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Pandora FMS vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

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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
26th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (66th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Log Management (59th), Cloud Monitoring Software (38th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 2.3%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow Discovery2.3%
Pandora FMS2.1%
Other95.6%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Asociado/ at Infraestructura Informática
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…
Abhinay Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Now Developer at Bangmetric services pvt ltd
Cloud discovery has improved asset visibility and reporting but still needs smarter automation
The impact of ServiceNow Discovery on my organization's strategic planning depends on various factors. Some customers have their own discovery tools which they do not want to switch from, even if we explain why ServiceNow might be better, because they have been using them for a long time. Some customers are dynamic, so we need to have some kind of proposition that comes with ServiceNow. Sometimes, we need to talk with ServiceNow people themselves to give them a bundle offer in which we can have Discovery and ITSM at a much more affordable price than the competitors, so that is our main goal. Currently, I would say there might be a possibility if we can use some AI discovery features that could be helpful for our organization. If we can get discovery jobs running based on AI schedules, that would be beneficial. I believe in the coming future that I want to see myself working more with ServiceNow in this capacity.

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 features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"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."
"Stability is where they shine. It has been super stable. We have high-end monitoring for our data centers. We monitor all kinds of metrics in our two data centers. We monitor maybe over 2,500 checks, and the product that has been successful and always alerting us is Pandora."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"We are consultants and thanks to Pandora can detect a lot of disasters that other companies can't, and we can offer high availability of the system to the client."
"Thanks to Pandora FMS, we've been able to adapt to every new monitoring challenge over the past seven years."
"Discovery enables us to get an accurate inventory that's updated daily. It eliminates human error and the need for people to update configuration changes manually. We have not implemented them yet but plan to set up alerts on CIs that are being audited to see if there are any changes."
"Service Now has a great drag and drop functionality, which makes it easier to use than, say, EMC, and it is dedicated to designing an easy-to-use tool for IT defense, giving users better leverage."
"This solution provides excellent insights."
"It's a single system of record and it captures the relationships."
"We can find servers or services we were unaware of and stumble on vulnerabilities from those devices."
"I would rate the stability of ServiceNow Discovery as nine, as we never had downtime."
"It does a good job of collecting the data that's necessary for data centers, and IT's operations."
"They provide the ability to see into the Discovery tools I want. They offer the best tool view."
 

Cons

"Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box."
"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems and we have issues with monitoring."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"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."
"Technical support has not been helpful when we have come across problems. They take too long to respond and then don't provide helpful information."
"The patterns are the biggest area where improvement could be made."
"The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility."
"ServiceNow Discovery should improve its cloud capabilities."
"The product should improve its customer interface, web interface, and front end. I would like to see the integration of keyboard chat with the solution."
"If it's too expensive, there are definitely a lot of alternatives out there that can do discovery just as well, especially if they have published APIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"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."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten. We had availed some discount from the standard pricing. Even then, the tool's pricing is expensive. You have to pay some vendor service fees for the product's implementation."
"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."
"The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is not cheap."
"You need a subscription to ServiceNow Discovery, so you can use its features. You can also use specific plugins with the tool, and some of the plugins are free. I don't have information on how much my company pays for the subscription to ServiceNow Discovery."
"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."
"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
20%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?
Regarding pricing, I have not dealt much with it. I am more focused on the feature side of things, so I cannot comment on the latest pricing because it is dynamic as well. Sometimes it is cheaper f...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
ServiceNow could improve ServiceNow Discovery by integrating artificial intelligence capabilities. The system could study frequently created queries for the CMDB, whether related to applications, c...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow Discovery?
I mainly use ServiceNow Discovery for asset inventory in the estate. I primarily use it for linking applications versus inventory and creating disaster recovery plans, recovery time objectives, and...
 

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 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.