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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
25th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (78th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (55th), Log Management (63rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
5th
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 January 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.3%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery3.3%
Pandora FMS1.5%
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…
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

"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"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."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"I find that the Discovery and scripting features are the most useful."
"ServiceNow Discovery helps with operations, audits, and allows people to assess how a particular change in infrastructure impacts other components."
"The service management and operations management modules are valuable."
"The biggest advantage of ServiceNow is the value that it brings."
"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."
"The solution finds public cloud infrastructures globally and updates the integration management database, service catalogs, and asset management details."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It's pretty robust, and it's agentless for the most part. So, you don't need to deploy agents, which makes it a lot easier to stand up."
 

Cons

"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"I believe there is room for improvement in ServiceNow Discovery, particularly in providing more detailed information about network usage and communication between ServiceNow and the infrastructure."
"Its integration with legacy apps is one area for improvement. ServiceNow Discovery offers out-of-the-box reports, and though that's okay, allowing easier report customization would improve the solution."
"It creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."
"ServiceNow Discovery should improve its cloud capabilities."
"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."
"When you switch versions, for example, when you go from Paris to Quebec they will introduce many new things and occasionally things break when they do that."
"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."
"ServiceNow is very costly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"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."
"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."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"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."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"ServiceNow Discovery has very broad pricing, so it becomes costly. It would be better if it had a pay-as-you-use licensing model because the total cost of ownership is quite high."
"The product is not cheap."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."
"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."
"As per a general discussion I had with the stakeholders, I figured out that it is a costly tool. There is a need to make additional payments apart from the licensing fees for better support services from ServiceNow."
"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."
"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

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.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.