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

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (6th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Server Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.3%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.1%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery	3.3%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	3.1%
Other	93.6%

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

reviewer2759271

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.

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NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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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

"I am impressed with the tool's incident problem change management."

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

"Stability-wise, I feel it is a good product."

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

"I find that the Discovery and scripting features are the most useful."

"ServiceNow's Discovery feature is quite significant because it allows for service mapping and integrates with VIN management. It involves adding a business context to servers, routers, switches, and data centers. This means understanding not only what's installed on these systems and how they function together but also recognizing their significance in terms of business applications from the business's perspective and how they impact business processes and capabilities. So when we delve into these aspects and connect them to the essential components, it can help you engage in more meaningful discussions to enhance capacity management practices. In essence, it contributes to the overall IT portfolio, almost functioning as a business platform. This platform is accessible to users who leverage the data to initiate incidents, implement changes, and resolve problems. Consequently, consolidating all configuration items or assets into a unified platform makes sense, especially considering you already have Discovery in place. If the cost is reasonable, the other two components might not provide much value, except for their user-friendliness, which is often less important to leaders compared to the desired outcomes."

"The product provides great scalability features."

"The product's discovery feature is valuable due to its accuracy, reliability, and the high prestige associated with the information it provides."

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."

"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."

"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."

"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"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."

"I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved."

"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."

"I cannot tie CMDB at this stage with strategic planning regarding ServiceNow Discovery ability to maintain accurate data in CMDB."

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

"ServiceNow is very costly."

"ServiceNow Discovery should improve its cloud capabilities."

"ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

"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."

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

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

"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."

"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."

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

"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."

"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."

"If the product is not deployed properly, it can be very expensive."

"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."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"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."

"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."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"The price is too high."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

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?

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.

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 is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

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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