ServiceNow vs TOPdesk comparison

ServiceNow and TOPdesk are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. ServiceNow is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while TOPdesk is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.5. ServiceNow holds a 12.9% mindshare in HDS, compared to TOPdesk’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of TOPdesk users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow

Read 224 ServiceNow reviews

23,781 Views
7,848 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

TOPdesk

Read 10 TOPdesk reviews

1,635 Views
1,275 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

TOPdesk

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

ServiceNow and TOPdesk compete in the service management category. ServiceNow appears to have the upper hand with its highly customizable platform and comprehensive features, while TOPdesk offers simplicity and ease of use.

Features: ServiceNow features a highly configurable platform with a wide array of pre-built ITIL processes, integration capabilities, and strong community support. TOPdesk is known for its ease of use, intuitive interface, and straightforward ticketing features.

Room for Improvement: ServiceNow is criticized for its complex licensing model, high costs, and usability challenges, which can lead to system disruptions. TOPdesk could improve its reporting tool, integration with tools like Microsoft Teams, and its relatively rigid structure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow offers flexible deployment options, including public, private, hybrid clouds, and on-premises environments. However, its customer service is seen as inconsistent. TOPdesk primarily offers on-premises deployment and has experienced declining technical support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow is considered expensive with a complex licensing model, offering a potentially positive ROI for larger enterprises. TOPdesk provides more affordable pricing with straightforward value through essential features, appealing to smaller companies.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow vs. TOPdesk Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. TOPdesk

January 2026

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Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

224

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)

TOPdesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

17th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 12.9%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TOPdesk is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow	12.9%
TOPdesk	2.1%
Other	85.0%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

MichaelTang1

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.

Read full review

Martina Peneva

People Technology Lead at Scandinavian Tobacco Group

Implement service management changes while addressing UI improvements

Topdesk's user interface makes it easy to handle requests and escalate them to other groups or reassign them when working on a single ticket. Additionally, the service management tool in HR allows for a change in delivering services, replacing email communication with ticket raising. The knowledge library enables the local HR to store and share relevant information and frequently asked cases, enhancing collaboration. The ticket system also facilitates escalating cases to other involved departments. IT, HR, and some other teams primarily use this system.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The thing that I like most about it is the easy integration with the CMDB. I'm able to look at the CMDB for applications and develop my assessments and attestations based on the application and point them at that application owner. So, I can really automate the whole thing."

"Within our organization, we're not finding really any major issues with scalability and things of that nature."

"The solution has very good automation tools."

"Very easy to implement and to respond to my clients' needs."

"It gave us professionalized, faster incident turn around times. Improved quality of information shared with our customers. Over time we build an extensive knowledge base that assists in both self-service as in services provided by the servicedesk when handling incidents."

"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."

"It's more about the ease of use of ServiceNow. Plus, everything is there in a single platform. If you need any additional functionality, you just need to enable the plugins without even installing anything on the servers"

"The solution is easy to use, simple to make queries, flexible to configure, integrates well, and supports all of our companies needs."

More ServiceNow pros

"This solution has provided me with a well-defined process and interaction, compared to my previous tool, GLPI."

"It is an easy-to-use solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the incident management module."

"When it comes to implementing new features, they listen to what their customers want via a suggestion forum that they have."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ticketing feature."

"Its ITSM approach is quite useful."

"Change management is the most critical feature."

"The most valuable feature of TOPdesk is the reports."

More TOPdesk pros

Cons

"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow."

"We do a lot of relatively advanced stuff for the size that we are, but ServiceNow itself is so big and to some extent, there is a significant amount of complexity that you have, a big learning curve I would say, in order to really get on board."

"Needs additional software titles and easier normalization."

"For healthcare, which is a pretty audited environment, there are no concrete solutions for digital signatures, apart from our license with Adobe, so it requires orchestration."

"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."

"There is a need to learn scripting because as in the case of all the ITSM tools, scripting is needed for customization. If you're not very comfortable with scripting, then you may feel that you cannot do everything in ServiceNow without learning scripting."

"I find ServiceNow to be a little bit clunky. If I need to report an issue they have a number of different options. I can report an issue, I can ask a question, I can make a request and it has varying levels of importance or levels of attention required. I find that what's required to submit is not always clear."

"The asset management application could be improved. They have a lot of the infrastructure built, but it does not come with already made compatibility with some of the most popular vendors, such as Cisco and Microsoft. You have to fix it yourself."

More ServiceNow cons

"From a UI perspective, there is room for improvement. It sometimes takes many steps to do something simple, like creating or moving a knowledge item."

"One of the disadvantages of TOPdesk is the reporting tool. It is very poor and not in real-time. You do not always receive the correct information."

"This solution is modular so you only buy what you need, but I prefer what some companies are doing where they include everything in the package."

"The solution's change management could be better."

"If I open a ticket on the infrastructure team, I can't move it to the financial team for them to manage the ticket."

"All companies have processes that need to be adjusted. When you have a change, you need to name it, and many companies have a set of changes you can use. It would be helpful if there were more space in TOPdesk to name the change or use metadata to record the kinds of changes."

"It is time-consuming to add new users."

"The solution should be made more user-friendly."

More TOPdesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."

"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."

"The CapEx version is great."

"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."

"The price of this solution is expensive."

"In Tunisia, the companies find the licensing costs to be expensive."

"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

"There are three fee options to choose from for a company and these options compared to market prices are very high. For example, if I use one of the first options for 10 assets, then it costs 20,000 Euros. If you went to competitors, then you pay less."

"The solution's pricing is reasonable and not expensive."

"Compared to other products in this segment, I think that they are priced well and not too expensive."

"The cost of the solution on a yearly basis is $20,000. Technical support is not extra. It's included in the yearly cost. Updates are also included. The solution is good at keeping its product up to date."

"The solution is inexpensive compared to competitors."

"TOPdesk's pricing is cheaper than Jira's."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	166

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TOPdesk?

The solution's pricing is reasonable and not expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with TOPdesk?

From a UI perspective, there is room for improvement, as some tasks like creating or moving a knowledge item within the library require many steps instead of simple actions like drag and drop. This...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for TOPdesk?

I use Topdesk to change the way we deliver our services in HR to the business. Instead of writing an email to a particular person or visiting their desk, I ask employees to raise a ticket for servi...

See all answers

Comparisons

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Zendesk vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

Pega Platform vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

JIRA Service Management vs TOPdesk

Compared 12% of the time

GLPI by Teclib vs TOPdesk

Compared 7% of the time

Freshdesk vs TOPdesk

Compared 7% of the time

Zendesk vs TOPdesk

Compared 6% of the time

ProProfs Help Desk vs TOPdesk

Compared 5% of the time

More TOPdesk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

January 2026

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Overview

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Excellent service management made easy : Happy customers are the goal of every supporting department. We understand. That’s why we’ve created a solution that helps you improve customer communication, manage workflows and keep track of assets. But above all: our software is simple and attractive. This not only makes it pleasant to use, but also quick to adopt. You’re looking to deliver excellent service from day one – and TOPdesk is here to help. TOPdesk delivers one integrated service platform for IT, FM, HR and other Service departments with a build Self Service Portal, asset management, reporting and integration platform( see also our TOPdesk Marketplace for selection of connectors). Some key features include : Call Management, Incident and Service Request Management, Service Catalogue, Asset & Configuration Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Project Management, Operations Management, Reservations Management, Stock & Order Management, Contract Management and SLA's, Survey Management, Self Service Portal, Form designer, Portal designer, Event & Action Management, Knowlegde Base, Report wizards, Resource Management, Barcode, CAD and Exchange integration TOPdesk helps you streamline your ITIL, Agile, Sox, KCS, ASL/BISL, GDPR compliance Result at our global customer base : 98% customer retention rate 99% of our implementations within budget and timeframe 90% up and running within 3 month NPS score of 35 (4500 cusotmers) 98% customer recommondation score 4,7 score at Gartner Peer Insights Our ecosystem consist of : 4500 customers across 45 countries > 300.000 daily users > 15.000.000 supported end-users 40+ partners What makes TOPdesk unique? • ITIL-based modules for all your service needs: from Ticket and Asset Management to Reservations Management • License based on end users or service agents, whateveris best for you • Unlimited number of assets or self service users • Easy to implement: get up and running quickly • Choose between on-premises or SaaS

TOPdesk

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

City of Amsterdam, University of Edinbroughm, IKEA, KLM Catering Services, FloraHolland, BOVAG, PostNL, Total, Hilton, Oce, Canon, Agip, Compass Group, Serco, Danone, BMW, Eneco, And many more.

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. TOPdesk

January 2026

Free Report: ServiceNow vs. TOPdesk

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow vs. TOPdesk and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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