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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
25th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (78th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (55th), Log Management (63rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
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 Pandora FMS is 1.5%, up from 1.2% 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%
Pandora FMS1.5%
Other95.2%
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…
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

"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"It does a good job of collecting the data that's necessary for data centers, and IT's operations."
"The service management and operations management modules are valuable."
"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 easy."
"It's pretty robust, and it's agentless for the most part. So, you don't need to deploy agents, which makes it a lot easier to stand up."
"ServiceNow Discovery is useful for discovering the servers, like the servers of Windows and Linux, from the client network."
"The most valuable asset is relationship building because the solution discovers and builds auto relationships in a way that makes cleanup very easy."
 

Cons

"In the future, we may have double the number of devices, and we do not want to have any issues with performance in the data display."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"It is one of the most costly applications in terms of subscription costs."
"ServiceNow is very costly."
"The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility."
"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."
"The service mapping component is less developed than it is in other solutions, and is in need of improvement."
"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."
"On the Software Asset Management part of it, I expect additional reconciliation and Discovery features there."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"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."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"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."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."
"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."
"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."
"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."
"The solution is very expensive."
"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 pricing is determined based on the CIs."
"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."
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Top Industries

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

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: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.