ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

ServiceNow and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #41 with an average rating of 7.5, while Splunk is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4. ServiceNow holds a 0.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 4.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

771 Views
593 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk AppDynamics

Read 245 Splunk AppDynamics reviews

13,704 Views
8,634 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Splunk AppDynamics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Splunk AppDynamics and ServiceNow Cloud Observability are direct competitors in cloud monitoring and observability. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is considered to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and long-term value.

Features: Splunk AppDynamics provides application performance monitoring, diverse integration capabilities, and real-time analytics. ServiceNow Cloud Observability offers workflow automation, data centralization, and proactive incident management.

Room for Improvement: Splunk AppDynamics could improve its capabilities for monitoring emerging technologies, enhance its scalability features, and offer more robust security protocols. ServiceNow Cloud Observability could work on improving its user interface for less complex operations, increase integration capabilities with third-party applications, and reduce the initial setup complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk AppDynamics features a streamlined deployment process and responsive technical support. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is known for its robust integration with existing ServiceNow products and thorough onboarding processes, emphasizing continued customer engagement through its established platform.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk AppDynamics offers a lower upfront cost with substantial ROI from its optimized performance solutions. ServiceNow Cloud Observability, while higher in initial expense, provides compelling ROI through efficient incident management and enhanced operational transparency.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics

April 2025

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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 Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

245

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui

Head of Technology and Services at arwentech

Dynamic mapping enhances workflows that are user-friendly

One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"Error analysis in the troubleshooting sections go straight to the point."

"The proactive monitoring from AppDynamics definitely helps."

"The most valuable feature is the live reporting on the current health\performance of our application"

"It is easy to gain visibility into complex environments with AppDynamics. It has the ability to combine operation information of the environment and business information with strong business IQ support."

"In AppDynamics, everywhere I go, there's some sort of grouping and aggregation function, or there's some sort of timeline that lets me zero in more quickly on the traces that I need. They go to more pains to aggregate and bubble the important ones to the top. That removes a lot of manual work."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ability to discover and track transactions."

"The most valuable feature is the one that enables you to have visibility into the end-users journey."

"The auto-discovery of the logs is the most valuable feature. It requires minimal configuration, we just need to set up on once and it automatically detects through the code."

More Splunk AppDynamics pros

Cons

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"While it is scalable, it could be better."

"The AppDynamics installation process needs to be more straightforward. Deploying the product is also tricky."

"The major concern lies with reports, specifically their configurability. It's like, if I want to combine multiple reports and generate them all at once, that's not possible. Even though there's a setup for generating 25 reports, I wanted to group them all and generate them in one go, which isn't currently feasible. I have to manually run each report and set the time for it."

"There could log management features included in the product."

"What could be improved in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for the synthetic jobs or synthetic agents, in particular, you can't do a lot of tests with just one agent. You have to install a lot of agents if you want to do more tests, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is that you're only able to see basic metrics in the absence of server or database visibility. For the SaaS version of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring, my team just downloaded then installed the extension in an application in Azure to see the application on the controller, so if this can be done in the on-premise version of the solution as well, without needing to install the agent on the machine, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring better. Currently, the .NET agent consumes the CPU or memory and clients usually raise this issue with my team, so it would be good if the on-premises version doesn't require agent installation on the machine. Another functionality I'd like to see in the next release of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for it to receive updates from the file config without needing to reset IIS because right now when you do a modification in IIS, you have to restart IIS. When you add a service to the agent config, you have to restart IIS. For the product server, it's not possible to reset IIS after you make changes to the config file, so if this could be improved, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring a better solution."

"I would like to see a better way to automate actions based on the events generated by the tool."

"SQL statement monitoring"

"The solution could be more user-friendly for diagnostic purposes. Anyone who is using the solution should be able to infer what that error is about, they should be able to troubleshoot it better."

More Splunk AppDynamics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"I believe there was probably an extra charge whenever I wanted to contact the support team."

"There were no added costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"It could be a bit lower, but looking at the scalability, functionality, and other things, you can understand why AppDynamics is so expensive as compared to some of the cheaper products that don't have that full single pane of glass they've got. Dynatrace has got three different elements that you need to log into just to get a full view, which is not so good, and because of that, it is a bit cheaper."

"AppDynamics is what I would consider an enterprise-level solution. This means that it's a solution that is intended for use by larger organizations, while small or medium-sized businesses may find it difficult to afford. The number of agents required will also impact the pricing, and smaller companies may only be able to afford a limited number of agents. Essentially, the cost of the solution is not within the reach of every organization, and only some may be able to afford it."

"Pricing is based on the size of the deployment."

"It is expensive. However, our time to recover has been reduced, and this product has helped recuperate costs and provided us with ROI."

"Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs."

"I rate AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's pricing as seven out of ten. Mobile monitoring is paid based on the number of instances utilizing the mobile monitoring service, which increases as the scale grows. Consequently, your mobile user count can proportionally surpass all other applications."

More Splunk AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

11%

Educational Organization

48%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

See all answers

APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit

Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

Comparisons

Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 33% of the time

Helios vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 20% of the time

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 19% of the time

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 18% of the time

New Relic vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 10% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 15% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 10% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 6% of the time

More Splunk AppDynamics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

March 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk AppDynamics

March 2025

Download Splunk AppDynamics product report

Also Known As

LightStep

No data available

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Splunk AppDynamics enhances application performance monitoring with advanced diagnostics and real-time insights, offering seamless end-to-end transaction tracking and infrastructure visibility.

AppDynamics provides critical tools for businesses to analyze application behavior and performance. Through innovative features like transaction snapshot analysis and adaptable dashboards, users can quickly identify and address issues, ensuring high levels of system uptime and efficiency. It is designed to support complex environments including Kubernetes and AWS, enhancing user experience by detecting performance issues early. Despite needing improvements in network monitoring and integration, it remains a robust option for tracking application health.

What are the key features of AppDynamics?

Real-time Performance Monitoring: Offers immediate insights into application behavior.
Business Transaction Tracking: Tracks transactions from start to finish for bottleneck identification.
JVM Memory Monitoring: Provides detailed JVM metrics and memory use information.
Deep-dive Diagnostics: Enables in-depth analysis of code and stack traces.
Adaptable Dashboards: Customizable views for better data interpretation.

How does AppDynamics benefit users?

Improved Incident Resolution: Faster problem detection and solution implementation.
Enhanced Application Performance: Real-time monitoring optimizes system operations.
Comprehensive Visibility: Provides a full view of application infrastructure.
Informed Decision Making: Detailed analytics guide performance improvements.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhances user experience through faster issue resolutions.

In industries like financial services and e-commerce, AppDynamics facilitates performance tracking across distributed systems, optimizing infrastructure to meet consumer demands. It excels in environments needing precise transaction monitoring and is pivotal in delivering high value and satisfaction.

Splunk

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics

April 2025

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