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ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
222
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
SolarWinds Service Desk
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
35th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.8%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Service Desk is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Nikhil Gohil - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility
I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.
BENDER BENEDICT - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust solution to automate and manage incidents and requests
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 add-on allowed us to integrate with Jira Cloud Service, but we couldn't integrate completely and can only integrate with the project. I would also suggest that the incident and request management be separated on SolarWinds Service Desk. The solution's incident and request management feature are one of the core reasons why we had to migrate to Jira Service Management. It was difficult to filter incidents and requests. They are all compiled together in a single dashboard, which is not convenient for most of the users, especially the IT support person.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are features included in the new release for intelligent software, like the chatbot. For HR services, the HR agent which is in that chatbot has been fantastic."
"Everything about the schema, including the design of ServiceNow, is great."
"The look and feel is a valuable benefit for adoption."
"This solution is a single-storage for our user community to submit help desk tickets."
"We consider the integration capabilities of the solution with other tools to be a valuable feature."
"For the nuts and bolts running of an IT organization, I can't really say there's anything lacking feature-wise."
"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."
"ServiceNow gives us a lot for free: workflows, organizational structures, service portal, forms, reporting, disaster recovery, and so on."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"It's a great platform, but there's still room for improvement. As the solutions stands now, you do need a lot of previous experience to use it. It would be great if they could develop some use case templates. This would be beneficial for a small and medium-sized businesses."
"We don't have a huge amount of password reset requests, but the minimum package of resets that ServiceNow offers is much more than we need."
"An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."
"Integration capabilities can improve."
"I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies."
"The pricing structure could be more budget-friendly."
"I know that discovery tools are not meant to be simple, but somehow, if they could make it more simple and robust, that would be great."
"It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"The license model is based on a number of fulfillers (active users who play some role within the ServiceNow functionality). Therefore, you can serve as many end-users as you want, without additional costs."
"The cost is quite high."
"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"The price could be a little lower for the solution. Many of my customers have issues with the licensing process, they have to make it easier and straightforward."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
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 ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
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Comparisons

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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    
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Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.