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Pandora FMS 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

Pandora FMS
Ranking in Server Monitoring
23rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (74th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (54th), Log Management (57th), Cloud Monitoring Software (40th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (3rd), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.3%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 3.7%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery3.7%
Pandora FMS1.3%
Other95.0%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…
Ayobanji Iluyomade - PeerSpot reviewer
Service helps organizations with network discovery and IT infrastructure management but troubleshooting challenges remain
ServiceNow Discovery was adopted by my organization. We use ServiceNow Discovery for discovery and ITSM The most beneficial features of ServiceNow Discovery for maintaining my IT infrastructure are the CMDB top and discovery of network switches. The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"The best thing about Discovery is maintaining all the CIs in one place. I can sort the data, export it to Excel for manipulation, and build reports like how many computers or servers we have and their capacity."
"One highly valuable aspect is the use of service accounts, which automates the process of identifying underlying nodes and associated assets."
"I believe one of the great functionalities or improvements in ServiceNow Discovery is its ability to gather information about any Configuration Items (CIs)."
"It is a stable solution...The initial setup of the product is straightforward."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"ServiceNow Discovery works better than other products I've used."
"In the past, I found troubleshooting difficult in ServiceNow Discovery because I didn't have much exposure to the platform during that time, but then I explored some troubleshooting features, and I found that it wasn't that tough, so this is one of the qualities I like about ServiceNow Discovery. I also like that log reading in ServiceNow Discovery is much better than other tools. Another valuable feature of the tool is that you don't need to install many tools to deploy ITSM. You only need to subscribe to the modules to deploy the proper ITSM in your organization."
 

Cons

"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."
"In my opinion, it's quite slow compared to other tools, like Device42. Also, there are predefined fields in Device42 that are not available in ServiceNow. These are the basic things I think can be improved here."
"Improvements are required with the scripts used to collect the information from servers."
"The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility."
"Instead of AI, even GenAI should be introduced in ServiceNow Discovery."
"ServiceNow is very costly."
"Discovery, while a bit pricey, integrates well with other tools and offers a centralized discovery solution. These aspects could be enhanced in the new release."
"ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"ServiceNow Discovery is expensive, but the company has a monopoly and we need to use the solution. We use it because we do not have a choice."
"As per a general discussion I had with the stakeholders, I figured out that it is a costly tool. There is a need to make additional payments apart from the licensing fees for better support services from ServiceNow."
"It's on a yearly basis. We renew our contract for three years at a time."
"There is a subscription for ServiceNow Discovery. It's expensive, but I think it's one of the best solutions on the market, so it's worth it."
"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."
"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"It costs a lot. It is probably close to over a hundred thousand. It's an expensive platform, but you can't compare ServiceNow's Discovery functionality to other discovery tools. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison of ServiceNow to a configuration management tool to an asset management tool because it does those things, but it's not those things."
"The solution is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. ServiceNow Discovery and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.