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ServiceNow Discovery vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Server Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th), Network Monitoring Software (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 3.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery2.4%
WhatsUp Gold3.9%
Other93.7%
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 data is really good, it's reliable and they keep adding to it."
"I like ServiceNow Discovery's overall structure and the way data comes in without creating a different dashboard or interface."
"When my team starting any project or learning a new environment, we always implement ServiceNow Discovery which can be used along with other products."
"This solution provides excellent insights."
"Service Now has a great drag and drop functionality, which makes it easier to use than, say, EMC, and it is dedicated to designing an easy-to-use tool for IT defense, giving users better leverage."
"They have a very good network in the infrastructure of Discovery."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The installation and configuration process are easy."
"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."
 

Cons

"ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool."
"The product could improve some of the visualization and architecture setups."
"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."
"In a few instances, ServiceNow has failed to discover some basic things. Some other tools are better at network discovery than ServiceNow. I'm not talking about database servers or any other infrastructure—only networking. Cloud discovery could also be better."
"I would rate technical support for ServiceNow Discovery as four. This rating is because there are features on the tool that never worked and despite calling our support, there were no results."
"The patterns are the biggest area where improvement could be made."
"It creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."
"The solution is too high priced."
"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."
"Importing the maps and being able to customize them could be easier."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."
"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."
"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."
"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."
"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."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"Setting up and licensing for ServiceNow can be expensive, especially for enterprise service management."
"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

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?
ServiceNow could improve ServiceNow Discovery by integrating artificial intelligence capabilities. The system could study frequently created queries for the CMDB, whether related to applications, c...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow Discovery?
I mainly use ServiceNow Discovery for asset inventory in the estate. I primarily use it for linking applications versus inventory and creating disaster recovery plans, recovery time objectives, and...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Discovery vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.