No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Pandora FMS vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 (66th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Log Management (59th), Cloud Monitoring Software (39th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery2.4%
Pandora FMS2.1%
Other95.5%
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

"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"In comparison with most monitoring software, this software is incredibly easy to use."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The support is excellent for this product; their response time is very fast, and they are very knowledgeable."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"Stability is where they shine. It has been super stable. We have high-end monitoring for our data centers. We monitor all kinds of metrics in our two data centers. We monitor maybe over 2,500 checks, and the product that has been successful and always alerting us is Pandora."
"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."
"I believe one of the great functionalities or improvements in ServiceNow Discovery is its ability to gather information about any Configuration Items (CIs)."
"The best part about ServiceNow Discovery is that it is included in the ServiceNow suite."
"Stability-wise, I feel it is a good product."
"I would rate the stability of ServiceNow Discovery as nine, as we never had downtime."
"The service management and operations management modules are valuable."
"The solution is straightforward to set up, it is stable, we can scale the solution, and the solution is user-friendly."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
 

Cons

"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."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"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."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products such as Universal CMDB."
"Debugging is a bit tough in ServiceNow Discovery, so debugging should be made very easy."
"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."
"ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool."
"I cannot tie CMDB at this stage with strategic planning regarding ServiceNow Discovery ability to maintain accurate data in CMDB."
"The solution is too high priced."
"What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools."
"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."
"The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility."
 

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."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"ROI (Return on Investment) is good. ServiceNow don't disclose the price publicly. They'll assess your organization's needs and then come up with a price."
"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's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"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 product is not cheap."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"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."
"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
21%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing 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 Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
ServiceNow could improve ServiceNow Discovery by integrating artificial intelligence capabilities. The system could study frequently created queries for the CMDB, whether related to applications, c...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow Discovery?
I mainly use ServiceNow Discovery for asset inventory in the estate. I primarily use it for linking applications versus inventory and creating disaster recovery plans, recovery time objectives, and...
 

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: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.