BMC Helix ITSM vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BMC Helix ITSM
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
BMC Helix ITSM replaces Remedy. It is a broad suite of ITSM, tools with strong integrations to other BMC tools and in-built ITAM. The product is used mainly by global brands and is offered in on-premise and SaaS configurations.N/A
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$55
per month agent
Pricing
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
BMC Helix ITSM
Contact Sales
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19
per month agent
Suite Team
$55
per month agent
Support Professional
$55
per month agent
Suite Growth
$89
per month agent
Suite Professional
$115
per month agent
Support Enterprise
$115
per month agent
Suite Enterprise
$169
per month agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
BMC Helix ITSM
Chose BMC Helix ITSM
Another business unit is using Salesforce for their IT management, and we were looking at switching over. However due to BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)'s great support for ITIL implementation and the requirement for on-premise, we decided to stick with BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy).
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is much cleaner, simpler, and the support staff is faster to respond with actual solutions than the larger solutions. It is also a lot cheaper, both in license cost and in cost to implement. There are also a number of additional support channels (which I am not …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM
8.6
55 Ratings
5% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.7
148 Ratings
11% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.554 Ratings9.0147 Ratings
Expert directory8.041 Ratings8.097 Ratings
Service restoration8.349 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-service tools8.553 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.744 Ratings8.4103 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.253 Ratings8.399 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards8.753 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3147 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.1146 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM
8.9
50 Ratings
8% above category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Configuration mangement9.047 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset management dashboard8.747 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement9.039 Ratings00 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM
9.2
51 Ratings
9% above category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Change requests repository9.351 Ratings00 Ratings
Change calendar8.748 Ratings00 Ratings
Service-level management9.650 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
133 Ratings
10% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.3127 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4121 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.6
144 Ratings
13% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.5116 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.555 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.092 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.0141 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.9106 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.6 out of 10
Front
Front
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(61 ratings)
8.7
(186 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(7 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(12 ratings)
8.7
(59 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(9 ratings)
6.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.6
(2 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BMC Helix ITSMZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
BMC Software Inc.
There are many ITSM platforms available - but only a very select few are true enterprise leaders. BMC Helix is one. When it comes to managing thousands of incidents daily, BMC Helix helps cut through the noise with incident correlation and predictive problem management.
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Zendesk
Zendesk is well suited when dealing with a customer who does not know English. This way, they can copy the email sent and translate it into their home language for better understanding. Zendesk is less appropriate when a customer sends their personal details, such as their bank details. Sometimes, a seller may want us to return their documents, which is also inappropriate.
Read full review
Pros
BMC Software Inc.
  • The Service Asset and Configuration Management capabilities of Helix ITSM are awesome. It can be used as a central repository for all SACM information and seamlessly integrated with Helix Discovery.
  • It has the most certified ITIL process modules of any ITSM system. These modules work seamlessly with each other and give you the power to manage any situation effectively.
  • As an Administrator of Helix ITSM you have many tools at your disposal to create customizations, workflows. BMC makes it easy to manage the system, leaving time to develop customizations and workflows.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
Read full review
Cons
BMC Software Inc.
  • Customization can be lengthy due to the numerous features included in the software.
  • New staff members require some sort of hands-on training to get to know all the use capabilities.
  • The analytics can be improved to include forecasts and trend analysis.
  • Expensive compared to competitors.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • The development of messaging out of the earlier Chat module is clunky and still has limitations for multi language flows.
  • When creating queries in Explore, you can't search for 'or' conditions, only 'And', meaning you have to build multiple queries and manually add them.
  • You can't download the charts in the reports, they come down as tables and then you have to make your own charts.
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Likelihood to Renew
BMC Software Inc.
We rate it an 8 because BMC Helix ITSM provides valuable features that greatly enhance our IT Service Management. While it meets our needs effectively, there's potential for further improvement in areas like user interface simplicity and customization options. We're satisfied with the platform and look forward to its continued development.
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Zendesk
Zendesk is an amazing tool for communicating with your customers easily. The communication tickets from sellers to us or from us to sellers are stored, and there are statuses used to make communication easy. We have internal conversations between departments, linked with useful software such as Zingtree, Talkdesk, and Webs.
Read full review
Usability
BMC Software Inc.
At least Remedy is all contained in a single platform, so the interface is consistent. Also, the most heavily performed functions are generally usable. However, to use some of the more advanced modules can be a bit more cumbersome (such as Change Management and CMDB (Not Including ADDM)). So, overall BMC Remedy ITSM is better than some applications like CA SDM or HP SM, but not quite on par with ServiceNow.
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Zendesk
I used to work without a ticketing service, and everything was handled on an email provider, this made it very difficult to track, no integrations to the software complicating the use of internal tools or other software like Guru, Zendesk Suite wasn't hard to learn, in fact it was very easy, very straightforward, and I was an admin learning to use several tools at the same time.
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Reliability and Availability
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
BMC Software Inc.
Their tech support is top notch. They respond and get back to us, even on lower level incidents and issues, very quickly. It is rare that we deal with a support technician who does not know what they are doing.
Read full review
Zendesk
We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
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Online Training
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
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Implementation Rating
BMC Software Inc.
Satisfied because I didn't have to do it!
Read full review
Zendesk
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
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Alternatives Considered
BMC Software Inc.
Moving to Helix from on premises Remedy provides all the same benefits of ServiceNow with most of the existing customisations we have developed over the last eight years. There was no feature we needed that ServiceNow provided that Helix could not provide. The biggest factor was Helix's ability to use concurrent licences vs ServiceNow's named licences. We have large numbers of partners who use the system infrequently, but they do need to use it to raise changes or manage incidents/problems. ServiceNow would have been much more costly for effectively the same functionality.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Suite is exceptionally user friendly and highly customisable. Free training for all levels and roles of users which is easy to follow and engaging for users is particularly helpful along with the added support behind the scenes from Zendesk support and the Zendesk community is second to none.
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Scalability
BMC Software Inc.
Again, always room for improvement, but a very stable product none-the-less.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BMC Software Inc.
  • Positive: an introduction to ITIL and viewing Asset, User Management from the perspective of ITIL, and how BMC has implemented those processes
  • Negative: The development team needs to communicate better with the sales and support side, and they need offer an open API
  • Negative: Currently the Asset Management side has little security and validation of Asset input: anyone can make API (mostly), at any item, which is a problem that I am apart of solving.
  • The UX needs updating, badly. Its quality is poor: it functions, but it is cumbersome, click-heavy and requires several hours to understand how to function with it. Also, it needs to ditch IE11 support, altogether.
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Zendesk
  • Integrating other AI solutions for an organization with high volumes can cost about USD5000 monthly. With Zendesk AI and by building onto the same with AI powered apps built for Zendesk Suite we save a projected USD4000 monthly.
  • Robust Zendesk APIs have enabled us to integrate our internal system with a customized app saving us hundreds of hours every quarter spent loading customer profiles that are not loaded instantly from the app.
  • Plug and play apps like Round robin save us weeks of sprint delay timelines as they do not require additional coding or developer support to install and start using.
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ScreenShots

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations