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Icinga vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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 IT Infrastructure Monitoring
48th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (37th), Server Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (1st), Cloud Management (9th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 1.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management1.1%
Icinga1.5%
Other97.4%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2755671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Significant enhancement in operations with powerful discovery and analytics, yet pricing structure poses challenges
ServiceNow IT Operations Management provides out-of-the-box dashboards. Along with the dashboard, it also provides the Operations Workspace, which is very useful for operations teams. There is a functionality called Performance Analytics, which we are also using to develop some dashboards for the senior leadership and operations team where they can perform trend analysis of alerts and events happening across the infrastructure and application landscape. These dashboards are really useful here. ServiceNow IT Operations Management's biggest plus point is that it is a platform. ITOM is just one module that ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers, but they provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"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."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"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."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is the user interface."
"You can improve integrations of the operation with the solution."
"Their Event Management is very good."
"It is emerging as a holistic solution for enterprise service management."
"The reason is it's cost-effective, number one."
"It's easy to set up."
"Provides everything in one solution."
"The scalability of ServiceNow is good."
 

Cons

"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"It should have better integrations with other solutions."
"The most complaints we have received from our clients are the solution's discovery aspect. I've heard a few concerns from the customers where we have to integrate with a third-party tool to make a full-fledged discovery along with ServiceNow. ServiceNow alone does not do the total capacity of the discovery. The discovery portion of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not in-depth as what the customers are looking for. The information that it gathers from the assets is a little more limited than what other tools provide."
"ServiceNow could be more prescriptive on how customers can leverage some of the benefits."
"There are some limitations with Discovery; some areas are not available in the installation. I would like the solution to be able to discover more devices. That will remove the need to have multiple tools."
"There are not enough apps in the app store to expand functionality. There should be more made available."
"Service mapping is pretty limited."
"I believe that technical support could improve a bit. I would rate it a six."
"Service Mapping is a time-consuming process. The time and effort versus the benefits are very difficult to articulate to customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"The solution is cheap."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is costly compared to the products offered by its competitors."
"It is moderately expensive. The pricing itself and the licensing options are depending on the model and the customization."
"While not entirely sure, I believe the solution costs at least a million dollars annually."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"It has different subscription models."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"I would rate the product's pricing a five out of ten since there are vendors who are cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
Regarding pricing, while I initially felt the prices were high when we moved, I now see that it is reasonable considering that we are not just using an ITSM tool; we are improving processes and com...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
ServiceNow IT Operations Management can be improved by focusing on adoption, as some companies still use other tools, and we had to onboard them initially, addressing challenges such as data migrat...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
As an implementation expert and former CIO, I handled implementation from an IT best practice perspective for different companies.
 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.