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Cherwell Service Management vs PagerDuty Operations Cloud vs ServiceNow 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cherwell Service Management1.8%
ServiceNow14.2%
JIRA Service Management6.9%
Other77.1%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
IT Alerting and Incident Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PagerDuty Operations Cloud11.0%
Opsgenie7.5%
Everbridge IT Alerting5.5%
Other76.0%
IT Alerting and Incident Management
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow14.2%
JIRA Service Management6.9%
BMC Helix ITSM5.5%
Other73.4%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
NS
Senior SRE at IBM
Automated incident workflows have transformed on-call operations and improved response times
Since I host our internal services, I want more customization relating to our specific use case. The needed improvements include the configuration process, as new team members face a steep learning curve to understand the platform. With many new members, they need training to set up runbook workflows, event orchestration, and manage complex on-call schedules across 23 services, making it a challenge for new users. Additionally, I feel the web interface requires improvements. I would rate PagerDuty Operations Cloud as eight out of ten because the cons include a complex configuration process and high costs for each add-on that I try to obtain, making subscriptions costly, along with limited customization in certain incident workflows. The primary reasons for rating it an eight include the complex configuration which makes it challenging for new users, as well as their difficulty in setting up advanced runbook workflows and managing complex on-call setups. The web user interface also requires improvement. Although I receive alerts via the mobile app, which is beneficial for handling schedule maintenance, the same features should be added to the web interface. Customization issues persist, such as the inability to clone entire schedules as part of the workflows, and I want to keep incidents open for a specified duration, neither of which I can currently customize. Thus, I raised a ticket with PagerDuty Operations Cloud to address these concerns. Furthermore, the cost is high, making it one of the more expensive incident management solutions.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"Implementing CSM has made us very efficient and we're now able to plan changes and the steps required for implementation."
"While using PagerDuty hasn't resulted in a decrease in issues, it has allowed us, in combination with the monitoring systems, to know about issues before customers are alerting us."
"PagerDuty Operations Cloud is definitely an important tool, because with our investment we can save time and resolve issues quickly, saving around 30 minutes for each incident which adds up to almost 40 to 50 hours saved in a week."
"The solution's most valuable features are that it adds each alert as a service, has good scheduling capabilities, and includes the ability to write logic based on texts."
"The best features that PagerDuty Operations Cloud offers are that it is user-friendly, the design is scalable, and it is quite easy to use for a newbie as well."
"It's improved our organization by making the on-call lifestyle less stressful."
"The best thing that we've had is that we get alerted before things happen rather than after the customer's having a problem or notices the problem."
"PagerDuty Operations Cloud positively impacts my organization by helping us win customer trust; when problems occur, the speed of our reaction and involvement with customers is crucial, and PagerDuty Operations Cloud facilitates quick responses to potential issues."
"PagerDuty Operations Cloud changed the process and the flow in our team very smoothly."
"ServiceNow gives us a lot for free: workflows, organizational structures, service portal, forms, reporting, disaster recovery, and so on."
"I like the flexibility on ServiceNow; we use it for our help desk admin and our call center, but we also use it for our knowledge management system, which is our growth area, and we get to add our custom homemade apps plus vendor apps to integrate into it to get the total package that we need."
"It's a very low-code platform, and it's simple. The user experience is also really good."
"It is very user friendly, and I've enjoyed using the dashboard and user interface."
"Having quick easy access to information is crucial in any business but especially in the medical field."
"The solution helps us to collaborate and it's great that it is knowledge-based."
"I think the technical support is pretty good."
"In the past, I've used other products, and they're not that scalable; if you're working in a company that has multiple facilities, multiple countries, the best way to go is with ServiceNow."
 

Cons

"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"Agile delivery should be supported."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"They need to improve their mobile interface, as well as features regarding the extension of the mobile access to the end user."
"We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly."
"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"I have observed that MTTR is very slow, and wrong escalation sometimes routes alerts to the wrong team rather than the proper team."
"I would defiantly like to see more integration with other systems. This would really add some value for us."
"Our developers noted that integrating incident bots or chatbots created with AI tools occasionally presents challenges with PagerDuty Operations Cloud."
"Because of the way you have to structure the rosters, if an engineer has to go on leave (or something), you can't just go in and reassign/take this person out of all of the different rosters that they're in. You have to go into each of the rosters and take them out. There might be a roster for business hours, after hours rotation, and monitoring deployments. Each time we need to take an engineer out of the pool, e.g., if they're sick or on leave, then we have to go and touch all of those rosters, updating and replacing them. Whereas, if we could just take the person out and have it automatically fill in the rostering, then that would make life a lot easier for managing it."
"Because of the way you have to structure the rosters, if an engineer has to go on leave, you can't just go in and reassign or take this person out of all of the different rosters that they're in."
"The solution does not code all alerts correctly so sometimes you get false positives or multiple alerts for the same issue."
"I think an area of PagerDuty Operations Cloud that could be improved is their premium pricing, as it compares unfavorably with competitors such as Atlassian's Opsgenie and ServiceNow, which offer bundle deals, plus DataDog now has incident management capabilities."
"Even though PagerDuty Operations Cloud is a strong platform, many things can be improved."
"Its setup is tough. It takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience."
"ServiceNow's customization is not too agile in those cases; it takes a little bit of time."
"ServiceNow's mobile app should be seamless and it is not right now."
"Currently, we are finding it a bit difficult to monitor the subscriptions that are being used. The reporting feature related to this can be improved. Its ITOM functionality can be improved. BMC does a better job than ServiceNow in terms of capturing utilization and other such things."
"The licensing needs to be divided into tiers in order to attract lower-level users."
"Reaching beyond IT asset management is the biggest challenge to ServiceNow right now."
"There should be greater integration with other enterprise applications. We're using Microsoft, Oracle, and other applications, and it would be good to have a greater integration on some of the immediate hiccups that you have with these services."
"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"If we wanted phone calls or additional SMSs, we would have to pitch up for those. They give us so many per month per user, then we have to pay extra if it goes over that."
"If you add more people, then you have to pay more, which is always a thing with the SaaS solutions."
"Licensing costs are around $700 a month, and the only additional costs, are phone costs in some instances."
"There is a license needed to use PagerDuty."
"The cost is based on the package you select."
"The price is very high."
"The solution is paid on a monthly basis and represents about 1% of the platform's budget."
"PagerDuty has monthly and yearly licenses available, the costs of which can get quite high if you have a large number of users."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"They could be more competitive with their licensing."
"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."
"The price is okay for us. It's reasonable."
"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."
"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 first impact for the customer is that it is expensive, but do not forget that it is a solution that includes infrastructure; a single cost, easy to justify."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Performing Arts
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise42
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise171
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PagerDuty?
The setup cost and pricing for PagerDuty Operations Cloud are very cost-effective, but I have a suggestion: if PagerD...
What needs improvement with PagerDuty?
I do not have anything that I dislike about PagerDuty Operations Cloud. Sometimes it hangs and occasionally I am unab...
What is your primary use case for PagerDuty?
The major part of PagerDuty Operations Cloud is for communication and pinging people and engaging them and pulling th...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
40% of the Fortune 100 TrustPagerDuty. Customers include: Slack, Intuit, Zendesk, Panasonic, Pinterest, Airbnb, eHarmony, McKesson, Comcast
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    
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: April 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.