ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

ServiceNow and SolarWinds are both solutions in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category. ServiceNow is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while SolarWinds is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. ServiceNow holds a 19.6% mindshare in ISM, compared to SolarWinds’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow

Read 224 ServiceNow reviews

23,304 Views
6,991 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Service Desk

Read 2 SolarWinds Service Desk reviews

312 Views
309 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

SolarWinds Service Desk

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ServiceNow and SolarWinds Service Desk based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

September 2025

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Helped 873,003 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

224

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)

SolarWinds Service Desk

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

15th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 19.6%, down from 25.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Service Desk is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ServiceNow	19.6%
SolarWinds Service Desk	0.5%
Other	79.9%

IT Service Management (ITSM)

Featured Reviews

Anil Rao

Vice President Delivery & Operations at Rezilyens

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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Rajendra Karad

Team Leader at Orient Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Provides superior visibility and efficiency with excellent analytics capabilities

What I appreciate the most about the product is that, as per the name given, it brings better visibility to the client in terms of their infrastructure, application, and performance. SolarWinds Service Desk is a quite matured product now, making it one of the best options on the market. The incident management feature is aligned to the ITIL framework. The asset management feature is also a very thoughtful framework they have implemented. Right from onboarding an asset till scrapping it, the complete lifecycle is cleanly maintained within the system itself. All the approval chains, their logs, and even the contract information have been made very easy for the users to maintain. The knowledge base feature is an out-of-the-box knowledge base, and additionally, we can integrate our own DMS. Machine learning is something that they have been following, and we can integrate an external DMS with that, which helps in searching SOPs and even the global knowledge base over the internet, allowing it to be searched within the same single window itself. Change management in SolarWinds Service Desk is linked with the service catalog, and since it also has a service portal, a self-service portal for users, introducing a service catalog that's integrated with the change management actually completes the flow and makes life easier for IT administrators.

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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

"It's a very low-code platform, and it's simple. The user experience is also really good."

"The pricing of the product is quite good. It's not too expensive."

"The most impactful feature in our day-to-day operations is the ticket status, which provides crucial visibility into the progress of each resource or incident."

"It facilitates the monitoring of major incidents and provides insights into the effort expended to resolve each incident."

"Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money."

"Easy to implement and consolidate different platforms and users with useful functionalities."

"Some of the valuable features I have found the solution to have are it can serve many different types of businesses, it has strong platform capabilities, provides application development, built-in predictive intelligence, and performance analytics reports."

"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."

More ServiceNow pros

"The solution is very stable."

Cons

"The solution should offer better security when it comes to storing data."

"Service mapping could be less complicated."

"While ServiceNow has many options, the number of options can sometimes be confusing regarding where to click or how things work, as it is based on configuration provided by the administrator."

"The licensing needs to be divided into tiers in order to attract lower-level users."

"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."

"The customer service of the product right now isn't very good. It's an aspect they really need to improve."

"Data access is a bit difficult, where you sometimes wish you had a relational database for some queries. The flexibility of data access in general is a bit on the low end. Of course, there is flexibility in some ways, but when I need a certain combination of data for some report, it can become a challenge."

"Currently, we are finding it a bit difficult to monitor the subscriptions that are being used. The reporting feature related to this can be improved. Its ITOM functionality can be improved. BMC does a better job than ServiceNow in terms of capturing utilization and other such things."

More ServiceNow cons

"The integration with other applications can use improvement because, for example, it was nearly impossible to integrate SolarWinds Service Desk with monday.com because we had to get an add-on from Zapier."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ServiceNow's pricing is comparatively higher than Helix's."

"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."

"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."

"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."

"Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers."

"The setup cost is high compared to others, especially when the scope is not fixed."

"The solution is expensive."

"$230 per user."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	54
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	164

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Service Desk?

The industry standard practices that this product is already certified for show that there will always be room for improvement since it is a service-led product, so we'll keep on giving feedback wh...

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What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Service Desk?

Instead of Traverse, we are now using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, as we have replaced Kaseya Traverse with that. I recommend it to my customers. We are now dealing with SolarWinds Servic...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Service Desk?

I think the pricing of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is now comparative and suited to our business model, which is the reason we have moved to that. It has actually helped my customers' tec...

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Comparisons

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 6% of the time

Pega Platform vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Power Apps vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

Samanage vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 50% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SolarWinds Service Desk

Compared 50% of the time

More SolarWinds Service Desk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

October 2025

Download ServiceNow product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

October 2025

Download SolarWinds Service Desk product report

Overview

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Incident management consolidates, manages, and prioritizes incoming tickets.
Service catalog standardizes service request and fulfillment processes.
Fully integrated IT asset management compiles hardware, software, POs, and more.
Service portal for users to have a single place to submit tickets and requests.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

September 2025

Free Report: ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk

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