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Salesforce Service Cloud vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Salesforce Service Cloud offers high ROI with improved service efficiency, though success varies by company size and careful planning is needed.
Sentiment score
7.0
Organizations experience varied ROI from ServiceNow, often seeing efficiency gains and cost savings, but face adoption challenges.
Salesforce Service Cloud requires significant maintenance effort to see ROI.
They have removed the costs associated with on-prem infrastructure, including data center costs, power costs, and physical server costs.
The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Salesforce Service Cloud offers responsive support, though some recommend premium options due to occasional delays and level one frustrations.
Sentiment score
7.1
ServiceNow excels in customer service responsiveness, but technical support quality varies, particularly with complex issues, prompting community reliance.
Unless you have premium support, assistance is restricted.
The support is exemplary and deserves a perfect rating.
Obtaining support for maintenance is the current challenge because they don't have a presence in the local market.
Most of the support comes from partners, and customers heavily rely on them.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Salesforce Service Cloud excels in scalability, integration, and customization, appealing to businesses of various sizes despite governor limits.
Sentiment score
7.4
ServiceNow excels in scalable cloud infrastructure, supporting smooth expansions across organizations by following best practices and upgrading hardware.
Nobody can compete with Salesforce Service Cloud's scalability.
There are no limitations or performance issues with ServiceNow; it is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
It is capable of vertical scaling with no issues.
I rate the scalability of ServiceNow as an eight on a scale of one to ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Salesforce Service Cloud is highly stable and reliable, with swift issue resolution and minimal integration challenges, supporting customizations effectively.
Sentiment score
7.7
ServiceNow is highly stable with excellent uptime, strong support, and impressive reliability, though scalability issues occur with heavy customizations.
We rarely encounter stability issues with Salesforce Service Cloud, although when they occur, they cause significant disruption.
It is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
ServiceNow is stable enough.
ServiceNow is already a stable tool.
 

Room For Improvement

Salesforce Service Cloud users seek enhancements in email integration, UI speed, AI features, pricing, and system integration.
ServiceNow needs pricing, usability, and support enhancements, including better documentation, UI, integration, and global support for improvement.
Salesforce Service Cloud should focus on simplification.
The pricing of Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive compared to other solutions like our current SAP CRM, which is much cheaper.
Moreover, ServiceNow does not charge based on data uploaded or downloaded, so they should reconsider their pricing and data policies to align better with the financial capabilities of the region.
The initial setup of ServiceNow was easy for me, and I can easily access the knowledge base, pass tickets to another team through internal notes, and each individual will get a personal email when a ticket is placed into their queue.
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow.
 

Setup Cost

Salesforce Service Cloud offers flexible pricing that can be expensive; negotiation can help optimize costs for enterprises.
ServiceNow's pricing is higher due to licensing complexity, requiring negotiation for better deals despite unlimited end-users being supported.
Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive.
The approximate licensing costs for Salesforce Service Cloud are around three hundred dollars a year per user.
ServiceNow's pricing can be justified if more functionality is required.
ServiceNow is expensive for all regions.
 

Valuable Features

Salesforce Service Cloud excels in integration, automation, and customization, enhancing efficiency and user experience with robust features.
ServiceNow enhances IT operations with flexible integration, customization, and modules, offering efficiency, automation, and seamless cloud-based upgrades.
Salesforce Service Cloud improved our organization with its mobile capabilities.
Salesforce Service Cloud offers pre-built packages that are best in class.
ServiceNow provides a wide range of functionality, covering all the necessary modules, unlike Jira which is primarily for IT.
The features of ServiceNow that I find most valuable include its ability to easily access ticket details if you know the ticket number, monitor the timeline of when the ticket was created, and see the current status.
Automation capabilities are impressive, bolstered by a vast repository of out-of-the-box connectors and plugins that facilitate integration with various applications worldwide.
 

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Service Cloud
Ranking in Help Desk Software
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (2nd), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), IT Alerting and Incident Management (6th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
219
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 May 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Salesforce Service Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 23.4%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

ChanchalSaxena - PeerSpot reviewer
High scalability with good plugins and excellent customer visibility
The solution should improve: 1. Reports & dashboard - The product should be capable of delivering complex reports as per company requirements without the need for a Tableau license. 2. Einstein has limited capabilities, and it suggests the analysis by predefined algorithms - but in a practical scenario, businesses need to ask real-time questions, and AI products should be capable of delivering the exact answers. Generic answers may not be effective.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Service Cloud?
The approximate licensing costs for Salesforce Service Cloud are around three hundred dollars a year per user.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Service Cloud?
The pricing of Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive compared to other solutions like our current SAP CRM ( /products/sap-crm-reviews ), which is much cheaper.
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Service Cloud?
I used Salesforce Service Cloud ( /products/salesforce-service-cloud-reviews ) for our sales agents to track visits, gather feedback from customers, and capture orders.
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Service Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Stanley Black & Decker, Coca-Cola, Activision, Wells Fargo, Spotify, Aldo, Philips, The Red Cross, Blue Shield of California, Sprouts Farmers Market, Direct Energy Solar, Inspirato, Kiva
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 Salesforce Service Cloud vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.