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Freshservice vs ServiceNow CMDB 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

Freshservice
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (5th), Project Management Software (10th), Cloud Management (12th), IT Asset Management (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (8th), AI IT Support (3rd)
ServiceNow CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of Freshservice is 9.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow CMDB is 26.0%, down from 38.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow CMDB26.0%
Freshservice9.1%
Other64.9%
Configuration Management Databases
 

Featured Reviews

RF
IT Service Delivery Manager at Symposiam
Automation and AI have transformed our service delivery and have made IT support faster and more efficient
I always keep up with Freshservice's roadmaps and new features. Freshservice has been very good at listening to feedback and adding those feature requests into their next iterations. I wish they would offer more granular data export options for utilizing in Power BI, along with predictive analytics for capacity planning and SLA breaches to enable more proactive support management and reduce firefighting. While the dashboards are effective, some users find custom reporting limited compared to ServiceNow or Jira. I would also appreciate deeper integrations, especially for niche apps requiring development coding work to enable advanced orchestration. Native integrations for DevOps pipelines such as GitHub Actions and Jenkins, along with stronger API flexibility for complex workflows, would enhance functionality. Although the CMDB and asset management are solid, they do lack advanced dependency mapping compared to other enterprise tools. My wishlist includes automated impact analysis for changes and improved visualization of asset relationships, enabling quicker resolutions from an agent's perspective when alerts come in. I acknowledge that Device42 may enhance this, but it is an extra cost beyond what we already pay. While Freddy AI is excellent for triage and suggestions, some users desire more proactive automation, such as predictive ticket routing based on historical patterns and AI-driven capacity forecasting. Lastly, the pricing tiers might seem rigid for mid-sized teams, so a more granular add-on option for features such as Device42 or pay-per-use for orchestration workflows could be beneficial.
reviewer2782440 - PeerSpot reviewer
ServiceNow Consultant at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation features and integrated service mapping have streamlined incident and change management processes
There is probably room for improvement in ServiceNow CMDB. I'm so immersed in projects and solving direct customer issues that I don't think too much about potential improvements. Maintaining an accurate and up-to-date ServiceNow CMDB can be challenging due to incoming data from various sources, but ServiceNow has been developing small AI components to help with data discrepancies and deduplication recently. They have also improved integrations with other tools, providing many out-of-the-box integrations to different monitoring tools and CMDBs, which previously required coding experience for custom integrations. They are moving towards a more low-code or no-code approach, which is part of their goal as a company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend it if you're looking for a really quick way of getting your help desk up and running with a ticketing system and some pretty cool automation with emails, notifications, etc."
"It has allowed the client to implement service management processes that didn't previously exist in the business and to have more visibility and control of process tickets."
"We like the mail tickets on offer; it is something we love, and there are workflows that are working quite well, with multiple queues and resolution groups, and the solution has been stable."
"Freshservice's best feature is its user-friendliness."
"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management."
"One of the things I liked about Freshservice was how easy it was to implement. While it doesn't have extensive customization capabilities, the available options are sufficient for certain sizes of companies. You don't need to customize your ticketing system much. Freshservice is a great solution because you can implement it very quickly. You can upload your catalog, and you're done in maybe a week or two."
"Due to our previous system being so poor, our ROI was effectively immediate as staff could easily log tickets via email, web, or over phone."
"We use the ticketing system primarily, which is very easy to use for all users."
"It is a dependable source of data. If I want to understand what technologies are used to deliver certain business outcomes, this is what I would use. I can know that this particular server is being used to deliver this business application or business service."
"The support of the whole infrastructure is one of the main features that makes ServiceNow CMDB suitable for every type of company."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
"The CMDB for us is fed by our discovery tools, and it lets us be able to track the changes that we make to any incidents or escalation points that we have associated with a CI."
"The stability is about the same as other platforms; it's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and the scalability of the solution is good."
"The way the CSDM model we have implemented works is great, as they provide good structure and offer excellent services right out of the box without the need to configure it."
"I like ServiceNow CMDB's discovery tools. If you have discovery tools and the discovery tools are built around a philosophy of mapping, then we can implement a top-down architectural mapping of the elements in the upper structure and create your CI."
"ServiceNow CMDB is fully integrated and complete. ServiceNow has modules for everything an IT service company needs, and it's flexible."
 

Cons

"Freshservice could improve the integration with Microsoft Outlook."
"The ability to customize the user interface is a bit lacking, and the reporting is a bit lacking because they're very stringent upon what you can pull reporting-wise within Freshservice. They have a lot of built-in reports that are very nice, but when it comes to customizing these, they just provide you with certain data. When you try to build your own report wizard, you aren't able to go and select some of the data that is shown in some of the reports that come with Freshservice. This is something that we have brought up with our account representative, and we have suggested these as feature updates in the future. We're still waiting on them to go and implement something like that."
"The chat portal is not that great."
"There are some limitations in reporting. For example, I would like to have a report of conversations or replies."
"Freshservice has an AI agent that needs improvement for finding knowledge base articles."
"We would like to have chat as a support channel in order to enjoy the same benefit of real-time support that Freshdesk has."
"They're not very good at technical support."
"It's hard to interact directly with the users themselves."
"Pricing is all over the place. That is one of the comments I can make regarding pricing."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"I'm still learning about CMDB's capabilities, so I haven't seen anything that I want added yet."
"We would like the solution to be made more easily scalable in future updates."
"I wish we didn't have to pay for additional modules. For example, the vulnerability module is at an additional cost so that we can pull the Qualys scans and actually have automated tickets involved. If that workflow can also be part of that, it would be nice."
"The tool is not user-friendly. It has a lot of features and you can get lost in it."
"If you have multiple tools that are going to ingest data into the CMDB, you need to be careful of what rules we write to ensure that they fall in place."
"There are some gaps in the technologies that can be solved. Operational technology isn't quite 100% there yet, but I hear it is on the roadmap."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
"Freshservice price is competitive, it is not more than other solutions on the market."
"Freshservice is a fairly cheap solution. Though monthly payments can be made towards the licensing costs of the solution, my company prefers to make annual payments."
"It is $34 per license, per agent. Currently, we don't see any add-ons at extra fees."
"It was a middle tier. It wasn't an expensive one. It was a tier model usage. Licensing costs varied between admin users and regular users."
"The pricing information is on their website. It's my understanding that their Pro Plan, for example, is around $89/month."
"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management. Asset management has the possibility to keep track of licenses and that's very useful. The price of the solution is very good."
"We're basically paying about $100 USD per agent per month."
"It is always fluctuating. It seems to change every six months. Every time they come out with a new iteration, it changes. It is pretty complicated, and they should improve it."
"The market sees ServiceNow as the Ferrari in terms of pricing. It's at the very top, and its cost is very, very high."
"I would like it to be cheaper. If you've got a large environment, it can get quite expensive quite quickly. You still get a return on investment, but everybody has a tight budget. In terms of licensing, everything is pretty much known upfront. Being SaaS-based, there are no real additional gotchas that we came across."
"In comparison to the cost of other solutions, you get value for your money with ServiceNow CMDB. It could definitely be cheaper though."
"It is really expensive. I don't know actually how much it costs, but in 2016, when a client decided to move from an old solution to ServiceNow and had to choose a supplier for ServiceNow, I had heard that it could cost $10 per hour, which is really expensive. I am not aware of any additional fees to the standard licensing fees. There is no standard ServiceNow solution. When a company wants to acquire ServiceNow, they already know which module they will choose. In a basic package, you would have Service Catalog, Incident Management, and Change Management. These modules are usually required in an IT company."
"The product is pricey."
"The product price falls on the higher side of the spectrum."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
I do not have any experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, as it was assigned to the infrastructure team.
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
Freshservice has an AI agent that needs improvement for finding knowledge base articles. When issues or incidents are received in Freshservice, new users should be able to receive direct help from ...
What is your primary use case for Freshservice?
Freshservice is used to redirect ticket handling and acknowledge tickets and incidents received. Tickets are redirected with their short description and subject line in Freshservice, which allows f...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow CMDB?
I would like to improve ServiceNow CMDB through better implementation and parameterization. ServiceNow has capabilities, and I wonder if they have included some AI capability to detect data that ar...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow CMDB?
I mostly deal with ServiceNow CMDB, orchestration, and also project management with ServiceNow. I also provide support for operations in Jira.
What advice do you have for others considering ServiceNow CMDB?
I am a consultant, not a reseller. I used to work for a company, but now I am a consultant. There is project management, ServiceNow CMDB, and orchestration features. Today, we have integrated it wi...
 

Also Known As

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
Wayfair, Siemens, Allianz, Experian, Vitas Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshservice vs. ServiceNow CMDB and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.