ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

ServiceNow and SolarWinds are both solutions in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category. ServiceNow is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while SolarWinds is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 92% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ServiceNow and SolarWinds Service Desk based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

August 2026

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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

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

Management Consultant at Accenture

Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions

Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.

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Hemanthreddy Vakiti

Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling

I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

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Vaibhav Patkar

CISO at Orient Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Improved service requests and network monitoring have increased efficiency but integration needs work

SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product. Kaseya is somewhat dated, and SolarWinds Service Desk has better connectivity in terms of superior integration facilities compared to Kaseya. Additionally, SolarWinds Service Desk offers multiple options within the same tool, including ITSM as well as NOC and network monitoring capabilities. SolarWinds Service Desk has much greater acceptability in the market and a wide range of implementations and integrations with various tools and applications. Life becomes simpler when choosing a standard product, whereas Kaseya may not be as highly regarded in the market. SolarWinds Service Desk may have some flaws, but work is being done to address them. SolarWinds Service Desk is an affordable product. SolarWinds Service Desk is suitable for all customers ranging from small to enterprise. There are some small customers, and the primary usage is within the company itself, and then as customers require it, access can be provided to them.

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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

"With RPA, specifically with Automation Anywhere, it has really helped us engage with those clients and achieve the results that they want."

"It automates forms for our customers and our analysts."

"Sometimes the customer will not provide any data. Using Automation Anywhere, we can easily automate to capture the customer data. Then, we can use that customer data inside the Cisco Unified Wire Voice Portal."

"Many tasks take a long time for a person to do them. Automation Anywhere enables us to do those jobs in less time."

"We work on SAP as well as many other internal platforms, and this solution can very easily be moved between them."

"What I like most about Automation Anywhere is that it saves a lot of time because it rarely makes mistakes, which could have been made if we were to do that work repeatedly."

"Automation Anywhere has been an integral part of this product's evolution in general. A hindrance that we were faced with was companies who did not have API integrations for Salesforce. This is where RPA and Automation Anywhere came in and helped us with integrating solutions which did not have API integrations within themselves. That's how we've evolved in the past two to three months."

"We have used document processing from the beginning. We have a few use cases running in production, processing thousands of documents. With the success rate of more than 80%, it's efficiently extracting data for us."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"Some of the valuable features I have found the solution to have are it can serve many different types of businesses, it has strong platform capabilities, provides application development, built-in predictive intelligence, and performance analytics reports."

"There are lots of modules around IT service management such as IT business management and human resource management (HRC)."

"We have found the service easy to use, although, we have ended up customising a lot of parameters."

"I would recommend this solution because I make good use of it."

"ServiceNow has helped improve our organization by making it more efficient, freeing up 30% of our human resources that can be utilized on other tasks, and the solution has added value to the company."

"Learn anything you need to know direclty from ServiceNow."

"ServiceNow is such a broad framework that you can basically touch upon any improvement that you want to do in your company."

"ServiceNow has been implemented to streamline team workflows across different departments in our company. Users, including traveling leaders, were able to approve requests and authorize additional rights through the mobile platform."

More ServiceNow pros

"SolarWinds Service Desk is a recognized product across the world and a dependable product."

"What I appreciate the most about the product is that, as per the name given, it brings better visibility to the client in terms of their infrastructure, application, and performance."

"The solution is very stable."

Cons

"One thing I dislike about Automation Anywhere is that our process is time-consuming. Since the bot is utilized by that machine and if a long-running task is happening, then another bot may not run and the machine is locked."

"Version 11 is a bit heavy. At times, it takes a toll on the computing resources. It consumes a lot for computing power. We have seen multiple instances where computers or the client has crashed because of this particular problem. Automation Anywhere can improve this a lot."

"We could use more accuracy with IQ Bot."

"The IQ Bot is pretty immature, in regards to AI and machine learning. I would like them to add additional logic."

"Giving access to our internal websites was not simple during the initial setup."

"Excel automation or the activities for Excel is an area of improvement."

"It would be really good if they could give more priority to tickets which are raised by partners. Right now, Automation Anywhere customers and employees have higher priority."

"We encountered issues during the upgrade of the framework."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"The reporting, which also includes dashboards, needs to be improved, and there should also be the ability to turn on and off portions of Project Management. Currently, as soon as you install the new version, you've got to go back there and make all the tweaks. There should be just a configuration file that goes to the new version. The Project Management module does not leverage the knowledge base the way it should, and there is no built-in ability to get to the articles. Resource management should be easier. It would be amazing if they can make resource management a little bit more graphical. There are other solutions that I've seen where resource management was a more visual experience."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved and given a better design."

"The pricing model is a little bit prohibitive for us."

"The solution’s pricing is expensive and could be improved."

"It's like, "That's not an answer." It's like, "What should we do? We need guidance." Well, "No. you can do anything with it." Okay. That doesn't quite help me as a user, and future administrator, or as an executive."

"The ability to embed help information onto the screens."

"I think they also should rethink the way they license the tool because it’s too expensive to automate all of your business, but you’ll need lots of licenses."

"I'm not sure if they have the software-as-a-catalogue yet, as far as bringing in the software titles with all of the rules of engagement for the software licensing."

More ServiceNow cons

"The integration with other applications can use improvement because, for example, it was nearly impossible to integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with monday.com because we had to get an add-on from Zapier."

"The only additional features I would like to see in the future, to make it closer to perfection, are intelligent features that are currently being developed on the cloud platform and not on the on-premise model."

"The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They recently launched a Community Edition, which is okay, but they should have done this a long time ago."

"It depends. For example, for my group, we are centralizing the infrastructure in Paris. Our contract is signed with Automation Anywhere in France. The currency and the pricing of Automation Anywhere in France can appear beneficial and interesting for Germany and Scandinavian countries, but when we share our infra and are internally charging other countries such as Poland, Brazil, or some other country with a lower currency value as compared to Euro, it becomes less beneficial. They would prefer to sign the contract directly with Automation Anywhere because they will benefit from a price that is as per their local market."

"The cost is affordable, which makes an easy barrier to entry for the RPA market."

"More than 40 to 50 percent of the IT budget will be for the cost of automation projects in the coming years since these projects enhance operations add value."

"I find the license pricing to be competitive and reflective of the pricing models throughout the RPA space, and I believe there is a lot of value in continuing to maintain the free community edition platform."

"When I started working on it, it was difficult to obtain a trial version (barrier to entry). Now, they have a Community Edition, which may make it easy to get started."

"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."

"The cost for scalability is much cheaper than developing a new system."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"We are happy with the pricing."

"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."

"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."

"The CapEx version is great."

"It is fairly expensive."

"They could be more competitive with their licensing."

"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."

"There are licensing fees."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	157
Midsize Enterprise	81
Large Enterprise	558

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	57
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	179

No data available

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.

See all answers

Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?

The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into t...

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Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?

Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow?

ServiceNow operates on a subscription-based pricing model with custom pricing based on modules, users, and business r...

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What needs improvement with SolarWinds Service Desk?

The primary concern so far is the integration part because of the APIs; this is the main area of concern. Currently, ...

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What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Service Desk?

SolarWinds Service Desk is used for ITSM and network monitoring purposes. The major use cases being utilized are from...

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What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Service Desk?

I think the pricing of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is now comparative and suited to our business model, whi...

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Comparisons

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Microsoft Power Automate vs Automation Anywhere

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Blue Prism vs Automation Anywhere

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AutomationEdge vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 2% of the time

WorkFusion vs Automation Anywhere

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IBM Maximo Application Suite vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Zendesk vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Freshservice vs ServiceNow

Compared 3% of the time

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Samanage vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 26% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 23% of the time

Atera vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 15% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 9% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 6% of the time

More SolarWinds Service Desk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

August 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

July 2026

Download ServiceNow product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Service Desk

July 2026

Download SolarWinds Service Desk product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

No data available

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

ServiceNow

Demo not available

SolarWinds

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

ServiceNow offers customizability and cloud-based integration that sustains operational efficiency. Enabling change and incident management, it accelerates workflow automation and project management without downtime issues, serving deployment needs for IT service and productivity enhancements.

ServiceNow stands out with its adaptable workflows and cloud-native infrastructure, boosting IT service, project, and asset management. Known for its robust incident and change management, the platform addresses business needs through its user-centric design and extensive integration options. By facilitating seamless IT operations and automation, ServiceNow empowers businesses to enhance productivity and efficiency. Regular updates ensure users benefit from the latest features without service interruptions, although pricing and licensing complexities demand attention. Users seek improved reporting tools and a more intuitive design while expressing interest in refined mobile functionality and better documentation.

What are the key features of ServiceNow?

Customizability: Enables tailored workflows to align with business processes.
Cloud-Based Integration: Allows seamless updates and operational sustainability.
Incident and Change Management: Supports efficient handling of IT-related issues.
Automation Capabilities: Automates repetitive tasks, enhancing productivity.
User-Friendly Design: Simplifies navigation and improves user interaction.
Comprehensive Reporting: Provides detailed insights for better decision-making.

What benefits and ROI should users anticipate from ServiceNow?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlines processes and reduces manual efforts.
Enhanced Productivity: Automates tasks, enabling focus on strategic initiatives.
Seamless Operations: Integrates across departments for unified management.
Effective IT Management: Smooth incident, change, and problem resolution.
Cost and Time Savings: Reduces operational costs through efficient workflow management.

ServiceNow finds implementation across industries like IT, HR, asset management, and help desks, addressing ticketing and configuration needs. Businesses use its dashboard for tracking performance metrics, enhancing decision-making in departments like HR service delivery. Its adaptability also makes it suitable for industries requiring robust operational management and process automation, driving efficiency and growth.

ServiceNow

SolarWinds Service Desk provides IT service management capabilities designed to streamline service delivery and enhance the efficiency of IT operations, catering to a knowledgeable audience looking for effective IT solutions.

It offers comprehensive functionality for IT service management. Utilizing automation and advanced analytics, it improves workflow management and incident resolution times. With cloud-based architecture, it ensures easy access and scalability. Features enable effective tracking, reporting, and management, making it a sought-after choice for IT teams seeking efficient service management.

What are the most important features of SolarWinds Service Desk?

Incident Management: Streamlines the resolution process to manage incidents efficiently.
Service Catalog: Allows customization of service offerings to meet specific requirements.
Automation: Automates routine tasks to boost operational productivity.
Change Management: Facilitates controlled change processes with risk assessment capabilities.
Asset Management: Provides detailed tracking and management of IT assets.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from SolarWinds Service Desk?

Reduced Downtime: Minimizes service interruptions, improving operational continuity.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers operational costs through optimized workflows and automation.
Scalability: Grows with business needs, supporting evolving requirements.
Enhanced Productivity: Increases team efficiency with a streamlined service management framework.
Improved Satisfaction: Boosts end-user satisfaction with prompt service delivery and resolution.

In industries such as healthcare and education, SolarWinds Service Desk is implemented to improve compliance and service quality. IT departments benefit from its flexible workflows that adhere to specific sector regulations. Customizable features cater to specific requirements, ensuring effective service management across different sectors.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

August 2026

Free Report: ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.

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