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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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 2.8%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery2.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.0%
Other94.2%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The data is really good, it's reliable and they keep adding to it."
"When my team starting any project or learning a new environment, we always implement ServiceNow Discovery which can be used along with other products."
"It's a single system of record and it captures the relationships."
"I am impressed with the tool's incident problem change management."
"The best part about ServiceNow Discovery is that it is included in the ServiceNow suite."
"The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB."
"The best thing about Discovery is maintaining all the CIs in one place. I can sort the data, export it to Excel for manipulation, and build reports like how many computers or servers we have and their capacity."
"The biggest advantage of ServiceNow is the value that it brings."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything; all we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"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."
"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"
"Once we got our IT inventory organized and aligned with the business, we were able to leverage our Orion Platform to provide more than just a reactive-based monitoring service to the business."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"They can expand on the plugins for some of the other tools."
"Its integration with legacy apps is one area for improvement. ServiceNow Discovery offers out-of-the-box reports, and though that's okay, allowing easier report customization would improve the solution."
"It creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."
"The initial setup could be made easier. We hired professionals to implement it, and they trained our employees for ongoing processes."
"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."
"Without improvement in the patters, applications can't be discovered"
"ServiceNow Discovery is not the cheapest solution, and the pricing model is based on discovered nodes, so if you discover a lot, it becomes expensive."
"Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"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."
"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."
"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not cheap."
"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 pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."
"If the product is not deployed properly, it can be very expensive."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"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."
"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."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"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."
"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."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"The price is too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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?
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?
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 w...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
 

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.