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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 (76th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Log Management (61st), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (7th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 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 3.1%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery3.1%
Pandora FMS1.7%
Other95.2%
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…
Abhinay Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This tool has been of great help because we can manage faster solutions with the problems in our network and it helped us reduce our response time."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"Thanks to Pandora FMS, we've been able to adapt to every new monitoring challenge over the past seven years."
"Pandora FMS is a powerful monitoring system that has enabled us to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes."
"Each of these points I think represents the keys as to why this software works in my jewelry stores, as it gives me greater control over all of the devices, the best performance, and I can interpret the data easily and much faster, with excellent results."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"The best part about ServiceNow Discovery is that it is included in the ServiceNow suite."
"I would rate the stability of ServiceNow Discovery as nine, as we never had downtime."
"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."
"The best thing about Discovery is maintaining all the CIs in one place. I can sort the data, export it to Excel for manipulation, and build reports like how many computers or servers we have and their capacity."
"Discovery enables us to get an accurate inventory that's updated daily. It eliminates human error and the need for people to update configuration changes manually. We have not implemented them yet but plan to set up alerts on CIs that are being audited to see if there are any changes."
"ServiceNow Discovery works better than other products I've used."
"I find that the Discovery and scripting features are the most useful."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
 

Cons

"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"In the future, we may have double the number of devices, and we do not want to have any issues with performance in the data display."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"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."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"ServiceNow has a constant development environment. Hence they get constant bugs which result in incorrect performance. It should also improve customer service."
"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."
"We would like more flexibility with the licensing. Discovery is bundled with ServiceNow's ITOM license. It was more affordable when it was sold separately, but we bought a package license to get more functionality out of the CMDB. We'd prefer to buy only the pieces we need instead of taking things we don't want or solutions that aren't yet mature enough to use."
"It's an expensive platform."
"The solution needs to improve the cost of the solution. There are a few different solutions and they do act the same and have the same types of capabilities, however, the cost is quite high."
"Debugging is a bit tough in ServiceNow Discovery, so debugging should be made very easy."
"They can expand on the plugins for some of the other tools."
"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"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."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."
"It's on a yearly basis. We renew our contract for three years at a time."
"The price could be better. It's a bit on the pricey side."
"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."
"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."
"The product is not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business17
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?
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...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
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 w...
 

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: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.