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ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Service Desk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
223
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
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 21.5%, down from 26.9% 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow21.5%
SolarWinds Service Desk0.5%
Other78.0%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rajendra Karad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the ease of use."
"Will give us better control over asset management and technical debt once we can centralize all contract information."
"We have found change management and CMDB to be very useful."
"It gave us professionalized, faster incident turn around times. Improved quality of information shared with our customers. Over time we build an extensive knowledge base that assists in both self-service as in services provided by the servicedesk when handling incidents."
"ServiceNow offers a range of ITSM, IT incident management, and PRCPs."
"I recommend ServiceNow due to its stability and good security."
"The flow designer feature of ServiceNow has had the biggest impact on our productivity because it has helped me reduce manual efforts by creating automation and robotics."
"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."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"One thing I don't care for is the reporting and the way it functions."
"There is a need to learn scripting because as in the case of all the ITSM tools, scripting is needed for customization. If you're not very comfortable with scripting, then you may feel that you cannot do everything in ServiceNow without learning scripting."
"I have enjoyed all the features. There is not any feature that I have missed or didn't have."
"I know that discovery tools are not meant to be simple, but somehow, if they could make it more simple and robust, that would be great."
"When we are using the solution on mobile phones on their networks the performance is reduced with a delay of approximately 8 seconds. There is less delay using the desktop computers connected to the WiFi or to the network directly."
"An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."
"Before implementing this solution, you should have the ITSM model in place for chain management requests. That is a prerequisite because you cannot perform tasks without it."
"When it comes to reference fields, there are some limitations where you aren't able to use them, like in relationship queries. In Remedy, when you click a menu, you get options directly, whereas here, if you use a reference field, it points you to a different form. So the UI experience totally changes for the end user."
"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

"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 solution is priced for medium to enterprises sized businesses. However, it is expensive compared to competitors."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."
"The licenses are expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable and affordable, making it suitable for businesses ranging from small to large scale."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten. The pricing for ServiceNow is based on a SaaS platform with annual contracts. However, it may not offer much flexibility for adjusting usage in the short term."
"The price could be a little lower for the solution. Many of my customers have issues with the licensing process, they have to make it easier and straightforward."
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
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise163
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Service Desk and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.