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ServiceNow Discovery vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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

ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (3rd), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.6%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ayobanji Iluyomade - PeerSpot reviewer
Service helps organizations with network discovery and IT infrastructure management but troubleshooting challenges remain
ServiceNow Discovery was adopted by my organization. We use ServiceNow Discovery for discovery and ITSM The most beneficial features of ServiceNow Discovery for maintaining my IT infrastructure are the CMDB top and discovery of network switches. The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room…
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow Discovery is its performance."
"The best part about ServiceNow Discovery is that it is included in the ServiceNow suite."
"The product provides great scalability features."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."
"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."
"The solution finds public cloud infrastructures globally and updates the integration management database, service catalogs, and asset management details."
"It has given us an understanding of each layer from a server application."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
 

Cons

"The solution should improve the classes of discovery assets to disregard more junk data."
"ServiceNow has a constant development environment. Hence they get constant bugs which result in incorrect performance. It should also improve customer service."
"On the Software Asset Management part of it, I expect additional reconciliation and Discovery features there."
"Improvements are required with the scripts used to collect the information from servers."
"Debugging is a bit tough in ServiceNow Discovery, so debugging should be made very easy."
"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."
"They can expand on the plugins for some of the other tools."
"The solution is too high priced."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."
"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."
"There is a need to make payments every quarter of a year towards the licensing costs of the solution. ServiceNow Discovery is an expensive tool."
"The product is not cheap."
"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."
"Setting up and licensing for ServiceNow can be expensive, especially for enterprise service management."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I think the price of ServiceNow Discovery is cheaper than BMC.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room for improvement are getting custom reports on the relationship between CIs that are not on the same table.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.