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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
223
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)
36th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 22.1%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Service Desk is 0.5%, 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.
Rajendra Karad - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides superior visibility and efficiency with excellent analytics capabilities
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. SolarWinds Service Desk is a quite matured product now, making it one of the best options on the market. The incident management feature is aligned to the ITIL framework. The asset management feature is also a very thoughtful framework they have implemented. Right from onboarding an asset till scrapping it, the complete lifecycle is cleanly maintained within the system itself. All the approval chains, their logs, and even the contract information have been made very easy for the users to maintain. The knowledge base feature is an out-of-the-box knowledge base, and additionally, we can integrate our own DMS. Machine learning is something that they have been following, and we can integrate an external DMS with that, which helps in searching SOPs and even the global knowledge base over the internet, allowing it to be searched within the same single window itself. Change management in SolarWinds Service Desk is linked with the service catalog, and since it also has a service portal, a self-service portal for users, introducing a service catalog that's integrated with the change management actually completes the flow and makes life easier for IT administrators.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable, scalable and easy to use."
"In financial management, this platform has the infrastructure allowing us to expand the way we want to. For example, it gives you many business rules and budget models that you can use to optimize your workflow. It does not put you in a box. Additionally, integrating this solution with other platforms is extremely easy to do."
"The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients."
"I have seen ROI from ServiceNow, as the client I mentioned earlier is achieving ROI for adopting this cloud-based technology."
"The product's integration functionality in the change management module has significantly improved efficiency in our organization."
"The flow designer feature of ServiceNow has had the biggest impact on our productivity because it has helped me reduce manual efforts by creating automation and robotics."
"Discovery has reduced, on average, the time to build/deploy devices within our environment by one hour. This may not seem like much but it adds up over time. It also reaps additional time savings with its ability to capture changes through subsequent discoveries over the life of the device."
"ServiceNow is a cloud solution. That fact was very important for us, that it is not an on-prem solution, as it reduces our internal cost of support."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."
"The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."
"Compared to other products that I have been using, it is not as user-friendly."
"Complexities in the organization made the initial deployment complex."
"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."
"The utilization of AI in ServiceNow needs enhancement."
"One thing I don't care for is the reporting and the way it functions."
"The ability to embed help information onto the screens."
"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

"I have found the solution very expensive."
"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"For the modules we use, we found it competitive. I can't think of any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
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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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 vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.