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Device42 vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Device42 provides efficient asset management, enhancing time and cost savings despite challenges in quantifying ROI precisely.
Sentiment score
6.1
ServiceNow Discovery's ROI is inconsistent, with full benefits seen when combined with other services for operational efficiency.
The TCO calculations based on five years and three years have yielded a remarkable ROI compared to on-premise workload, validating the business case submission to the customer.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I can confidently say at least 30% is the savings which we have seen.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
This efficiency with time and resources was perfect.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Device42's customer service is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, though complex issues sometimes experience slower resolution.
Sentiment score
6.0
ServiceNow Discovery's support varies, with mixed experiences on responsiveness and effectiveness, improving with advanced support tiers and partnerships.
Customer support for Device42 is fantastic.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Our internal teams have also leveraged the platform which is available for the customers and the partners to onboard them, have a bit of training on the tool and then ask any specific questions to either the TAM or the customer support team.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to resolving technical issues, the support team is responsive and always available to help.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
The 'follow the sun' model, where the time of raising the ticket and where it lands, plays a crucial role.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
This rating is because there are features on the tool that never worked and despite calling our support, there were no results.
IT Service Performance Manager at MTN
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Device42 efficiently scales vertically and horizontally, accommodating growth with ease, adaptability, and integrated Masscan for discovery speed.
Sentiment score
7.4
ServiceNow Discovery is highly scalable, suited for large infrastructures, compatible with AWS and Azure, but requires careful cost management.
It is very much scalable and allows you to design your discovery solution without facing any challenge.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Device42's scalability works well for me; if I want to add more resources, such as a Remote Collector for a new site, I can easily connect it to the main appliance.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The scalability is good and with the increase in the size of the environment, it has definitely grown and changed over the last couple of years.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it as a nine on a scale of one to ten, indicating it is highly scalable.
Software Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It receives this rating because it can be difficult to troubleshoot when the discovery is failing.
IT Service Performance Manager at MTN
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Device42 is reliable with stable performance, regular updates, and efficient support, despite occasional maintenance and minor bugs.
Sentiment score
8.0
ServiceNow Discovery is highly stable and reliable, with minor configuration issues not affecting its strong overall performance ratings.
Device42 is stable and has been reliable for my organization.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Device42 has been pretty stable.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the stability of ServiceNow Discovery as nine, as we never had downtime.
IT Service Performance Manager at MTN
That is not a mistake of the product. It is due to excessive security on the network.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Device42 needs improved workflows, mobile experience, integration, scalability, and enhanced features like dashboards, discovery, and AI for users.
ServiceNow Discovery struggles with service mapping and integration, necessitating enhancements for usability, cloud capabilities, and easier licensing.
I foresee areas of improvement for the agent-less solution, which could be very useful for those organizations that might not allow configuring an agent in their source machines for workload discovery.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
From an ITSM and ticketing perspective, I would say if there were integrations available, that would have really been better because a lot of times what we end up seeing or leveraging is ServiceNow because they have that native or out of the box capability, and even Freshservice has that capability out of the box.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
If automatic updates were available for the solution instead of having customers go through the process of downloading and uploading update packages themselves, it would be beneficial.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation.
Software Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room for improvement are getting custom reports on the relationship between CIs that are not on the same table.
IT Service Performance Manager at MTN
 

Setup Cost

Device42's pricing varies widely, offering affordability for some, yet seen as costly by others, especially for large-scale use.
ServiceNow Discovery is pricey but valued for advanced features, with potential discounts though standalone costs are high.
Compared to other competitors, it does not cost much, and I would recommend it from a cost perspective.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
For example, I felt the BMC Discovery pricing was quite high.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
ServiceNow is considered more expensive compared to other products.
Software Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I think the price of ServiceNow Discovery is cheaper than BMC.
IT Service Performance Manager at MTN
 

Valuable Features

Device42 offers comprehensive IT asset management with agentless discovery, simplifying asset inventory, network visualization, and hybrid cloud migration planning.
ServiceNow Discovery integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow suite, enhancing IT operations through automated mapping, security, and cloud discovery.
Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud.
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have leveraged that to discover IT assets such as physical servers, VMs, network devices, containers, storage devices, the applications, cloud resources and their relationships or their dependencies with each other and to the outside.
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Device42 has positively impacted our organization by helping us become one of the best companies for asset management and inventory for the enterprise businesses we work with.
Cloud Presales Engineer at Activedge Technologies Ltd.
The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding.
Software Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
ServiceNow Discovery helps with operations, audits, and allows people to assess how a particular change in infrastructure impacts other components.
Director, Information Technology at Gen™
ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (2nd), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd), Data Center Infrastructure Management (1st)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (4th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of Device42 is 4.2%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery4.4%
Device424.2%
Other91.4%
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2783919 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Granular discovery has ensured confident workload migration and optimized cloud move group planning
Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud. For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud. Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud. Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.
reviewer2759271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has supported enterprise needs well and addresses discovery across environments
Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective. Hence, they will not opt for ServiceNow Discovery as a solution, either as an ITSM solution or ITOM solution. It will not be affordable. I am specifically talking about the Middle East and Africa region. ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool. They use event management from getting events from other tools. In that front, they had a roadmap for going for an open-source solution, but I have not seen that materialize. There is a lack of tools perspective for monitoring. Perhaps they do not have a plan because there are hundreds of tools available, and they prefer to focus on integration and event management.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
I felt the pricing was a little bit mid-range as compared to the other tools which are out there in the market. For example, I felt the BMC Discovery pricing was quite high. So I think the pricing ...
What needs improvement with Device42?
Device42 can improve in the area of updates. If automatic updates were available for the solution instead of having customers go through the process of downloading and uploading update packages the...
What do you like most about ServiceNow Discovery?
The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?
The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Find out what your peers are saying about Device42 vs. ServiceNow Discovery and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.