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 8.7. Kayako holds a 0.3% mindshare in HDS, compared to ServiceNow’s 21.3% 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

120 Views
17 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

Read 222 ServiceNow reviews

8,346 Views
1,509 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kayako

ServiceNow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

June 2025

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Helped 860,168 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

6.9

Number of Reviews

222

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 July 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Kayako is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.3%, down from 26.2% 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 offers enhanced and efficient communication between the requester and the four pillar EDR through an online chat platform."

"Overall, I rate ServiceNow 10 out of 10."

"The feature that I have found most valuable from ServiceNow is the ability to assign sub-tasks to different teams, including problem tickets and the regular and chain tasks."

"I find almost all the features valuable. It can do nearly everything except make your coffee, as my colleagues always say. It's got pros and cons, like every software, but the good thing about it is that it has a very structured approach."

"Being able to have the required information for project management is valuable. I've got multiple people accessing it, and I'm tracking tasks with percentages done. It allows me to have detailed notes and provides the ability to attach documents. I have used a lot of project management solutions, and there were gaps in terms of what was available. ServiceNow has got all the features and functionalities. It is a solid solution. It is also easy to get into and use. It is certainly highly scalable."

"ServiceNow was the first true enterprise to service management platform."

"I don't have to look through a whole bunch of other incidents that aren't relevant to me. It's very useful in that sense."

"It can scale well if you are managing IT assets."

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."

"There is room for improvement in price."

"The standard UI is very restricted. It doesn't look as good, compared to Remedy. Building your own UI requires some additional coding..."

"All the screens are similar. It's the same platform for everything and you need to familiarize yourself with it. In the past, you used to have one screen per application. Now, you have everything integrated into one. Everybody will manage the same screen and they need to navigate into the same screen as the Internet Explorer with a toolbar with the categories and look for the things you want to see or the models you want to use."

"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."

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

"Like all other IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS subscription cloud providers, ServiceNow is constantly improving by building new capabilities to expand the breadth and depth of its offerings while increasing its activities with partners to build more capabilities."

"The solution's user experience could be improved concerning its UI and portals."

"The Express edition does not allow the option for scripting."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."

"For large-scale companies, the cost of ServiceNow is not expensive, but for small and mid-scale companies, it is higher."

"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."

"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."

"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."

"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."

"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."

"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."

"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

June 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: June 2025.

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