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LeanIX vs ServiceNow 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

LeanIX
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (1st)
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
222
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

LeanIX and ServiceNow aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. LeanIX is designed for Enterprise Architecture Management and holds a mindshare of 15.8%, up 14.7% compared to last year.
ServiceNow, on the other hand, focuses on IT Service Management (ITSM), holds 21.8% mindshare, down 27.0% since last year.
Enterprise Architecture Management
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Q&A Highlights

AC
Feb 13, 2025
 

Featured Reviews

Umit Sengul - PeerSpot reviewer
A platform that facilitates efficient IT architecture management and integration, improving organizational coordination and decision-making
LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've been able to develop some nice looking reports, and the dashboard's capability to map is very easy compared to Enterprise Architect."
"The most valuable feature would be application portfolio management, which is where they came from, but over time, they have got artificial intelligence. They built up a very good repository. If I identify a system by name, from historical information, oftentimes, they can tell me that this is deployed with this number of CPUs and they can give me a really good profile of the application for me to put it into a change management database with very little effort."
"The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources."
"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."
"The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies."
"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and the user experience. It's easy to map the fact sheets."
"Among the most valuable features are the easy-to-use interface and the ability to get quick results... Many tools that I have seen are great for technical people and for giving technical and business information as well, but they're not as friendly and easy as LeanIX... It works well for both technical and business users. It provides a good combination, enabling you to quickly put valuable information in for both technical and non-technical people and derive results."
"One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool."
"The flow designer for application development is the most valuable. The newest version of flow designer allows us to develop applications quite fast. We can have custom and mobile applications. It has an interface for mobiles, and it also has a good reputation."
"Some of the valuable features I have found the solution to have are it can serve many different types of businesses, it has strong platform capabilities, provides application development, built-in predictive intelligence, and performance analytics reports."
"Flexibility is the most valuable feature of ServiceNow, that is, being able to modify it to do what we need it to do."
"ServiceNow provides quite good insights about what is happening in the organization."
"ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI."
"It is robust and very user-friendly."
"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."
"We used ServiceNow for change management, release management, and event management."
 

Cons

"The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner."
"The modeling could be improved."
"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."
"Not a ten because you always have that gap between complexity and easy to use. And the more complex the tool becomes, the more difficult it is to get the usability."
"Another area for improvement is that when you're starting to look into more advanced information, using the solution's APIs and its customizations, documentation for that specific aspect is not very good. There is not too much support built into the offering for that aspect, for a developer."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module."
"I have enjoyed all the features. There is not any feature that I have missed or didn't have."
"In an upcoming release, there should be more administration tools."
"It would be nice if we could, with some specific access rights, move histories from one squad to another, as they generate dependencies or duplicate or flag them."
"They can maybe improve the area of agile project management. They do have user storyboards and other things, but we kind of lean on Jira for that work. This is perhaps an area that could be looked at a little more."
"We find it good in general. Obviously, there are areas of improvement for every capability. As they evolve more, if they keep on adding more intelligence into the capabilities, it will improve. The improvement areas are more integration across the landscape and more intelligence for the overall capability of the solution."
"They could improve license management, particularly when integrating different applications or toolsets."
"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."
"It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"There is a sweet spot of where they need to be on pricing right now. They could go up a little bit in pricing, but it has to do with the cost savings, and it has to do with the practitioners using it. I use it where I get cost savings and I can justify it, but they probably have the ability to flex a 10% up channel on their sales on that. So, they could increase their settle price, not their offering price, when they sell. They can probably hold that up a little bit higher than it is because there are cost savings that we can drive from it."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
"The tool needs to include more flexible licensing options. We do not use the tool all the time. So pricing should be considered only when we use the tool."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"I have found the solution very expensive."
"It is an expensive platform."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"The license model is based on a number of fulfillers (active users who play some role within the ServiceNow functionality). Therefore, you can serve as many end-users as you want, without additional costs."
"ServiceNow tends to be a little bit more expensive as compared to BMC Helix ITSM."
"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."
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Answers from the Community

AC
Feb 13, 2025
Feb 13, 2025
Bizzdesign has a ServiceNow integration that is available on the SNOW App Store - this blog will explain how you can use the power of both platforms to design strategic technology roadmaps to drive digital transformation, IT estate modernization and cloud transformation for your enterprise. - ServiceNow APM and Bizzdesign to win at Digital Transformation
2 out of 5 answers
Jairo Willian Pereira - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 4, 2022
IMHO, ServiceNow is a complete ITSM tool, designed to support tradictional/waterfall and digital/agile "business" and is completely adherent with ITIL (and others frameworks). LeanIX offers a more limited setup of inventary, correlation and others tools (for example, offers only few ITIL domains), such as showed here https://docs.leanix.net/docs.For market-time, features and maturity i'll choice ServiceNow but the price may be a problem.
KO
Jan 4, 2022
Don't know about LeanIX but QualiWare has a ServiceNow bi-directional API already in place....
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any experience with Strategic Project Portfolio Management Solutions?
Hi @Cheryl Joseph ​Looking at the crossover between Project and Portfolio management with EA, then Planview could be a good choice. If looking at Portfolio Management from an EA perspective then Le...
What do you like most about LeanIX?
The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?
LeanIX pricing ranges from moderate to high. Our usage and costs depend on the number of applications, and as the number of applications grows, so does the cost. We have aligned our usage with appl...
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

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
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 SAP LeanIX, Sparx Systems, erwin by Quest and others in Enterprise Architecture Management. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.