Kayako vs ServiceNow comparison

Kayako and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Kayako is ranked #46, while ServiceNow is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Kayako holds a 0.2% mindshare in HDS, compared to ServiceNow’s 21.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kayako users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

Kayako

Read 1 Kayako review

137 Views
132 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

Read 223 ServiceNow reviews

26,973 Views
7,552 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kayako

ServiceNow

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kayako and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

August 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

Kayako

Ranking in Help Desk Software

46th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Shared Inbox (10th)

ServiceNow

Ranking in Help Desk Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

223

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Kayako is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.2%, down from 26.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer1712472

Operations and Support Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Flexible, straightforward implementation, and helpful support

We are in the process of switching from Kayako to ManageEngine Desktop Central. We went through a full review of our service desk processing and one of the solutions we purchased was a ManageEngine Desktop Central. When we were looking at the integrations into the Kayako system and how it works, we found that ManageEngine Desktop Central did very similar things. It had better layers of classification, other templating, and additional features that we did not have with Kayako. Our service manager made the decision to switch at that time. My advice to others wanting to implement Kayako would be for them to plan out their service processes first, prior to trying to implement them in the tool. We made the mistake of jumping in too soon back 10 years ago. I started using it in a way that we could have tooled it in a different way to make it better. We could have had more implementation process information to make sure we received what we wanted to out of the solution. I rate Kayako an eight out of ten.

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Nikhil Gohil

Solution Engineer - Digital Platform | Mobile at British American Tobacco

Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility

I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."

"It enables us to meet SLAs, track issues across the environment, and report those issues."

"Discovery has reduced, on average, the time to build/deploy devices within our environment by one hour. This may not seem like much but it adds up over time. It also reaps additional time savings with its ability to capture changes through subsequent discoveries over the life of the device."

"The workflow capability for easy setup is powerful."

"Very good incident management, chain management and problem management features."

"I prefer ServiceNow to the competition because of its ease of use, installation and configuration."

"Very easy to implement and to respond to my clients' needs."

"ServiceNow is very easy to set up."

"Will give us better control over asset management and technical debt once we can centralize all contract information."

More ServiceNow pros

Cons

"Some of the reporting in Kayako could be improved. It only has two levels of classification and if there were additional levels added for reporting purposes it would be awesome for our environment."

"It should include information on navigating various user interfaces for creating diverse requests directed to different teams."

"It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved."

"There is inherent complexity with this tool because of the number of things that it can do."

"The utilization of AI in ServiceNow needs enhancement."

"Their cloud management is also not that great compared to other products."

"The visuals are the one area where there is opportunity for improvement."

"Creating service catalog forms could be made easier."

"The level of complexity and the level of discovery are the two areas that can be improved. Its UI needs to evolve. They focus a lot on cool colors and other little things, which don't bring value in terms of functionality. They need to focus less on presentation and more on the functionality within the UI. Its discovery mechanism should be improved. There is a component in ServiceNow that discovers the assets, but it doesn't do an immediate discovery, and there is a lag. If I want to open a ticket for a laptop or an asset, that asset needs to exist within ServiceNow for me to be able to say that I need to have its disk space or memory increased. It is referred to as a CI or configuration item in ServiceNow. Sometimes, ServiceNow doesn't discover these items, and as a result, I cannot open a ticket and tag that system or asset. If a system was introduced to the environment last week and it is still not listed, it becomes a problem. I will either have to wait or manually enter that system or asset. So, if I have a laptop with only 8 GB of memory and I want to request 16 GB of memory, I won't be able to do that in ServiceNow because my system or asset hasn't been discovered yet. Discovery is not immediate, and there is a lag."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."

"They could be more competitive with their licensing."

"The solution is expensive."

"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."

"For the modules we use, we found it competitive. I can't think of any costs in addition to the licensing fees."

"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."

"I have found the solution very expensive."

"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."

"The license model is based on a number of fulfillers (active users who play some role within the ServiceNow functionality). Therefore, you can serve as many end-users as you want, without additional costs."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

August 2025

Download Kayako product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

July 2025

Download ServiceNow product report

Overview

Kayako is a powerful customer service and support platform that gives your team the tools they need to communicate with customers across live chat, email, facebook and twitter.

Our approach brings every interaction your customer has with your business into Kayako and presents your agents with a comprehensive customer journey. This gives your team the context they need to immediately respond and support customers in a way that’s quick, accurate and personal.

Kayako is used by over 130,000 customer support pros in businesses of all sizes around the world, including Peugeot, NASA, Fedex, and GE.

Kayako

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Toshiba Canada, Disney, Avast, Namecheap, Texas Tech University

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 ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: August 2025.

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