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Device42 vs ServiceNow CMDB 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

Device42
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (9th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (6th)
ServiceNow CMDB
Ranking in Configuration Management Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Configuration Management Databases category, the mindshare of Device42 is 17.6%, up from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow CMDB is 41.7%, down from 44.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Databases
 

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.
EdwardScott - PeerSpot reviewer
It has helped us consolidate information, improving reporting and visibility
The setup was pretty straightforward on the development side, but I don't think the expectations of the user community are properly set. There is a gap between what the development side is doing, and what the user community expects. For example, my company has used ServiceNow for several years. When I joined, they weren't using it for much besides change management. That was easy to set up and configure. It was immature but fairly usable because no other processes had access to CMDB. It was easy, but their knowledge of what to do with CMDB was underdeveloped. We redeployed it in nine months, but we're still building. I wouldn't say that the deployment is complete because we haven't finished service mapping yet. We spent nine months fixing old problems and ensuring discovery is dependable. A team of about six people is working on the deployment, including architects, developers, subject matter experts, and process owners.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The auto-discovery is brilliant. You can have it scheduled to run on a regular basis, and the infrastructure is always getting updated within the platform. I would rate the asset discovery very highly. It's very comprehensive. It covers quite a lot of different methods for doing discovery and it supports a lot of different types of hardware as well."
"The most helpful feature in Device42 was the import feature, where you can seamlessly import your information into the configuration database manager."
"The solution is agentless."
"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."
"They've also just created some new interactive dashboards. CEOs can see and interact with the data rather than scrolling through endless Excel worksheets to find what they need."
"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."
"A big plus for Device42 was the auto-discovery. With it, we have updated devices, updated systems, and up-to-date systems."
"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 most valuable feature of ServiceNow is the user interface because you can customize or configure it directly from the user interface by using the mouse. It is easy to use even for non-IT people. You can also directly plug your ServiceNow instance within your Microsoft Active Directory and then retrieve all your users and groups. So, you can use the users and groups to put automation inside the application. When you have new hires, you can automate the group security and group attribution. It is very good in terms of performance. Its performance is almost 100%. Once, it took less than two minutes to back up and run an instance. It has very good reliability."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"I deal mostly with asset management, and ServiceNow helps me do my job more effectively."
"We like that this solution allows us to easily track the relationship between our CI and the IT asset module, for troubleshooting purposes, or to check the impact of an incident site."
"It is a dependable source of data. If I want to understand what technologies are used to deliver certain business outcomes, this is what I would use. I can know that this particular server is being used to deliver this business application or business service."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow CMDB is that it provides transparency and tracking of CI usage across multiple process owners or service owners."
"We were previously using spreadsheets to keep track of everything. ServiceNow CMDB has enabled us to consolidate all this information into one place, which helps with audits and reporting. It also improves visibility."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
 

Cons

"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."
"Configuring rPDUs in the data center for Device42 required us to add multiple discovery jobs. The rPDUs were referred to the ISPDUs and daisy-chained. They would automatically assign a unique SMP port, but Device42 didn't allow SMP ranges, so we had to create a discovery job for each rPDU individually. We submitted a feature request to mitigate that."
"Mapping items wasn't as intuitive as importing in Device42, so this is an area for improvement."
"It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved."
"I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security."
"For the iPhone, the device diagram cannot be downloaded. You have to go to each device and download the device diagram for that device. E.g., suppose there are a 1000 or 2000 servers. You cannot go to each server or device to download a device diagram for each device. There should be a one-click solution for downloading all device diagrams."
"If I want to delete an asset from a cabinet it does take a while. And if I'm doing it in bulk — say, for example, if we have one cabinet that has 20 servers in — if I want to remove all 20 servers, I have to do them individually, which is a bit time-consuming. If there were a way that I could just bulk-remove everything from there, that would definitely save some time."
"If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better."
"They can improve the mobile application and the TGO tool, which is a built-in tool for development and implementation. As a developer, it is very frustrating to configure or customize the mobile app. In my opinion, this part of the application needs full rework and re-engineering."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"While ServiceNow CMDB is flexible and comprehensive, it's also difficult to implement and requires a lot of customization. In order to fully leverage ServiceNow CMDB, you need ServiceNow Discovery and some other ServiceNow solutions. It's expensive to purchase all of these. We're negotiating with ServiceNow, but we're thinking about replacing it with another CMDB solution."
"The discovery process and service mapping could be improved."
"The tool is not user-friendly. It has a lot of features and you can get lost in it."
"When running large queries within the system, it does have a tendency to bog down the system. This is something that should be improved. I would also like to see the HAM Pro module beefed up a little bit and integrated better into the SAM Pro module, which seems to be pretty much on the roadmap. Its pricing is pretty complicated and always fluctuating. Its pricing should be improved."
"You need to perform additional planning because their recommendation is not to add columns to the core tables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"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."
"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."
"In comparison to the cost of other solutions, you get value for your money with ServiceNow CMDB. It could definitely be cheaper though."
"I would like it to be cheaper. If you've got a large environment, it can get quite expensive quite quickly. You still get a return on investment, but everybody has a tight budget. In terms of licensing, everything is pretty much known upfront. Being SaaS-based, there are no real additional gotchas that we came across."
"It is really expensive. I don't know actually how much it costs, but in 2016, when a client decided to move from an old solution to ServiceNow and had to choose a supplier for ServiceNow, I had heard that it could cost $10 per hour, which is really expensive. I am not aware of any additional fees to the standard licensing fees. There is no standard ServiceNow solution. When a company wants to acquire ServiceNow, they already know which module they will choose. In a basic package, you would have Service Catalog, Incident Management, and Change Management. These modules are usually required in an IT company."
"The product is pricey."
"The market sees ServiceNow as the Ferrari in terms of pricing. It's at the very top, and its cost is very, very high."
"The product price falls on the higher side of the spectrum."
"It is always fluctuating. It seems to change every six months. Every time they come out with a new iteration, it changes. It is pretty complicated, and they should improve it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your primary use case for Device42?
I use the solution for physical assets management, IT management, and application dependency mapping.
What do you like most about ServiceNow CMDB?
The product's initial setup phase was simple.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow CMDB?
I don't currently see any problems with ServiceNow CMDB since everything works fine. If I click on some particular CIs at the moment, all the information related to that CI appears by default. Righ...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow CMDB?
I use ServiceNow CMDB in my company to deal with areas like incidents, problems, and change management. I use ServiceNow CMDB in my company to deal with all the equipment inventories and our infras...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
Wayfair, Siemens, Allianz, Experian, Vitas Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Device42 vs. ServiceNow CMDB and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.