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Icinga vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Icinga
Ranking in Server Monitoring
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (6th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 6.0%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.3%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery3.3%
Icinga6.0%
Other90.7%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.
reviewer2759271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Has supported enterprise needs well and addresses discovery across environments
Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective. Hence, they will not opt for ServiceNow Discovery as a solution, either as an ITSM solution or ITOM solution. It will not be affordable. I am specifically talking about the Middle East and Africa region. ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool. They use event management from getting events from other tools. In that front, they had a roadmap for going for an open-source solution, but I have not seen that materialize. There is a lack of tools perspective for monitoring. Perhaps they do not have a plan because there are hundreds of tools available, and they prefer to focus on integration and event management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"The solution finds public cloud infrastructures globally and updates the integration management database, service catalogs, and asset management details."
"ServiceNow Discovery helps with operations, audits, and allows people to assess how a particular change in infrastructure impacts other components."
"The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"One of the most valuable features of ServiceNow Discovery is the automated discovery that helps identify dependencies and generates reports."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
 

Cons

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"The user interface should be improved."
"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"ServiceNow Discovery should be updated to provide its users with more out-of-the-box information and attributes to support the routers and switches from Cisco."
"I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved."
"What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools. Other tools have better reporting UI than what's currently in ServiceNow Discovery. What I'd like to see in the next release of ServiceNow Discovery is more user-friendly out-of-the-box reporting that would be helpful for non-technical users. Some users such as managers would want to just do a few clicks to access the reports and shouldn't be required to do search queries, but right now, reporting in the tool isn't very user-friendly."
"In future releases, I would like to see more AI-oriented enhancements in the solution. It would automate most of the things that we have to do manually write the scripts and go on the teleservice, what to do. So if we have something in place and if we can train the module, then AI would be a good thing."
"The continuous improvement in the quality and customization of the product features would be beneficial, particularly as more customers rely heavily on its capabilities."
"ServiceNow has a constant development environment. Hence they get constant bugs which result in incorrect performance. It should also improve customer service."
"It's an expensive platform."
"The current limitation requires having mid servers or discovery servers in each data center for proper discovery, hindering the ability to discover assets across continents such as Asia Pacific and Europe."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is cheap."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The solution is free to use."
"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."
"If the product is not deployed properly, it can be very expensive."
"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."
"ServiceNow Discovery has very broad pricing, so it becomes costly. It would be better if it had a pay-as-you-use licensing model because the total cost of ownership is quite high."
"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."
"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"There is a need to make payments every quarter of a year towards the licensing costs of the solution. ServiceNow Discovery is an expensive tool."
"It's a bit expensive compared to other products in the market, but it's worth the money you pay because it's far advanced in terms of features, automation, and capabilities compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
What do you like most about ServiceNow Discovery?
The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?
The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.
 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. ServiceNow Discovery and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.