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Salesforce Service Cloud vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Salesforce Service Cloud improves ROI through efficiency, visibility, and integration, yielding up to 50% ROI amidst varying challenges.
Sentiment score
6.6
ServiceNow boosts efficiency and cost savings through automation, enhanced project management, and improved integration, despite initial setup expenses.
Salesforce Service Cloud requires significant maintenance effort to see ROI.
They have removed the costs associated with on-prem infrastructure, including data center costs, power costs, and physical server costs.
The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients.
Manually, there are huge numbers that come up because these integrated tools help organizations make the right decisions with all the information in one place, while manual methods lack visibility.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Salesforce Service Cloud is praised for responsiveness and community support, though premium support is recommended for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.9
ServiceNow's customer service is efficient and responsive, though technical support experiences vary with some noting delays and mixed outcomes.
Unless you have premium support, assistance is restricted.
Salesforce directly does not give you the support, and it is through the partner that you have to go, leading to some time delays.
The support is exemplary and deserves a perfect rating.
Obtaining support for maintenance is the current challenge because they don't have a presence in the local market.
Whenever we have had issues, they have provided good support, and those issues have never recurred.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Service Cloud is scalable, customizable, and cloud-based, enabling seamless growth and integration for enterprise-level adaptability.
Sentiment score
7.4
ServiceNow offers high scalability, adaptability, and seamless expansion for diverse applications with minimal concerns, supported by regular updates.
Salesforce Service Cloud is the most advanced in scalability, rating around nine to ten.
Nobody can compete with Salesforce Service Cloud's scalability.
There are no limitations or performance issues with ServiceNow; it is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
It is capable of vertical scaling with no issues.
I rate the scalability of ServiceNow as an eight on a scale of one to ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Salesforce Service Cloud is stable and reliable, with rare disruptions, excellent support, and scalability when following best practices.
Sentiment score
7.7
ServiceNow offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficiently resolving issues while occasional bugs are linked to customizations.
We rarely encounter stability issues with Salesforce Service Cloud, although when they occur, they cause significant disruption.
It is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
I haven't faced any issues with stability; I've rarely seen any downtime.
ServiceNow is stable enough.
 

Room For Improvement

Salesforce Service Cloud needs UI/UX improvements, pricing adjustments, stability, better integrations, and enhanced reporting, email, and AI capabilities.
ServiceNow struggles with pricing, complexity, and usability, facing issues in training, integration, and user satisfaction due to its challenges.
Salesforce Service Cloud should focus on simplification.
Configuring Flows in Salesforce Service Cloud is very difficult.
It could be better in areas such as media; it does not handle media effectively, particularly with pictures and uploads.
It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow.
Their customer support could make it a great solution, not just product support but also their relationship with partners and training initiatives in different regions.
 

Setup Cost

Salesforce Service Cloud's high costs can be offset by negotiating contracts, offering flexible licensing and significant functionality for large teams.
ServiceNow is pricey with complex licensing; strategic negotiation and planning can optimize value and manage costs effectively.
The approximate licensing costs for Salesforce Service Cloud are around three hundred dollars a year per user.
Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive.
ServiceNow's pricing can be justified if more functionality is required.
ServiceNow does come with a price.
ServiceNow is expensive for all regions.
 

Valuable Features

Salesforce Service Cloud excels in customization, integration, automation, and scalability, offering real-time data, email management, and extensive API support.
ServiceNow offers flexible customization, intuitive interface, automation, integration, and seamless collaboration, enhancing efficiency and meeting diverse business needs.
Salesforce Service Cloud improved our organization with its mobile capabilities.
Salesforce Service Cloud offers pre-built packages that are best in class.
Usability is one of the strongest characteristics of Salesforce Service Cloud.
ServiceNow provides a wide range of functionality, covering all the necessary modules, unlike Jira which is primarily for IT.
Automation capabilities are impressive, bolstered by a vast repository of out-of-the-box connectors and plugins that facilitate integration with various applications worldwide.
The features of ServiceNow that I find most valuable include its ability to easily access ticket details if you know the ticket number, monitor the timeline of when the ticket was created, and see the current status.
 

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Service Cloud
Ranking in Help Desk Software
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (1st), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), IT Alerting and Incident Management (6th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
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 November 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Salesforce Service Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 15.3%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow15.3%
Salesforce Service Cloud2.2%
Other82.5%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

MARIA PILAR CANDA - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved customer service and post-sales support saves time
The solution could be more affordable as it's quite expensive for some organizations, particularly middle-sized companies. Additionally, finding technical talent for improving the solution is challenging. Configuring Flows in Salesforce Service Cloud is very difficult. There are very few technical people in the market capable of implementing all the flows that clients need at this moment. It's primarily a matter of talent limitation, and flow is the technical mechanism of Salesforce Service Cloud for process automation. In general, while they have the knowledge and help solve problems, finding the right person to address specific issues is very challenging.
Anil  Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Have reduced L1 dependency and improved incident resolution through AI-powered automation
To make ServiceNow better, they should reduce their pricing, especially because there's a lot of competition. Many customers have moved to ManageEngine because they cannot afford the license cost. The price should be reduced by at least 40%. The setup of ServiceNow is sometimes complex when new updates or versions are released. When they introduce something new, they should provide training to understand the new features and their functionality. We sometimes get stuck and have to call them to learn about the changes in the latest version. They should communicate the changes made from older versions to new versions, which features are not available, which features have changed, and how to implement them. If the communication part was handled properly, it would benefit us.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise164
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Service Cloud?
The approximate licensing costs for Salesforce Service Cloud are around three hundred dollars a year per user.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Service Cloud?
The solution could be more affordable as it's quite expensive for some organizations, particularly middle-sized companies. Additionally, finding technical talent for improving the solution is chall...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Service Cloud?
We have many clients with Salesforce Service Cloud and numerous use cases. The main use is in the sales area rather than the marketing area. We utilize it for customer service and customer post-sal...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Service Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Stanley Black & Decker, Coca-Cola, Activision, Wells Fargo, Spotify, Aldo, Philips, The Red Cross, Blue Shield of California, Sprouts Farmers Market, Direct Energy Solar, Inspirato, Kiva
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 Salesforce Service Cloud vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
872,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.