Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Pandora FMS vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Pandora FMS
Ranking in Server Monitoring
26th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (77th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (56th), Log Management (62nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (6th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery3.2%
Pandora FMS1.7%
Other95.1%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Asociado/ at Infraestructura Informática
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…
reviewer2759271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has supported enterprise needs well and addresses discovery across environments
Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective. Hence, they will not opt for ServiceNow Discovery as a solution, either as an ITSM solution or ITOM solution. It will not be affordable. I am specifically talking about the Middle East and Africa region. ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool. They use event management from getting events from other tools. In that front, they had a roadmap for going for an open-source solution, but I have not seen that materialize. There is a lack of tools perspective for monitoring. Perhaps they do not have a plan because there are hundreds of tools available, and they prefer to focus on integration and event management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"Pandora's architecture is interesting. It's open so you can easily extend and enhance it. It's simpler to customize Pandora compared to other solutions. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"In the past, I found troubleshooting difficult in ServiceNow Discovery because I didn't have much exposure to the platform during that time, but then I explored some troubleshooting features, and I found that it wasn't that tough, so this is one of the qualities I like about ServiceNow Discovery. I also like that log reading in ServiceNow Discovery is much better than other tools. Another valuable feature of the tool is that you don't need to install many tools to deploy ITSM. You only need to subscribe to the modules to deploy the proper ITSM in your organization."
"We can scale the solution."
"It does a good job of collecting the data that's necessary for data centers, and IT's operations."
"One of the most valuable features of ServiceNow Discovery is the automated discovery that helps identify dependencies and generates reports."
"ServiceNow Discovery helps with operations, audits, and allows people to assess how a particular change in infrastructure impacts other components."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow Discovery is its performance."
"I am impressed with the tool's incident problem change management."
"It has given us an understanding of each layer from a server application."
 

Cons

"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box. You can work around these limitations with the help of other tools like Grafana. The shortcomings are mostly on the graphical side. The built-in report generators are a bit limited in some areas."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved."
"ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool."
"Application discovery could be improved. And, right now, ServiceNow needs to be coupled with another solution in order to verify information."
"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."
"ServiceNow Discovery could improve the interface. The navigation bar could improve. It would be helpful to have a landing page to go to find all the elements in one place."
"ServiceNow has a constant development environment. Hence they get constant bugs which result in incorrect performance. It should also improve customer service."
"The product should improve its customer interface, web interface, and front end. I would like to see the integration of keyboard chat with the solution."
"The continuous improvement in the quality and customization of the product features would be beneficial, particularly as more customers rely heavily on its capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"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."
"You need a subscription to ServiceNow Discovery, so you can use its features. You can also use specific plugins with the tool, and some of the plugins are free. I don't have information on how much my company pays for the subscription to ServiceNow Discovery."
"The solution is very expensive."
"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."
"It costs a lot. It is probably close to over a hundred thousand. It's an expensive platform, but you can't compare ServiceNow's Discovery functionality to other discovery tools. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison of ServiceNow to a configuration management tool to an asset management tool because it does those things, but it's not those things."
"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."
"If the product is not deployed properly, it can be very expensive."
"There is a subscription for ServiceNow Discovery. It's expensive, but I think it's one of the best solutions on the market, so it's worth it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about ServiceNow Discovery?
The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?
The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. ServiceNow Discovery and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.