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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
7.5
Salesforce Service Cloud offers high ROI with improved service efficiency, though success varies by company size and careful planning is needed.
Sentiment score
7.0
ServiceNow enhances efficiency, project management, and resource management, offering quick ROI through automation and optimized system integrations.
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
7.2
Salesforce Service Cloud offers responsive support, though some recommend premium options due to occasional delays and level one frustrations.
Sentiment score
7.0
ServiceNow's support is praised for knowledge and community resources but criticized for inconsistent response times and outsourced interactions.
Unless you have premium support, assistance is restricted.
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.
I have contacted them four to five times over the past two years, and they have been quite helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Salesforce Service Cloud excels in scalability, integration, and customization, appealing to businesses of various sizes despite governor limits.
Sentiment score
7.5
ServiceNow offers scalable, cloud-based solutions that support seamless growth and integration for enterprises, with strong user satisfaction.
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
8.2
Salesforce Service Cloud is highly stable and reliable, with swift issue resolution and minimal integration challenges, supporting customizations effectively.
Sentiment score
7.7
ServiceNow offers stable, high-performance IT service management with minimal downtime; customization requires best practices to maintain optimal performance.
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 users seek enhancements in email integration, UI speed, AI features, pricing, and system integration.
ServiceNow requires enhanced UI, documentation, integration, performance, training, and mobile features to boost user satisfaction and accessibility.
Salesforce Service Cloud should focus on simplification.
The pricing of Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive compared to other solutions like our current SAP CRM, which is much cheaper.
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.
From a functionality perspective, the features in ServiceNow are acceptable as, at the moment, the ITSM modules rank highly, being 13 plus Pink Elephant certified, which is a good aspect to have.
 

Setup Cost

Salesforce Service Cloud offers flexible pricing that can be expensive; negotiation can help optimize costs for enterprises.
ServiceNow is costly for small companies but flexible for enterprises, with complex pricing needing negotiation for discounts.
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 integration, automation, and customization, enhancing efficiency and user experience with robust features.
ServiceNow's customization and integration capabilities enhance operational efficiency and align IT operations with business needs effectively.
Salesforce Service Cloud improved our organization with its mobile capabilities.
Salesforce Service Cloud offers pre-built packages that are best in class.
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (2nd), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), IT Alerting and Incident Management (6th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
221
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 June 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Salesforce Service Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 22.5%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

ChanchalSaxena - PeerSpot reviewer
High scalability with good plugins and excellent customer visibility
The solution should improve: 1. Reports & dashboard - The product should be capable of delivering complex reports as per company requirements without the need for a Tableau license. 2. Einstein has limited capabilities, and it suggests the analysis by predefined algorithms - but in a practical scenario, businesses need to ask real-time questions, and AI products should be capable of delivering the exact answers. Generic answers may not be effective.
Nikhil Gohil - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 pricing of Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive compared to other solutions like our current SAP CRM ( /products/sap-crm-reviews ), which is much cheaper.
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Service Cloud?
I used Salesforce Service Cloud ( /products/salesforce-service-cloud-reviews ) for our sales agents to track visits, gather feedback from customers, and capture orders.
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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.