ServiceNow Discovery vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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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

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (4th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Server Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th), Active Directory Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 4.3%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Kaustubh Partha

Technical Support Analyst at CLSA

Scans servers and network devices through SNMP and reduces manual maintenance for our infrastructure team

I like how ServiceNow Discovery scans servers and network devices through SNMP. Most fields on our forms are auto-filled, reducing manual maintenance for our infrastructure team. Post Discovery implementation there is hardly any maintenance. There are three to four fields that are customized. Otherwise, 90% of the data is auto-filled. Discovery can also run in bulk, which is helpful for organizations that cannot run it during weekdays. With identification rules, if a configuration item (CI) isn't in the CMDB, you can simply add the IP address, and it will be automatically added based on criteria like name or serial number, making CMDB maintenance easier.

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Subhajit Nag

Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services

The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow

SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The service management and operations management modules are valuable."

"I believe one of the great functionalities or improvements in ServiceNow Discovery is its ability to gather information about any Configuration Items (CIs)."

"ServiceNow Discovery is useful for discovering the servers, like the servers of Windows and Linux, from the client network."

"ServiceNow Discovery has played a vital role in improving service visibility through automated IT service management processes, including change and problem management."

"We mostly use the solution's ITSM and ITOM capabilities in most workflows."

"I like ServiceNow Discovery's overall structure and the way data comes in without creating a different dashboard or interface."

"The biggest advantage of ServiceNow is the value that it brings."

"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."

"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"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."

"In my opinion, it's quite slow compared to other tools, like Device42. Also, there are predefined fields in Device42 that are not available in ServiceNow. These are the basic things I think can be improved here."

"In future releases, I would like to see more AI-oriented enhancements in the solution. It would automate most of the things that we have to do manually write the scripts and go on the teleservice, what to do. So if we have something in place and if we can train the module, then AI would be a good thing."

"In terms of improvement, I would like for it to be possible to use without coding. I would like a dropdown so that every customer can do it easily for himself and can understand it."

"Discovery, while a bit pricey, integrates well with other tools and offers a centralized discovery solution. These aspects could be enhanced in the new release."

"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 creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."

"The technical support team's response time could be improved."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."

"It costs a lot. It is probably close to over a hundred thousand. It's an expensive platform, but you can't compare ServiceNow's Discovery functionality to other discovery tools. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison of ServiceNow to a configuration management tool to an asset management tool because it does those things, but it's not those things."

"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 product is not cheap."

"The solution is very expensive."

"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."

"It's a bit expensive compared to other products in the market, but it's worth the money you pay because it's far advanced in terms of features, automation, and capabilities compared to other products."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

45%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

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?

ServiceNow is considered more expensive compared to other products. If I were to rate the pricing on a scale from one to ten in terms of expense, I would rate it quite high.

What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?

Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation. Currently, each new product must be manually created if it is not already available in ServiceNow, which can be cumbers...

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

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...

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Product Reports

ServiceNow Discovery

Download ServiceNow Discovery product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

ServiceNow Discovery finds applications and devices on your network, and then updates the CMDB with the information it finds. Discovery is available as a separate subscription from the rest of the Now Platform.

ServiceNow

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor