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ServiceNow Orchestration vs Temporal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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 Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Temporal
Ranking in Process Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Orchestration is 4.0%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Temporal is 7.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Dinesh Kumar Raghu - PeerSpot reviewer
Fastest upgrading technology in the market currently
In each upgrade, ServiceNow is enhancing its product across various areas. They continuously improve different aspects one by one, ensuring that their service evolves with the changing needs. However, frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades. The current version fulfills everyone's requirements, and ServiceNow automatically updates annually, keeping pace with industry standards. They've been performing well, so I see no need for further upgrades, especially considering their consistent updates.
AbhishekDash - PeerSpot reviewer
Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management
Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a lot of ready to use orchestration custom packs."
"The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in languages like Java. But along with that, there are limitation in terms of network connectivity testing and administrator faces regular challenges in conducting connectivity tests due to these limitations."
"Orchestration is commonly utilized by major corporations. The process of linking methods in ServiceNow, known as the RTS chain to parent methods, is executed seamlessly and efficiently. It's quite impressive and significant in its impact."
"The data visualization is good."
"It has competitive AI capabilities."
"Provisioning of new systems is among the most impactful features for automating complex workflows with ServiceNow Orchestration."
"Employee onboarding, de-boarding, and other service-provision features make the process easier and it saves us a lot of time."
"It's probably the best product out there."
"When some jobs take a lot of time and fail midway, the solution’s retry feature automatically causes them to retry."
"What I like best about the tool is that it's easy to install, especially since it uses JavaScript. It's also easy to set up with Docker, and the documentation is easy to understand."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to retry from an interrupted state."
"Temporal provides visibility into workflow progress and analytics and supports scheduled tasks with customizable settings, making it very convenient."
"It is very useful for long-running workflows."
"The solution's most valuable features include its ability to simplify the management of complex workflows, improve system resilience and fault tolerance, and reduce the need for extensive boilerplate code."
"Temporal focus on developers rather than business users."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."
"There can be gaps in integration."
"The automatic remediation needs enhancement, particularly integrating ServiceNow with tools like SolarWinds and Logic Monitor. It is functional, but it needs improvement."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"Frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades."
"The flow rate for releases and updates is very, very slow and does not meet customers' objectives for scalability."
"The deployment requires awareness among the project staff."
"ServiceNow Orchestration needs to improve multiple aspects in which their event monitoring system is one. The solution lacks event monitoring systems which makes them non-competitive. They need to include improvements in a similar manner that they did in Sweden."
"Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products."
"I don't like the limitations on data flow, particularly the difficulty of passing large amounts of data between different activities."
"Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states."
"While the tool can be a bit daunting initially, especially if you're not used to async programming models, it's generally a pleasure. There's always room for improvement, though. I've noticed some limitations with the .NET SDK regarding dynamic workflows, but this might have been improved in recent versions. Overall, I think Temporal could be more open about implementing features in a more—.NET-friendly way, especially in how you add workers and clients."
"Temporal doesn't have built-in data storage to store the state of the ongoing execution."
"Temporal lacks many resources, like YouTube videos, which users can use to learn or refer to if they get stuck with the solution."
"Configuring workflows can be improved —the solution could offer more options, but it's not a must-have."
"Temporal images aren’t FIPS compliant, and we have to be FIPS compliant."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
"It is not very expensive."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."
"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."
"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."
"The savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."
"It is worth the price."
"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."
"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."
"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?
The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Orchestration?
The cost of ServiceNow Orchestration is considered medium; it is expensive but powerful. I would rate the pricing experience as a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?
The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow ( /products/servicenow-reviews ) partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?
In terms of pricing, Camunda is indeed costlier than Temporal. The cloud deployment costs differ, and while Camunda 7 can be cheaper due to its integrated setup, comparing latest versions between T...
What needs improvement with Temporal?
The only area for improvement in Temporal is the UI. I know it is a non-UI first product, but comparing Camunda versus Temporal UI, there is a difference. Moreover, n8n, being a no-code platform, i...
What is your primary use case for Temporal?
The main purposes for using Temporal are automation flows, especially financial automations and supply chain automations. Our company name is SR, we are a digital-first CPG brand making company, ma...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft
Information Not Available
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