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ServiceNow vs xMatters 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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
xMatters
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. ServiceNow is designed for IT Service Management (ITSM) and holds a mindshare of 19.6%, down 25.7% compared to last year.
xMatters, on the other hand, focuses on IT Alerting and Incident Management, holds 6.4% mindshare, down 7.0% since last year.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow19.6%
JIRA Service Management8.3%
BMC Helix ITSM7.5%
Other64.6%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
IT Alerting and Incident Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
xMatters6.4%
PagerDuty Operations Cloud19.5%
Opsgenie11.9%
Other62.2%
IT Alerting and Incident Management
 

Featured Reviews

Anil  Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Dean-Robinson - PeerSpot reviewer
A versatile solution with excellent logging capabilities that reduced our time to resolve
The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes. There are a couple of improvements that xMatters could make to the incident hub, where we can manage high-priority incidents. More sharing capability between collaborating incident managers would be good to see, including the ability to whiteboard. That would allow them to share and sketch out ideas while looking for a solution. Those two features are essential, and that's why we want to use the solution in conjunction with Everbridge because xMatters doesn't have them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Remote access is most valuable."
"It is a very promising product. They have a new release every six months. They're investing quite a lot, and you can do many creative things with the product. If you know how it works, you can have stricter rules in the product."
"You can put information in or export it out quickly, which is very useful when you have weekly or monthly reports."
"It is user-friendly and simple to use."
"Consolidating multiple functionalities into a single platform reduces the need to invest in various separate solutions. ServiceNow integrates ITSM, CMDB, Discovery modules, and more into one cohesive system."
"It is robust and very user-friendly."
"It enables us to meet SLAs, track issues across the environment, and report those issues."
"​The workflow capability for easy setup is powerful."
"That automation is the critical aspect of xMatters. Without those workflows, then we would have a system that maintains an on-call schedule in Excel. So xMatters provides the notification workflow and ensures you're notifying the right person at the right time."
"We use xMatters for alarming infrastructure outages and failures of batch jobs (post-processing)."
"People are able to go in and update their contact information and even set things like when they're going to be on vacation and who their backup is."
"We're able to communicate better with specific groups or offices. We didn't have that capability or granularity before. It has helped in that regard."
"We have reduced the time it takes to resolve major incidents through xMatters’s conference bridge management solution."
"The most valuable features are the ability to have groups and then have an on-call rotation in the groups. Outlook lacks both these features. Outlook gives you the ability to contact an individual or groups, but you can't contact them based on an on-call rotation, and you can't have built-in timing escalations inside of that. xMatters gives you the ability to do that, which is important when you have 50 or so people in the team, but you only want to contact the person who is on-call. You don't create any unnecessary noise. xMatters allows you to page the right person who is on-call versus just creating excessive noise."
"xMatters is helpful for getting the right on-call resources. That is a key factor. It is also very user-friendly, and just a little documentation helps you to understand things such as how on-calls are configured, how groups are configured, and how users update their on-call devices."
"​The ability to notify teams and monitor those notifications in real-time is valuable. Time-based escalation of notifications helps us resolve issues much more quickly."
 

Cons

"I find the way you need to attach things like screenshots and stuff is a bit gimmicky. I'm a casual user. I'll use it once every two months and only when I have an incident that I need to report. You don't get a lot of experience with it when you're just using it once in a while like that. Therefore, it needs to be more intuitive so that you don't have to re-learn how to do simple tasks as the way to do certain things just isn't obvious."
"In an upcoming release, there should be more administration tools."
"The utilization of AI in ServiceNow needs enhancement."
"Their user interface is old-fashioned and outdated, and it can be more friendly for the eye. They can improve the user experience."
"There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow."
"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."
"The capital expenditure neeed to get the tool up and running is extensive."
"I am interested to see the firm's strategic plans for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), and how the particular areas it will expand on from its existing investments (that feature, for example, in its ITSM Pro and CSM Pro modules)."
"The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes."
"They recently released an incident module that allows users, or at least teams, to track major incidents and other things, and you can send out communication via that one webpage. You can engage on-call teams and communicate to stakeholders as well, but one thing that is missing there is a group chat. If there is a group chat on the same webpage that all of the support teams could use, it would be a one-stop shop that all of the major incident managers would use as their product to manage a major incident. Without that, at the moment, they are mainly referring to teams and then adding data into xMatters as and when they can."
"While they do have an extensive library of integrations, sometimes those integrations or custom integrations, require a more technical level of expertise in products outside of xMatters, such as Java."
"We have had outages with the product. We have experienced functionality (defects), such as conference bridges can only be opened for four hours at a time and people get kicked out."
"I've asked for the ability to have tags on groups, and for dynamic lists, meaning the ability to pull data from another location and use it in xMatters dynamically. Right now, for example, if I have a form and want to populate a list, it's a manual process. I have to copy and paste the list items."
"The user interface could be more intuitive. Once you know what you're doing, you're fine. However, if you don't know where to start then it can be a bit difficult to figure out how to make it work and how it will function together with different tools in the Flow Designer."
"Support may take longer than desired to resolve some issues."
"If you are not one of the big players of their customers, the chance that one of your minor wishes will granted are very small."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licenses are expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable and affordable, making it suitable for businesses ranging from small to large scale."
"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."
"It is fairly expensive."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"Getting the solution up and running is expensive."
"The setup cost is high compared to others, especially when the scope is not fixed."
"The pricing and licensing are okay. I wish that the user licenses were cheaper but the stakeholder licenses are at a reasonable cost."
"xMatters is pricey, but you have to consider what a critical incident costs your organization."
"If the licensing were cheaper, our customer might buy more."
"I don't make the decisions on the cost aspect. We haven't had any complaints. I think it has a reasonable price."
"​I do not think it is worth the value.​"
"If you are willing to pay for the licensing of it, it is able to scale out.​"
"It is worth the cost. You need to know the number of users that are going to use it, which is usually pretty easy to calculate. It's on a per-user license."
"Cost is probably my biggest concern. I know the solution was recently acquired by Everbridge, and Everbridge was one of the competitors that was included in our RFP five years ago. Everbridge's costs were astronomical compared to where every other solution was, not just xMatters."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
29%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise164
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise24
 

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.
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
xMatters IT Management
 

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    
Over 2.7 million users trust xMatters daily at successful startups and global giants including athenahealth, BMC Software, Box, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Experian, NVIDIA, ViaSat and Vodafone. xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, California and has offices worldwide.  Visit our website to see how business like yours found solutions with xMatters.
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC Helix and others in IT Service Management (ITSM). Updated: October 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.