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Device42 vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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

Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (3rd), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (4th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (4th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in IT Asset Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of Device42 is 6.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 24.3%, down from 26.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

Krishna Gopal Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Good reporting and discovery capabilities, and helpful for understanding device dependencies and asset management
Its price needs to be improved. It is more expensive than some of the other tools out there. Their support is good, but their knowledge base should be better. There should be a common area where we can search and find solutions for our queries or issues. We don't always need to raise a ticket with the Device42 support team. Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features in my experience is the precise tracking of hardware devices and their locations registered in the solution. The solution allows to determine the exact placement of assets based on the building maps and the room details. This feature has allowed us to gain upper hand on the customers and provide them with a great satisfaction because they can visually see the arrangement of their assets within the organisation or building."
"I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment."
"The way the solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality works is you set up a discovery job, then you can schedule it to run. I schedule all of the runs daily at different times so nothing is interfering with anything else. It's nice to know that you can set up the scan, schedule it, and sit back. You can check them every day and make sure everything ran, making sure nothing had errors, then you're good to go. Anything new is going to automatically be discovered, which is nice. It takes some of the stress off because you don't have to know, "If this team opened new servers, we need make sure now it will automatically pick them up." It is one less thing to worry about. It gathers a lot of data points."
"The IP address tracking [is valuable]... We have a lot of different devices and some of them have many IP addresses, so keeping track of which ones are assigned where is very critical for putting new devices on the network and giving them new addresses. All of our devices are statically assigned, so if we don't keep good records then we could accidentally assign a duplicate, which would cause problems on the network."
"The Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data."
"The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want."
"The continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I like the incident module, which is useful for tracking your incidents and other things. It is a reliable solution."
"It is robust and very user-friendly."
"It allows us to filter the data, create graphs, and get detailed reports."
"I like the reporting aspect of it. It helps us know where we stand regarding the types of issues we're receiving... It also shows us trends. That enables us to possibly predict an issue that might come up in the future as well as what is happening right now. We will like that feature. With it, we can either avoid certain issues or know where we need to focus more regarding the service we provide."
"Remote access is most valuable."
"The feature that I have found most valuable from ServiceNow is the ability to assign sub-tasks to different teams, including problem tickets and the regular and chain tasks."
"Primarily, we use it for incident management and change across the landscape. It is the virtual repository for our incident management processes. It gives us visibility about what's happening from the change management perspective across our CABs, including our enterprise CABs."
"I don't have to look through a whole bunch of other incidents that aren't relevant to me. It's very useful in that sense."
 

Cons

"The breadth and depth of the solution's discovery of IT asset information means the system does most of the work, but they need to work on improving the database discovery part, especially for Oracle Exadata."
"When servers have two network adapters, automatically discovered will be only one network card because the other one is a backup. Device42 has some problems to find the other connection."
"In my experience I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead other solutions such as lanweber are much more cost effective. Previously, Device42 operated on perpetualysis without any fees. But recently they have altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as a very costly affair. Therefore I would like to suggest that they evaluate their pricing strategy and licence scheme, conduct a market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price."
"It would be nice for the agent to have an installer versus a single file across multiple systems."
"My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient."
"While the automatic IT asset discovery is great, the first time using it can be confusing when you are configuring the SNMP. I don't remember for sure but I don't think it said "SNMP community," it said "password". The first time I used it I was thinking about communities but the tool said "password," and when you say "password" in SNMP you are thinking about SNMP version 3. This is the only thing that is confusing, although there were some devices that were not included in the discovery."
"The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server, appliance, virtual machine, or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests."
"Since I was focused on deploying connectors and getting all the servers to be scanned, one of the biggest pains was when a job would fail, then the output (logging) was poor. For example, "Why did it fail?" In these cases, you get a generic error. It doesn't point you in the right direction and tell you why you got the error, which is really annoying. There have been times I asked, "Is there somewhere I can see a better log as to why is this failing?" That would be a really nice improvement."
"The reporting, which also includes dashboards, needs to be improved, and there should also be the ability to turn on and off portions of Project Management. Currently, as soon as you install the new version, you've got to go back there and make all the tweaks. There should be just a configuration file that goes to the new version.  The Project Management module does not leverage the knowledge base the way it should, and there is no built-in ability to get to the articles. Resource management should be easier. It would be amazing if they can make resource management a little bit more graphical. There are other solutions that I've seen where resource management was a more visual experience."
"Some enhancements to the self-service platform would be helpful. That part is still a little barebone... Also, the mobile app is not bad, but it's limited."
"The biggest complaint I have is that the ServiceNow search engine is not very robust."
"The product’s standard user experience is not the best."
"We don't have a huge amount of password reset requests, but the minimum package of resets that ServiceNow offers is much more than we need."
"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."
"There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow."
"I would like to see more functionality in terms of custom workflows, not impacting the overall platform health."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $100,000 per year."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."
"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."
"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."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"The cost is quite high."
"The CapEx version is great."
"The solution is expensive."
"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 licenses are expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?
Based on the use case for Device42, I found the solution a bit expensive. However, when you look at the support and the industry standards, Device42 was on par with the industry. Device42 is a litt...
What needs improvement with Device42?
The product must provide AI features. It would be very useful if I could create datasets or queries from an AI interface.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
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    
Find out what your peers are saying about Device42 vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.