost service desk system, Spiceworks is a good software solution to start out with, especially when it comes to startups and those organizations that don't currently have any existing service desk software in place.""The most valuable features are the inventory and personalization.""Tickets by e-mail, with actions by hastag.""The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful."

More Spiceworks Pros →

Cons
"We have experienced outages, because some other customers did something on the same cluster that we share.""Maybe it could be more simplified and easier to change the reporting point of view, like from a different vendor to another.""The product's customization capabilities, price, and technical support are areas of concern where improvements are needed.""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.""In the next release, I would like to see AI used for classification or categorization.""BMC Helix ITSM should have an easy-to-use user interface.""Compared to ServiceNow, BMC Remedy is somewhat "closed." I can go to the ServiceNow website and learn everything there is to know about the product, and training is available. That really wasn't available with BMC Remedy.""If I'm working with a client who wants to expand and move into other areas - they want to expand their workflow and other parts of the organization, they want to do some work with project management, they want to do some work with HR - I'm not sure that BMC Remedy is doing that. And it's because of their platform. Any software has a lifecycle. To me, BMC is a dated architecture."

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"Its reporting is lousy and bad. It is not as good as it should be. There is too much work involved to get what you want. Most times, you have to call them to customize some stuff. I just don't like that part. They need to work on their reporting. They have a way to go.""The tool needs to improve its customization of the user interface.""What I would like to see is a simplified solution that is packaged better, where you can easily implement or turn on the functionality that you need."

More N-able MSP Manager Cons →

"The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice.""I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging. When I click a note or a device, I should be able to see more details about the router and modem. For example, I want to see the version, downtime, availability, latency, etc. I should have easy access to everything about our assets at a glance.""I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves.""Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable.""The GUI must be improved.""It would be nice to have remote access to the solution via a tablet. They also need remote control from a PC. Right now, to complete the technical support process, you have to have a tool to access the PC, and check the problems.""With Spiceworks, like, when I open the websites, I have to Zoom in. I need to zoom in on those websites sometimes because it makes it horrible to use.""Once a device was recognized on the network, Spiceworks never got rid of it even after you took it off the network. You had to go in and manually remove it."

More Spiceworks Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Please always get the latest quote from a BMC partner or from BMC. Check for the latest offerings."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "If you are looking for some kind of professional services form the OEM then you would have to purchase that."
  • "It is too expensive for a small business."
  • "It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more."
  • More BMC Helix ITSM Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Don't get scared of the price tag because it's definitely worth it."
  • "I don't know the exact cost, but I know it's reasonable. Its cost of entry is not bad. I've had other organizations sign up for it. I don't know how much they paid, but it wasn't bad. You charge for every object. You charge for AV, and you charge for servers. There is a charge for everything or every object in that. I know we make money from it, but I don't know what it is."
  • "I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten since it's not the cheapest one in the market."
  • More N-able MSP Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The product is free! Get it now."
  • "It's free."
  • "It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."
  • "Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."
  • "The tool is cheap."
  • More Spiceworks Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want using these, but they require quite some expertise before you can use them. Then there are the ones that are not open source, the enterprise softwares and cost you some money, but on the other hand, they are extremely easy to set-up and learn. You can have them up and running in a matter of minutes. And then there are those which are completely cloud based. They can be free of cost or charge some money depending on the software. The good thing about these is that you don’t have to install any extra software, and it can be managed completely online but then again these have limited features and you cannot exploit them to the full extent as you can do with the open-source and to some extent the enterprise software, so I won’t suggest you to use these, because these are generally not the complete solutions and require other support software to achieve the same. Below I have listed the outstanding pros and cons of the various Network analyzers that you can look into Nagios Pros: Nagios offers an extensive set of collector plug-ins that allows users to gather performance and availability data from a broad range of operating systems, including  Windows and Netware Nagios… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:If we consider major players like Ford or BMW, their core focus is manufacturing products like cars. To ensure smooth… more »
    Top Answer:The tool needs greater customization flexibility, particularly concerning notifications and the progressive view web… more »
    Top Answer:We used to support VMware applications, focusing on distributed applications such as data from ETW, Snowflake, and SAP… more »
    Top Answer:I am impressed with the tool's integration with our mail system.
    Top Answer:The tool needs to improve its customization of the user interface.
    Top Answer:We use the solution for the instant management of our support customers.
    Top Answer:The solution is easy to use and easy to manage.
    Top Answer:The GUI must be improved. The GUI looks old-fashioned. The vendor must do some web development for it.
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    8,391
    Comparisons
    4,725
    Reviews
    20
    Average Words per Review
    425
    Rating
    7.6
    27th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    533
    Comparisons
    408
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    298
    Rating
    7.0
    16th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    1,183
    Comparisons
    617
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    666
    Rating
    7.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Remedy ITSM, Remedy, Helix Remedy
    SolarWinds LOGICnow, SolarWinds MSP Manager
    Learn More
    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.”

    Managing your business and providing excellent support shouldn’t bog you down. MSP Manager’s ease of use will free your team to deliver on your promise of great service.

    • Intuitive, lightweight ticketing with seamless RMM and N-central® platform integrations.
    • Painless time tracking with convenient timers and functionality for recurring tickets and appointments.
    • Closed-loop email with automatic ticket monitoring and routing, with a streamlined Microsoft 365 setup via OAuth.
    • Complete customer and knowledge management with a branded portal.
    • Accounting integrations with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero.
    From network inventory and network monitoring to help desk software, and mobile device management (MDM) to cloud services detection, Spiceworks helps you manage everything about your IT workday from one easy place.
    Sample Customers
    Brookfield, HealthSouth Corporation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Mercator, SAP, Stanford University
    Longleaf Systems, ITproMedia, Choice Technology, Halski Systems, Allixo Technologies, Nettech, Concept Technology
    Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Media Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Construction Company10%
    Educational Organization6%
    Transportation Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government7%
    University6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise71%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise43%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise21%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise50%
    Buyer's Guide
    Help Desk Software
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: April 2024.
    767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.