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ServiceNow Discovery vs Zenoss Cloud 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)
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in Server Monitoring
25th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (19th), Event Monitoring (14th), Network Monitoring Software (64th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (50th), Container Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (41st), AIOps (28th)
 

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 Zenoss Cloud is 3.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery2.4%
Zenoss Cloud3.1%
Other94.5%
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.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In the past, I found troubleshooting difficult in ServiceNow Discovery because I didn't have much exposure to the platform during that time, but then I explored some troubleshooting features, and I found that it wasn't that tough, so this is one of the qualities I like about ServiceNow Discovery. I also like that log reading in ServiceNow Discovery is much better than other tools. Another valuable feature of the tool is that you don't need to install many tools to deploy ITSM. You only need to subscribe to the modules to deploy the proper ITSM in your organization."
"It has been stable since deployment."
"It does a good job of collecting the data that's necessary for data centers, and IT's operations."
"They provide the ability to see into the Discovery tools I want. They offer the best tool view."
"I believe one of the great functionalities or improvements in ServiceNow Discovery is its ability to gather information about any Configuration Items (CIs)."
"It's pretty robust, and it's agentless for the most part. So, you don't need to deploy agents, which makes it a lot easier to stand up."
"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."
"The security is a major part of the solution and customers look for the best security."
"Zenoss is more complex than LogicMonitor, but scalable and hugely customizable."
"With this solution, they can have one million users at the same time with no crashes."
"It is the most flexible solution of this type, but it takes time to adapt."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
"Overall, it's a great solution, and I consider it to be one of the best."
 

Cons

"What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools. Other tools have better reporting UI than what's currently in ServiceNow Discovery. What I'd like to see in the next release of ServiceNow Discovery is more user-friendly out-of-the-box reporting that would be helpful for non-technical users. Some users such as managers would want to just do a few clicks to access the reports and shouldn't be required to do search queries, but right now, reporting in the tool isn't very user-friendly."
"Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation."
"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."
"Debugging is a bit tough in ServiceNow Discovery, so debugging should be made very easy."
"It does create quite a few duplicate CIs, you need to monitor and clean them up."
"I would rate technical support from ServiceNow a six because sometimes I did not receive responses on time and they were delayed."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"Technical support is 3/10, poor: Incomplete and poor documentation Undocumented processes Inconsistent solutions to problems depending on source"
"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."
"This solution is complex for beginners so it takes some time to learn."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's on a yearly basis. We renew our contract for three years at a time."
"You need a subscription to ServiceNow Discovery, so you can use its features. You can also use specific plugins with the tool, and some of the plugins are free. I don't have information on how much my company pays for the subscription to ServiceNow Discovery."
"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."
"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."
"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 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."
"The product is not cheap."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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 Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

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 the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Discovery vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.