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ServiceNow vs SolarWinds Web Help Desk 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
228
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of ServiceNow is 11.7%, down from 23.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Web Help Desk is 1.0%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow11.7%
SolarWinds Web Help Desk1.0%
Other87.3%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling
I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported daily operational workflows and improved approval management across departments
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing SolarWinds Web Help Desk with TeamViewer, we need ease of configuration and ease of allocating, creating new fields or creating new layouts for many specific use cases. An organization can have a number of use cases when it comes to a ticketing tool. It's not a security solution; it's more of a service solution where you will be configuring the needed categories and needed fields for each department. On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Web Help Desk an 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Compared to HPE Service Manager, ServiceNow offers a lot more customizations and a lot more plug-ins that you can throw in there."
"I would recommend it and I love this tool."
"I really like what they've done with their common service data model because now I can make a connection between the business process and technology."
"ServiceNow is great. You can download the data into Excel and you can basically create reports. It's very flexible."
"It can scale well if you are managing IT assets."
"Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money and maintain a choice between buying more licenses or reclaiming licenses to stay within compliance."
"I like the solution very much."
"The most valuable features are its ease of use and capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"A person who is not in IT, but has some good ITSM knowledge will be able to configure it directly on SolarWinds, and Manage Engine."
"It is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the assets management module."
"SolarWinds supports case and incident reporting. This includes logging incidents and tracking them efficiently. Additionally, it is compatible and approved by the ITIL foundation and standards, meeting world-class standards."
"The biggest advantage for SolarWinds Web Help Desk is the user interface; we were able to configure a different UI for administrators, employees, and HODs based on their hierarchy level."
"SolarWinds is scalable as far as adding devices and servers."
"It has a pretty good search function, and if you do the advanced search, you can basically search for anything in any field."
 

Cons

"If you have advanced questions, technical support often doesn't know the answer."
"Where it could be improved is Discovery. This may sound odd since I just praised the value of ServiceNow Discovery, but improvements to its automatic detection, the breadth of devices, and the depth of devices covered, as well as keeping up with new technologies, are all essential."
"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow."
"The interface can be a bit more intuitive."
"ServiceNow doesn't cater to the Middle Eastern market."
"I would say database or data visibility. In fact, I think for me, I'm going for the physical side, most of the people like to access data without any constraints."
"There is inherent complexity with this tool because of the number of things that it can do."
"Transparency in the pricing model needs to be improved."
"The working part, the deployment part, and the configuration part was a little bit complex."
"A little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
"The interface feels clunky to me compared to some other systems that I've used. I used ManageEngine Service Desk prior to this at my previous job and that had stuff like categories that we use that I don't see in SolarWinds."
"However, it's a little outdated compared to newer products that include protection and detection."
"The technical team is not competent, or available, and they do not know the product."
"This is a good solution, but the GUI is really old-fashion and needs to be updated."
"The program seems buggy to me. Not infrequently, when I click to add a Note, the Notes section disappears instead of opening a box to add a Note."
"Dashboards need some amount of work to be done. Ease of customization is desired."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licenses are expensive."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"There are licensing fees."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."
"When you compare with ManageEngine and ServiceNow, SolarWinds is reasonable."
"They charge by the technician. It costs $117 per technician per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
11%
Construction Company
11%
Performing Arts
10%
University
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise171
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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 Web Help Desk?
Areas of improvement can be enhanced regarding configuration. We had the deployment metrics and usability, ease of use, and ease of access. These were the three functionalities we were looking for ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
For Zoho, we did OP Manager, Audit Security, AD Security and Asset Management, Patch Management. These things we are dealing with Zoho. We are not dealing with solutions such as Zoho Mail or Zoho P...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Web Help Desk?
We actually do the reselling. We created a self-service portal for the customers, and this particular function does impact reducing IT staff workload overall. From technical standpoints, comparing ...
 

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    
Instacart
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow vs. SolarWinds Web Help Desk and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.