BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy) vs. Cherwell Service Management

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)
Score 7.0 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
Cherwell Service Management
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.N/A
Pricing
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Considered Both Products
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)

No answer on this topic

Cherwell Service Management
Chose Cherwell Service Management
The licensing was favorable for our company. The setup and development made it easy to implement. We did have a 3rd party assist with requirements gathering and implementation. This allowed us to meet out targets and deliverables. Performance is very seldom an issue. The uptime …
Chose Cherwell Service Management
Both Remedy & CA were far more complex to implement, enhance and support. The architecture and framework each solution was developed on didn't lend itself to be no-code or low-code like Cherwell, and therefore the ability to expand and utilize either tool on an enterprise-level …
Chose Cherwell Service Management
ServiceNow was administrative heavy and required more than one admin. Also expensive for smaller customers.
Remedy was scaled more for enterprise customers where we are small to mid-sized.
FootPrints - we replaced FootPrints with Cherwell due to a lack of BMC putting any further …
Chose Cherwell Service Management
Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. …
Chose Cherwell Service Management
Though there are other competitive products that are more powerful and faster than Cherwell Service Management - we've been using CSM due to the price point.
Chose Cherwell Service Management
When I did the shopping for an ITSM solution, I found that ITSM solutions seemed to (at the time, anyway) fall into two rough categories and a small third category. In the first larger category, there were a group of the "out of the box", quick to implement but immature and …
Chose Cherwell Service Management
We evaluated numerous applications for our ITSM tool. There are specific reasons why each was eliminated but in a nutshell it mostly came down to the application's ability to meet our current and future support needs and 10-year cost. Cherwell was really the most flexible and …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)
7.5
45 Ratings
8% below category average
Cherwell Service Management
9.7
53 Ratings
17% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets7.544 Ratings10.052 Ratings
Expert directory7.931 Ratings9.641 Ratings
Service restoration6.939 Ratings9.935 Ratings
Self-service tools9.043 Ratings9.851 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.034 Ratings9.538 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.043 Ratings9.548 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards6.343 Ratings9.751 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)
8.6
41 Ratings
5% above category average
Cherwell Service Management
9.7
44 Ratings
17% above category average
Configuration mangement9.138 Ratings9.742 Ratings
Asset management dashboard8.938 Ratings9.741 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement7.731 Ratings9.731 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)
7.7
42 Ratings
8% below category average
Cherwell Service Management
9.8
50 Ratings
16% above category average
Change requests repository7.942 Ratings9.848 Ratings
Change calendar8.139 Ratings9.844 Ratings
Service-level management7.141 Ratings9.845 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
7.3
(50 ratings)
9.6
(57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(6 ratings)
9.9
(13 ratings)
Usability
6.5
(3 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(9 ratings)
6.6
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.6
(2 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BMC Helix ITSM (Remedy)Cherwell Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
BMC Software Inc.
Large complex organisation, with complex technology that needs to manage Technology Services. It is very flexible and able to manage a large complex environment but the knowledge required to set this up correctly (foundation data and configuration) is the key factor for success. It can integrate with many other systems and tools and integrate data from many sources - whether that be AWS cloud, or an on premises bespoke system. I would not recommend for a Small Organisation without the resources to set up and maintain the underlying foundation data and configuration.
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Ivanti
Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
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Pros
BMC Software Inc.
  • Integration with monitoring software like SolarWinds. where Remedy can transform notifications to work orders and assign to respective teams.
  • Detailed Customization capability to fit the exact needs of the organization.
  • Change management calendar, which integrates change orders from all organization departments and facilitates the scheduling process of project managers.
  • It can be offered as a cloud-based service, where you don't need to worry about server maintenance or database backup.
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Ivanti
  • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
  • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
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Cons
BMC Software Inc.
  • The interface (ironically). My company has made an attempt to replace the "classic" Remedy interface with some more functional, modern, but Remedy set to a particular look and feel (and consequently, functionality)
  • The API is hidden from the user: There exists an API for Remedy, that would make my job TONS easier, as I like to perform actions on Remedy in bulk (and therefore - programmatically). Exposing a user API is very much mainstream these days, so Remedy relying on its interface to perform ITIL is very limiting
  • By extension- the result of Remedy's interface is that it becomes very "click-happy": little buttons, and links stuffed into every corner of the screen, with options API logically together. API is old, but it still feels very rushed.
  • The primary tool for most of my ITIL operations is: searching. API of searching goes into finding assets, checking in equipment, finding users, tickets, etc. What Remedy could very much benefit from a "Google" -like interface
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Ivanti
  • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
  • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
  • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
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Likelihood to Renew
BMC Software Inc.
We have been customers of BMC for well over 7 years now and our corporation is tightly integrated with BMC and multiple solutions they offer us.
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Ivanti
Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
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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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Ivanti
I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
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Reliability and Availability
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
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Performance
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
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Support Rating
BMC Software Inc.
The support is good in overall resolving the issues and even in the deployment phase. We are able to use it in production without any trained in-house engineer as the support team gets the job done. We can say that experts completed the deployment for us, and now it is functional.
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Ivanti
We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
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In-Person Training
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
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Online Training
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
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Implementation Rating
BMC Software Inc.
Satisfied because I didn't have to do it!
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Ivanti
Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
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Alternatives Considered
BMC Software Inc.
The decision to select BMC Remedy was made prior to my employment. We did conduct an RFC process for a new ITSM platform and BMC was considered but not selected. We looked at several platforms and ended up choosing Ivanti Service Desk (previously LANDESK) due to the features, ease of customization and price.
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Ivanti
Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
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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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Ivanti
We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
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Professional Services
BMC Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Ivanti
As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
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Return on Investment
BMC Software Inc.
  • When I was in Management discussion calls, and all the team is happy while using BMC Remedy so I don't find any specific negative impact on our organization.
  • I really enjoy Smart IT as the tool of choice for our incident management team.
  • Visibility of tickets is key. All support staff users can see tickets in consoles they have access to.
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Ivanti
  • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
  • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
  • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
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