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CloudStack vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in Cloud Management
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CloudStack2.8%
ServiceNow IT Operations Management1.5%
Other95.7%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.
reviewer2755671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Significant enhancement in operations with powerful discovery and analytics, yet pricing structure poses challenges
ServiceNow IT Operations Management provides out-of-the-box dashboards. Along with the dashboard, it also provides the Operations Workspace, which is very useful for operations teams. There is a functionality called Performance Analytics, which we are also using to develop some dashboards for the senior leadership and operations team where they can perform trend analysis of alerts and events happening across the infrastructure and application landscape. These dashboards are really useful here. ServiceNow IT Operations Management's biggest plus point is that it is a platform. ITOM is just one module that ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers, but they provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."
"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."
"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."
"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."
"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic. We had three engineers (storage, virtual, Linux admins) only. Also, CS supports different flavours of hypervisors."
"The platform is very simple to scale-out.​"
"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."
"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
"It is a very stable solution."
"I am impressed with the tool's ability to track information in an easy way."
"It is flexible. You can tune it, more or less, as you want."
"It has been very useful for tracking. It has evolved a lot over time, and there is a single pane of glass where you can track and see everything."
"The solution is very capable and user friendly."
"The dashboard maintenance is very good, and the tool doesn't get stuck."
"Has service mapping, impact management, metric intelligence and health of analytics."
"Customer service is excellent."
 

Cons

"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."
"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."
"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."
"The product does not have an easily implementable payment gateway."
"It would be great to have a couple of “external” networks for VPC and have the possibility, for each domain, to choose they type of “external” network."
"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."
"When it comes to improvements, I think that my colleagues and I often have issues finding the correct screen and the search box does not work as intended."
"I advise others not to customize a lot while using the solution."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable. It is affordable for organizations with a minimum of 5,000 users plus."
"The solution’s licensing cost could be improved."
"Service mapping is pretty limited."
"The pricing of some modules is higher because they are sold in packages. If we need something specific, we cannot take it individually."
"The most complaints we have received from our clients are the solution's discovery aspect. I've heard a few concerns from the customers where we have to integrate with a third-party tool to make a full-fledged discovery along with ServiceNow. ServiceNow alone does not do the total capacity of the discovery. The discovery portion of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not in-depth as what the customers are looking for. The information that it gathers from the assets is a little more limited than what other tools provide."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management could do a little bit better with integrations. Integrating ServiceNow IT Operations Management with CMDB processes needs a little more work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"The pricing is high and may be excluding the small to medium-sized enterprise businesses."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"I would rate the product's pricing a five out of ten since there are vendors who are cheaper."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a costly solution. I'd rate the price at ten, on a scale from one to ten with one being the lowest and ten being the highest price. Some clients do have a problem with the price, but most find that the solution is worth the cost."
"This solution offers good value but comes at a very high premium. Pricing could be reduced by 10 to 20%."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"There are additional costs, you have to pay more for everything."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
What do you like most about ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
From my perspective as an asset manager, the most valuable feature of the solution is the configuration management portion, where I can actively add something to the database.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
It is definitely high-priced compared to other products available in the same domain in the market.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
We don't use the orchestration part of ServiceNow IT Operations Management here. The CMDB part of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a little bit too complicated, and it is a bit slow at our co...
 

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.