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ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
225
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 12.6%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Web Help Desk is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow12.6%
SolarWinds Web Help Desk1.1%
Other86.3%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

MT
Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency
I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ServiceNow is a very good platform, but do not build up things too fast."
"Very easy to implement and to respond to my clients' needs."
"Overall it's a great product."
"We have found the service easy to use, although, we have ended up customising a lot of parameters."
"It's great for keeping everyone informed in the company - not just IT. Everyone becomes aware of change requests and incidents so the entire company is on the same page."
"I think realistically, it helped us better our processes."
"We recently moved to ServiceNow from HP Service Manager about two years ago and it's been leaps and bounds just better than what we had before."
"Operations and maintenance costs have been reduced using this solution. We have been able to deliver faster solutions to our customers and track progress using live data."
"Once installed, it runs like a charm and doesn't ever crash."
"It has a pretty good search function. If you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field. If I do a search on the request field and just put in some terms I'm searching for, I can usually find the ticket that I'm looking for."
"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."
"The biggest advantage for SolarWinds Web Help Desk is the user interface; we were able to configure a different UI for administrators, employees, and HODs based on their hierarchy level."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"The solution scales well; currently is working for 60 help desk technicians (IT and non-IT) for over 2,000 users."
"It is easy to use."
"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."
 

Cons

"We've been through about four different vendors over the three and a half years. Some of that code has been problematic for us."
"ServiceNow doesn't cater to the Middle Eastern market."
"The RPA needs improvement. That's a new area for them that they're just entering into now."
"ServiceNow's mobile app should be seamless and it is not right now."
"I feel like there should be perhaps more unit testing before patches are rolled out because every patch has broken our entire catalog."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"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."
"The customization that we are doing for the needs of our organization are difficult to do and could be improved."
"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."
"A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
"This solution needs to have mobile application support added."
"We would like to see automation included in the next release. We would like to eliminate the L1, and L2 support, by at least 80%. To do this, we need automation with AI (Artificial Intelligence) in combination with ML (Machine Learning)."
"It would be good if there were training and tutorial videos on the Web Help Desk."
"The working part, the deployment part, and the configuration part was a little bit complex."
"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 of this solution is expensive."
"ServiceNow's pricing is comparatively higher than Helix's."
"I'm not aware of any additional costs. I'm pretty sure that the current client is paying just the licensing fee per user. I do know that they've got some support agreement with ServiceNow, but I don't think that is broken out or specific to Project Management. It is just inclusive."
"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."
"The price is okay for us. It's reasonable."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is priced for medium to enterprises sized businesses. However, it is expensive compared to competitors."
"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Retailer
13%
University
11%
Performing Arts
11%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise168
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of use, and ease of access. These were the three functionalities we were looking for ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are dealing with Zoho. We are not dealing with solutions such as Zoho Mail or Zoho P...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing ...
 

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    
Instacart
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.