Kayako vs ServiceNow comparison

Kayako and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Kayako is ranked #46, while ServiceNow is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Kayako holds a 0.2% mindshare in HDS, compared to ServiceNow’s 21.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kayako users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

Kayako

Read 1 Kayako review

137 Views
132 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

Read 223 ServiceNow reviews

26,973 Views
7,552 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kayako

ServiceNow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kayako and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

August 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

Kayako

Ranking in Help Desk Software

46th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Shared Inbox (10th)

ServiceNow

Ranking in Help Desk Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

223

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Kayako is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.2%, down from 26.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer1712472

Operations and Support Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Flexible, straightforward implementation, and helpful support

We are in the process of switching from Kayako to ManageEngine Desktop Central. We went through a full review of our service desk processing and one of the solutions we purchased was a ManageEngine Desktop Central. When we were looking at the integrations into the Kayako system and how it works, we found that ManageEngine Desktop Central did very similar things. It had better layers of classification, other templating, and additional features that we did not have with Kayako. Our service manager made the decision to switch at that time. My advice to others wanting to implement Kayako would be for them to plan out their service processes first, prior to trying to implement them in the tool. We made the mistake of jumping in too soon back 10 years ago. I started using it in a way that we could have tooled it in a different way to make it better. We could have had more implementation process information to make sure we received what we wanted to out of the solution. I rate Kayako an eight out of ten.

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Nikhil Gohil

Solution Engineer - Digital Platform | Mobile at British American Tobacco

Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility

I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."

"The solution is easy to use, simple to make queries, flexible to configure, integrates well, and supports all of our companies needs."

"Overall, I rate ServiceNow 10 out of 10."

"What I like the most is that it's a common service data model and the fact that everything is available on one platform."

"It has an excellent capability to integrate different access points."

"The analytics - we like to keep track of how much work everyone is doing."

"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."

"Very good incident management, chain management and problem management features."

"You can put information in or export it out quickly, which is very useful when you have weekly or monthly reports."

More ServiceNow pros

Cons

"Some of the reporting in Kayako could be improved. It only has two levels of classification and if there were additional levels added for reporting purposes it would be awesome for our environment."

"The product’s standard user experience is not the best."

"Needs additional software titles and easier normalization."

"Its stability and pricing need improvement."

"It should have more artificial intelligence for business and work capabilities. The community is not so active. There must be initiatives to make the community talk more and share more information."

"An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."

"For me, there's a real opportunity, especially within the IT Service Management suite, to give a much better overall view of the workflow that individuals have across the different applications. At the moment, a lot of information is quite siloed in the different tables in ServiceNow."

"Its setup is tough. It takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience."

"They need to be providing vendors and implementation partners with materials and guidance on implementation."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."

"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."

"I am from Brazil. For Latin American markets, ServiceNow is very expensive as compared to other vendors, such as VMware."

"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."

"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."

"$230 per user."

"They could be more competitive with their licensing."

"The CapEx version is great."

"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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 that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...

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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 ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...

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What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

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Comparisons

No data available

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

August 2025

Download Kayako product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

July 2025

Download ServiceNow product report

Overview

Kayako is a powerful customer service and support platform that gives your team the tools they need to communicate with customers across live chat, email, facebook and twitter.

Our approach brings every interaction your customer has with your business into Kayako and presents your agents with a comprehensive customer journey. This gives your team the context they need to immediately respond and support customers in a way that’s quick, accurate and personal.

Kayako is used by over 130,000 customer support pros in businesses of all sizes around the world, including Peugeot, NASA, Fedex, and GE.

Kayako

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Toshiba Canada, Disney, Avast, Namecheap, Texas Tech University

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 Help Desk Software. Updated: August 2025.

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