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IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (4th)
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Maximo and ServiceNow aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Maximo is designed for Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and holds a mindshare of 28.7%, up 26.7% compared to last year.
ServiceNow, on the other hand, focuses on IT Service Management (ITSM), holds 24.2% mindshare, down 27.4% since last year.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Maximo is the best software for assets management."
"The large range of configurability of the product is great, since everyone has a different way of doing things."
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
"​Maximo is very stable. We really do not have problem with stability.​"
"Work order management and scalability enables the businesses' needs to be met."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to correct maintenance."
"It is configurable, where you can add extra fields to screens and to the database."
"ServiceNow provides quite good insights about what is happening in the organization."
"I think the technical support is pretty good. They can be a little bit slow sometimes, but overall I think they're good."
"We can keep track of incidences. There is a bucket where we keep all our information, and it enables communication between stakeholders. It helps us collaborate with each other."
"Primarily, we use it for incident management and change across the landscape. It is the virtual repository for our incident management processes. It gives us visibility about what's happening from the change management perspective across our CABs, including our enterprise CABs."
"What I like the most is that it's a common service data model and the fact that everything is available on one platform."
"You can have it installed and up and running within hours if you know what you're doing. Time to market would be one of the main things to consider."
"Good stable and scalable solution."
"It's more about the ease of use of ServiceNow. Plus, everything is there in a single platform. If you need any additional functionality, you just need to enable the plugins without even installing anything on the servers"
 

Cons

"The mobile solution has a lot of room for improvement, especially in geopositioning capabilities, tracking capabilities, and configuration capabilities, in order to let the tech operate online and offline.​"
"The initial setup was complex, because it is a complex product."
"It's not user-friendly. It could use shortcuts for frequently requested services."
"​Maximo is a big system, so the initial setup is complex."
"Revision management of file attachments."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"The interface requires an upgrade."
"It should include information on navigating various user interfaces for creating diverse requests directed to different teams."
"Loads slower than expected, and its user interface needs improvement. Support for this product also needs to improve on their response time."
"I would like to see a mobile version of ServiceNow."
"There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great."
"There are sometimes challenges with the portal being a bit confusing for new users."
"One thing I don't care for is the reporting and the way it functions."
"They need to be providing vendors and implementation partners with materials and guidance on implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"The licenses are expensive."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"The solution is expensive."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."
"ServiceNow is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world.
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world. With IBM Maximo,...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Maximo
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Infor, IFS and others in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.