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

4th

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

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Active Directory Management (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.2%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery	3.2%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	3.2%
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

"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."

"It has been stable since deployment."

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

"ServiceNow Discovery works better than other products I've used."

"We can find servers or services we were unaware of and stumble on vulnerabilities from those devices."

"They have a very good network in the infrastructure of Discovery."

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

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

"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."

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

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."

"The current limitation requires having mid servers or discovery servers in each data center for proper discovery, hindering the ability to discover assets across continents such as Asia Pacific and Europe."

"The product should improve its customer interface, web interface, and front end. I would like to see the integration of keyboard chat with the solution."

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

"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."

"ServiceNow Discovery should be updated to provide its users with more out-of-the-box information and attributes to support the routers and switches from Cisco."

"I believe there is room for improvement in ServiceNow Discovery, particularly in providing more detailed information about network usage and communication between ServiceNow and the infrastructure."

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

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"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."

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

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

"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."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

"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 current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price could be better. It's a bit on the pricey side."

"The product is not cheap."

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

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

"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."

"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."

"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."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"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 think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

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

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

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