SX

With businesses focusing on accelerated digital transformation, IT Service Management (ITSM) has become a crucial business enabler. Whether the demand is to streamline service delivery, maintain seamless IT workflows, or deliver an intuitive customer experience, an ITSM platform is the solution you need to adopt the best practices.

Finding the right IT Service Management solution is not only about the functions – the solution should also be consistent with your business goals and financial plan. Many businesses are now exploring alternative ITSM solutions offering greater flexibility, cost efficiency, and tailored functionalities to meet their needs.

In 2025, you will have good ITSM alternatives that bring fresh innovations to the ITSM landscape. Here are the top 6 ITSM tools that are worth considering.

Top 6 ITSM Tools

HCL SX

HCL SX is a cutting-edge solution for IT service management. Its key strength lies in its no-code, Agentic AI-powered platform. It focuses on proactively preventing problems, decision-making with the help of AI, and a user-friendly interface.

What makes it a highly viable solution for modern businesses is its relevance, which is not limited to IT but also applies to HR, finance, and cross-departmental workflows.

Key Strengths:

MicroSkilled agents
The AI agents work autonomously and in concert to analyze and solve issues, playing parts like incident managers.
Cognitive Virtual Assistant (CVA)
Allows users to request help, create tickets, and solve problems in a chat interface with the help of AI.

Breaking New Ground in ITSM

Predictive analytics
Determines first-call resolution rates, ticket reopen risk, and change success probabilities to avoid downtime.

Proactive problem management
Analyze incident patterns to prevent the occurrence of the same problems.
Multi-supplier governance
Based on the Service Integration and Management (SIAM) framework, it provides a unique mechanism for managing transactions and governance, integrating multiple suppliers with a Consumer and Master Supplier.
No-code flexibility
Enables non-technical teams to create workflows, manage approvals, and build and customize dashboards without writing code.

Summarization and knowledge creation
Uses generative AI to create high-level summaries of complex workflows. Automatically creates FAQs and knowledge articles from tickets that come in frequently.

Smart workload allocation
Assigns tasks according to the capacity and skills of the team.

Self-service excellence
Integrated natural language search and AI-powered writing assistants actively engage users, decreasing the dependency on IT departments.

Weaknesses:

Using predictive models as the basis requires good data to maintain accuracy.
HCL SX is a relatively new platform; thus, its documentation is growing. Nevertheless, organizations must not rely on extensive manuals because the platform is intuitive and offers a no-code approach.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that helps companies make their IT work better and use less manual effort in their day-to-day tasks. This tool brings together many key IT jobs in one place. These include dealing with problems handling service needs, managing changes, keeping track of assets, and overseeing IT rules. By putting all these tasks into one system, ServiceNow allows businesses to cut down on manual work. This leads to better productivity in their operations and gives users a much better experience.

Key Strengths:

ServiceNow employs powerful automation tools to cut out repetitive tasks, allowing teams to focus on key strategic projects.
The platform harnesses predictive intelligence to foresee issues, rank tasks, and back up data-driven choices.
People without tech skills can build custom workflows and apps using its low-code/no-code setup.
The platform boasts a user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate and cutting down on training needs.
ServiceNow offers dashboards you can tailor, showing live data and performance stats for users to keep an eye on.
It includes reporting analytics tools that provide organizations with detailed insights about operational efficiency and service quality.

Weaknesses:

Licensing and implementation phases create financial barriers for smaller businesses. According to one user, “ServiceNow can be expensive, especially for smaller organizations.”¹
New users experience difficulties when trying to understand the complex nature of the platform. A customer shared that “When we onboard a new member, they take a long time to adapt.”²
Initial setup and integration require significant technical expertise, and overly customized instances become challenging to update.³
Users report slow page-load times and delays when managing large datasets or high incident volumes.⁴
While flexible, excessive customizations can create technical debt. Tuning the platform to niche workflows often demands developer support.⁵

BMC Helix ITSM

BMC Helix ITSM is a cloud-native, AI-driven ITSM platform designed for digital transformation, workflow automation, and improved service delivery. Helix includes most ITSM features, such as incident management, asset management, change management, and integration with DevOps.

Key Strengths:

BMC Helix uses AI and ML to maximize resource utilization, generate probable future service demand, and identify potential risk.
Helix is an apt solution for business IT infrastructures in large enterprises because it offers flexibility and ease of scaling as the company expands.
The platform is also compatible with other third-party software as it uses an open API.
The platform is simple for users to implement and use, as they can build incidents, manage changes, and create reports using drag-and-drop.

Weaknesses:

Although Helix is customizable, some reviewers complain that the workflow design is not as intuitive as that of other ITSM tools.
Certain users have noted that the user interface of Helix is somewhat outdated compared to other ITSM platforms.
If ticket volumes are large, it can be time-consuming to locate historical data or create comprehensive reports.

Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management, previously known as Jira Service Desk, is a new-age ITSM solution. It implements agile methodologies with ITSM best practices and offers a single-platform approach in request, incident, and change management. It is quite cost-effective and has seamless integration with other Atlassian products.

Key Strengths:

Built on the Jira platform, it quickly integrates with other DevOps tools, promoting change management and ongoing development.
While the self-service portal lets consumers fix problems without consulting IT, the highly sophisticated automation tools effectively route requests to the proper location.
By means of this single-platform approach, IT and operations teams can greatly improve service delivery and minimise siloed work.
It also performs effectively with other Atlassian tools such as Confluence, which lets one create adaptable workflows fit for the demands of the company.

Weaknesses:

For non-technical individuals, the interface might look complicated, making onboarding or workflow automation setup difficult.
Users have reported that there is sometimes a delay, especially when many tickets are handled simultaneously.

Ivanti Neurons

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM offers a service management solution that does not need agents to keep an eye on systems. It provides complete ITSM features, with a focus on making things automatic, managing assets, and handling workflows. Ivanti's platform is simple to use and can be tailored to fit different needs. This helps companies boost their IT operations, get more done, deliver better services, and make users happier.

Key Strengths:

Agentless real-time monitoring provides 24/7 infrastructure, application, and process monitoring.
Drag and drop workflow automation makes service management easier and allows teams to respond to changing business needs.
It provides comprehensive identification and control of IT assets from acquisition to retirement to achieve compliance and optimize the use of resources.
Enables users to search for knowledge articles and track requests to reduce the IT workload and decrease response time.
It offers customizable dashboards and reports to help gain better IT operations visibility.

Weaknesses:

Too many features in this ITSM platform may confuse new users and make the learning curve steep.
Some users commented that the interface appears a little inconsistent, as some features look like they are just integrated from other tools.

Freshservice

Another popular ITSM solution is Freshservice. It is a cloud-based ITSM solution by Freshworks and a strong contender for ServiceNow. It is a user-friendly platform, used primarily by small and mid-sized enterprises. Developed on ITIL best practices, Freshservice streamlines IT operations through automated workflows, AI-powered support, and seamless asset management.

Key Strengths:

Freddy AI, the built-in AI solution, improves ticket resolution by providing self-service, automating processes, and supplying valuable recommendations.
The interface is designed so that the IT teams can efficiently categorize, prioritize, and manage tickets.
Integrates ITSM with IT asset management for better coordination and greater visibility.
Offers data-driven insights into service performance, ticket resolution times, and SLA achievements.
Compatible with third-party tools like AWS, Google Apps, and many more.

Weaknesses:

Automation is strong, but the available digital workflows are limited to some extent.
Extensive customizations can slow down the platform’s response.
According to some users, the support team of Freshservice is rather slow in responding.

Considerations for Choosing the Right ITSM Platform

Choosing the right ITSM platform is crucial in optimizing IT performance and service quality at your organization. Here are the key factors to consider when making your choice:

Business Needs

Every business has different ITSM needs. While some businesses look for basic incident and change management, others have complex needs such as automation, AI, and sharp analytics. So, the platform should align with your ITIL framework. However, it is wise to choose an ITSM platform that has new-age capabilities to support your future growth.

Scalability

Your ITSM platform should help your business grow. Large companies need it to handle thousands of users and complex processes. Small and medium-sized businesses want flexibility without paying for unused features.

Integration Capabilities

ITSM can't work alone. You need a platform that works well with your company's existing systems, including monitoring tools, collaboration tools, and outside apps. Checking how well the platform connects with other systems is crucial to make your company's workflows easier and more effective.

Ease of Use and User Adoption

When it comes to getting people to use the system, you should think about how easy the interface is to use how people can learn it, and if it allows different access levels based on job roles. Companies should look for platforms that make workflows simpler and don't require a lot of effort to manage.

Licensing and Cost-effectiveness

The licensing needs to be straightforward and adaptable. Some have tricky pricing structures or sneaky fees that can pile up to a bunch of extra expenses for the project. Instead, pick options that give you simple and clear licensing, which costs less and works better down the road. If you don't, you will wind up shelling out more for the same stuff.

Advanced AI and Automation

Due to the increased complexity of IT ecosystems, automation and AI-enabled features are becoming essential. Automated workflows, AI-based analytics, and proactive incident management can relieve IT staff of repetitive work and allow them to concentrate on critical business processes.

Ease of Upgrades and Maintenance

It is a known fact that frequent updates can cause a lot of problems and affect the performance of the organization. Try to find products that require minimal or no professional services for upgrades, so that switching to new versions will not disturb work and will not require retraining.

AI-powered Service Management Solution

HCL SX is a future-ready ITSM platform that is perfect for today’s businesses. Designed for varied business needs, it is scalable for enterprises and SMBs, without incurring extra costs for the features you don’t need. Its native integration capabilities make it easier to connect with other tools, while the no-code interface makes it easy to use and learn quickly. HCL SX has a transparent licensing model that has no hidden costs.

What really makes HCL SX different is Agentic AI-powered automation, which significantly reduces the need for human intervention. Isn’t that what you are looking for in your IT service management practices? Features like cognitive virtual assistants, predictive analytics, and proactive problem management increase the effectiveness of operations and give your service desk agents the time to focus on real strategic tasks.

HCL SX has delivered enterprises satisfactory output. For example, a major managed service provider used HCL SX to simplify the management of multi-tenant services. The platform enabled them to onboard customers 40% faster, save 50% on operational costs, and lower MTTR by 35%.

If you are looking to enhance your IT operations and interested in exploring if HCL SX will be a right fit, here book your 30-day free trial.

References:

HCLSoftware: Fueling the Digital+ Economy

Web Content Viewer

Breaking New Ground in ITSM: Top 6 ITSM Tools to Watch in 2025