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Icinga vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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 IT Infrastructure Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (15th), Server Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (1st), Cloud Management (9th), AIOps (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 4.1%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ArbenKlaiqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports proactive IT issue resolution and enhances infrastructure visibility
ITOM Visibility assists in service mapping and determining the impact of different applications. ITOM Discovery scans the infrastructure and updates the CMDB ( /categories/configuration-management-databases ). ITOM Health is an event management tool that predicts outages. Certificate Inventory manages certificate expiration. ServiceNow IT Operations Management influences ITSM ( /categories/it-service-management-itsm ) processes by automating them and aiding in detecting and resolving IT issues to improve performance, reliability, and uptime.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"It is a product that is familiar for a lot of users."
"I like the solution mostly for CMDB discovery."
"The most valuable features of the solution are discovery, cloud governance, event management, and service mapping."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features of ServiceNow IT Operations Management are ease of use, intuitive design, and ease of management, and its based on IT practices which are good."
"Has service mapping, impact management, metric intelligence and health of analytics."
"The solution is easy to use and has great orchestration and automation capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is the user interface."
 

Cons

"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"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."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"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."
"Even though they call it low code there are a lot of customizations needed, especially from an ITOM standpoint."
"ServiceNow's pricing is expensive. A more streamlined configuration process tailored to use cases and industry would be beneficial."
"Service mapping is pretty limited."
"The solution's subscription model could be improved."
"The pricing is high."
"I advise others not to customize a lot while using the solution."
"The solution’s licensing cost could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of ServiceNow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"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."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"The solution is costly compared to the products offered by its competitors."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
"While not entirely sure, I believe the solution costs at least a million dollars annually."
"It has different subscription models."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"The pricing is high and may be excluding the small to medium-sized enterprise businesses."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Icinga?
The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first.
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 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?
We obtained discovery licenses at about seven dollars Australian per unit, which we found to be reasonable and competitive. The pricing model offers scaling where not everything consumes a license ...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
There is room for improvement in service mapping within ServiceNow ITOM. When we have more time, we'll look to extend that and apply it to business-critical services like email.
 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.