Icinga vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

Icinga and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Server Monitoring category. Icinga is ranked #16, while ServiceNow is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.8. Icinga holds a 4.2% mindshare in SM, compared to ServiceNow’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Icinga users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

6,705 Views
3,151 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Discovery

Read 45 ServiceNow Discovery reviews

5,027 Views
2,664 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Icinga

ServiceNow Discovery

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

Icinga and ServiceNow Discovery are tools used for IT infrastructure monitoring, but they differ in several key areas. ServiceNow Discovery seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced feature set and support, despite Icinga's flexibility and open-source nature.

Features: Icinga users value its customizable setup and integration with various plugins. It offers flexible monitoring configuration and community-supported plugins. ServiceNow Discovery is praised for its comprehensive asset discovery capabilities, automation features, and integrated workflows, making it suitable for larger organizations with complex needs.

Room for Improvement: Icinga users suggest improving documentation, simplifying setup, and enhancing user interface design. ServiceNow Discovery users desire more frequent updates, better scalability options, and improved integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga’s deployment process is intricate but flexible, with a community-driven customer service experience. ServiceNow Discovery has a streamlined deployment process and robust professional support, which is advantageous for enterprise environments.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga is cost-effective for small to medium enterprises due to low setup costs and its open-source model. ServiceNow Discovery, while more expensive, offers significant ROI through its advanced features and automation capabilities. Users generally find ServiceNow Discovery worth the higher price due to its comprehensive benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Icinga vs. ServiceNow Discovery Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. ServiceNow Discovery

June 2026

Download the complete report

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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

Icinga

Ranking in Server Monitoring

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (37th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)

ServiceNow Discovery

Ranking in Server Monitoring

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (9th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 4.2%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 2.6%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery	2.6%
Icinga	4.2%
Other	93.2%

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201

Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect

It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.

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Abhinay Sharma

Service Now Developer at Bangmetric services pvt ltd

Cloud discovery has improved asset visibility and reporting but still needs smarter automation

The impact of ServiceNow Discovery on my organization's strategic planning depends on various factors. Some customers have their own discovery tools which they do not want to switch from, even if we explain why ServiceNow might be better, because they have been using them for a long time. Some customers are dynamic, so we need to have some kind of proposition that comes with ServiceNow. Sometimes, we need to talk with ServiceNow people themselves to give them a bundle offer in which we can have Discovery and ITSM at a much more affordable price than the competitors, so that is our main goal. Currently, I would say there might be a possibility if we can use some AI discovery features that could be helpful for our organization. If we can get discovery jobs running based on AI schedules, that would be beneficial. I believe in the coming future that I want to see myself working more with ServiceNow in this capacity.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."

"I would recommend Icinga; it's an open-source solution, it's quite easy and simple to use, and checks can be run with Python code and Shell Script code."

"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."

"People should know that it is simple and advanced."

"The most valuable feature is one that not many are even aware of, as Icinga has a self-healing event handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted, and you can configure the handler to take action after the critical alarm without human interaction."

"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."

More Icinga pros

"It's pretty robust, and it's agentless for the most part. So, you don't need to deploy agents, which makes it a lot easier to stand up."

"ServiceNow's Discovery feature is quite significant because it allows for service mapping and integrates with VIN management. It involves adding a business context to servers, routers, switches, and data centers. This means understanding not only what's installed on these systems and how they function together but also recognizing their significance in terms of business applications from the business's perspective and how they impact business processes and capabilities. So when we delve into these aspects and connect them to the essential components, it can help you engage in more meaningful discussions to enhance capacity management practices. In essence, it contributes to the overall IT portfolio, almost functioning as a business platform. This platform is accessible to users who leverage the data to initiate incidents, implement changes, and resolve problems. Consequently, consolidating all configuration items or assets into a unified platform makes sense, especially considering you already have Discovery in place. If the cost is reasonable, the other two components might not provide much value, except for their user-friendliness, which is often less important to leaders compared to the desired outcomes."

"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."

"One highly valuable aspect is the use of service accounts, which automates the process of identifying underlying nodes and associated assets."

"Service Now has a great drag and drop functionality, which makes it easier to use than, say, EMC, and it is dedicated to designing an easy-to-use tool for IT defense, giving users better leverage."

"Most fields on our forms are auto-filled, reducing manual maintenance for our infrastructure team. Post Discovery implementation there is hardly any maintenance."

"The process involving the original setup of the solution is excellent."

"The data is really good, it's reliable and they keep adding to it."

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

Cons

"The user interface should be improved."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."

"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."

"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."

"Icinga’s automation could be improved."

More Icinga cons

"When you switch versions, for example, when you go from Paris to Quebec they will introduce many new things and occasionally things break when they do that."

"Instead of AI, even GenAI should be introduced in ServiceNow Discovery."

"Improvements are required with the scripts used to collect the information from servers."

"The initial setup could be made easier. We hired professionals to implement it, and they trained our employees for ongoing processes."

"It does create quite a few duplicate CIs, you need to monitor and clean them up."

"I am not seeing significant ROI beyond breaking even on what I spend."

"Without improvement in the patters, applications can't be discovered"

"I believe there is room for improvement in ServiceNow Discovery, particularly in providing more detailed information about network usage and communication between ServiceNow and the infrastructure."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

"The solution is cheap."

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."

"The solution is free to use."

"It's an open-source solution."

"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

"The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."

"ServiceNow Discovery is expensive, but the company has a monopoly and we need to use the solution. We use it because we do not have a choice."

"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."

"It's a bit expensive compared to other products in the market, but it's worth the money you pay because it's far advanced in terms of features, automation, and capabilities compared to other products."

"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."

"I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten. We had availed some discount from the standard pricing. Even then, the tool's pricing is expensive. You have to pay some vendor service fees for the product's implementation."

"It's on a yearly basis. We renew our contract for three years at a time."

"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	24

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?

Regarding pricing, I have not dealt much with it. I am more focused on the feature side of things, so I cannot comment on the latest pricing because it is dynamic as well. Sometimes it is cheaper f...

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What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?

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What is your primary use case for ServiceNow Discovery?

I have utilized ServiceNow Discovery for cloud management, specifically for basic AWS discovery. If you're having a VPS, it is also considered in discovery, and that falls under the cloud managemen...

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

June 2026

Download Icinga product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Discovery

May 2026

Download ServiceNow Discovery product report

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

No data available

Overview

Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.

With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Task Delegation: Streamlines monitoring tasks across distributed systems.
Event Handler: Enables automatic service recovery with minimal intervention.
Plugin Library: Offers extensive support for integrating diverse technologies.
API Accessibility: Facilitates automation with popular tools like Terraform.
Custom Plugins: Allows easy creation and personalization for monitoring needs.

What benefits should you consider in Icinga reviews?

Flexibility: Tailors monitoring to specific requirements with community support.
Scalability: Successfully manages growing infrastructure demands.
Proactivity: Enhances issue identification and resource allocation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing IT operations platforms.

Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.

Icinga

ServiceNow Discovery automates relationship building with agentless discovery and accurate dependency mapping. It seamlessly integrates with CMDB, offering secure operations and efficient data management, suitable for multi-cloud operations.

ServiceNow Discovery transforms IT infrastructure management by automating the mapping of hardware and software components, enhancing application visibility, and supporting predictive monitoring. It boasts expansive plugin options, low maintenance, and centralized data storage, all while operating effectively across cloud and on-premises environments. Users benefit from robust performance, comprehensive impact analysis, and easy setup. However, improving unnecessary data elimination, simplifying debugging, and enhancing global deployment could make it more effective. It requires more intuitive interfaces and code-free customization for better reconciliation and discovery of remote devices. Improved reporting, competitive pricing, and seamless integration with legacy and newer applications are valued enhancements.

What are the key features of ServiceNow Discovery?

Automated Relationship Building: Facilitates seamless integration with CMDB.
Agentless Discovery: Offers accurate mapping without the need for additional agents.
Dependency Mapping: Provides detailed infrastructure insights.
Multi-cloud Support: Ensures operations are streamlined across cloud environments.
Centralized Data Storage: Supports efficient data management.
Comprehensive Impact Analysis: Enhances capacity management.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Integration with CMDB: Enhances asset tracking and management.
Secure Operations: Minimizes security risks across IT environments.
Efficient Data Management: Streamlines processing and analysis of data.
Low Maintenance: Reduces operational overhead and downtime.
Robust Performance: Ensures reliability in diverse settings.

Companies in diverse sectors use ServiceNow Discovery for asset tracking, CMDB population, and identifying Configuration Items. This enables IT teams to map hardware and software components, enhance visibility, and facilitate predictive monitoring and auto-remediation processes. Integrating with other systems, ServiceNow Discovery provides valuable insights from IT environments, supporting both cloud and on-premises operations.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. ServiceNow Discovery

June 2026

Free Report: Icinga vs. ServiceNow Discovery

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