ServiceNow Discovery vs SolarWinds Pingdom comparison

The compared ServiceNow and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. ServiceNow is ranked #6 in IAM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 4.7% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #64 in APM , and holds a 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Discovery

Read 44 ServiceNow Discovery reviews

3,616 Views
1,627 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Pingdom

Read 4 SolarWinds Pingdom reviews

799 Views
727 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Discovery

SolarWinds Pingdom

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ServiceNow Discovery and SolarWinds Pingdom based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two IT Asset Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Pingdom Report (Updated: September 2020).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Pingdom

September 2020

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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

ServiceNow Discovery

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (6th), Server Monitoring (5th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)

SolarWinds Pingdom

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (64th)

Mindshare comparison

ServiceNow Discovery and SolarWinds Pingdom aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ServiceNow Discovery is designed for IT Asset Management and holds a mindshare of 4.7%, down 5.0% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Pingdom, on the other hand, focuses on Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability, holds 0.5% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.

IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery	4.7%
ServiceNow	14.6%
Lansweeper	7.3%
Other	73.4%

IT Asset Management

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SolarWinds Pingdom	0.5%
Dynatrace	6.6%
Datadog	5.5%
Other	87.4%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

reviewer2759271

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.

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Jay Vekaria

Linux System Administrator at Ergode

High performance, quick setup, but lacking ease of use

Some of the functions could improve by making them easier. There is room for improvement when it comes to the graphs provided by the software. Additionally, there seems to be an issue with the ping status, as it sometimes indicates that a website is down even when it is functioning properly. It appears that there are certain aspects related to cache management or other backend functionalities that are unclear. The time range graph and overall user interface could be more user-friendly. For example, when selecting a custom graph for a specific time period, clicking on it should open the corresponding website in a new tab, but instead, it displays the current graph. This lack of consistency can be frustrating when trying to navigate the interface. Furthermore, the reports shared on a weekly basis arrive one week late, reducing their usefulness. Overall, some extra efforts are required to make the user experience smoother and more efficient.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."

"ServiceNow Discovery is useful for discovering the servers, like the servers of Windows and Linux, from the client network."

"The biggest advantage of ServiceNow is the value that it brings."

"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 does a good job of collecting the data that's necessary for data centers, and IT's operations."

"We can find servers or services we were unaware of and stumble on vulnerabilities from those devices."

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"The most valuable features are monitoring and reporting."

"One notable feature of this software is its page speed setup, which is highly commendable. Additionally, the metrics it provides are also impressive."

"Once you set the threshold on your environment, it feels very real-time"

"There are alerting mechanisms in place to let us know, for example, if a device is not responding to a ping test and is probably not going to work."

Cons

"I believe there is room for improvement in ServiceNow Discovery, particularly in providing more detailed information about network usage and communication between ServiceNow and the infrastructure."

"The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility."

"It creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."

"I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved."

"When you switch versions, for example, when you go from Paris to Quebec they will introduce many new things and occasionally things break when they do that."

"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."

"In future releases, I would like to see more AI-oriented enhancements in the solution. It would automate most of the things that we have to do manually write the scripts and go on the teleservice, what to do. So if we have something in place and if we can train the module, then AI would be a good thing."

"The current limitation requires having mid servers or discovery servers in each data center for proper discovery, hindering the ability to discover assets across continents such as Asia Pacific and Europe."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"Some of the functions could improve by making them easier."

"Technical support could use some improvement."

"Pingdom is always improving everything in its product. So, they should work on the GUI."

"I would like to see better integration with other products."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It is an expensive product with a price that depends on the models that you wish to purchase."

"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."

"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."

"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."

"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."

"It is not recommended for smaller companies because of the price."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"The license was paid yearly and included technical support."

"This price of this solution is reasonable."

"While I wouldn't describe it as excessively expensive, if you require specific and reliable monitoring, SolarWinds can be a suitable option. The advantage is that SolarWinds offers a free version as well. If you don't heavily rely on its monitoring capabilities and are content with its basic features, the free version could suffice for your needs."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	23

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?

The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?

A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.

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Comparisons

Tanium vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 18% of the time

Lansweeper vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 14% of the time

BMC Helix Discovery vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 10% of the time

Flexera One vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 7% of the time

More ServiceNow Discovery Competitors

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Pingdom

Compared 17% of the time

Solarwinds Web Performance Monitor vs SolarWinds Pingdom

Compared 17% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Pingdom

Compared 12% of the time

Catchpoint vs SolarWinds Pingdom

Compared 12% of the time

New Relic vs SolarWinds Pingdom

Compared 10% of the time

More SolarWinds Pingdom Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Discovery

December 2025

Download ServiceNow Discovery product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

January 2026

Download SolarWinds Pingdom product report

Overview

ServiceNow Discovery finds applications and devices on your network, and then updates the CMDB with the information it finds. Discovery is available as a separate subscription from the rest of the Now Platform.

ServiceNow

SolarWinds® Pingdom® is a powerful and affordable SaaS-based web app performance monitoring solution. It’s one product providing comprehensive web app performance and user experience monitoring consisting of four major capabilities:

1. Uptime monitoring for webpages and other critical components like APIs, CDNs, DNS, networks, email, and more.

2. Page speed performance monitoring and page rankings.

3. Synthetic transaction monitoring from the simplest to the most complex transactions.

4. Real user monitoring (RUM), enabling a deeper and wider understanding of the user’s digital experience, and web application availability and performance.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY

Spotify, MailChimp, Slack, Twitter

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Pingdom

September 2020

Free Report: ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Pingdom

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Discovery vs. SolarWinds Pingdom and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.

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