ServiceNow Discovery vs Zabbix comparison

Read 103 Zabbix reviews

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95% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Discovery

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

Zabbix and ServiceNow Discovery are both prominent solutions in the network and application monitoring space. Zabbix's pricing and support receive higher satisfaction from users. However, ServiceNow Discovery is often considered superior due to its feature set, justifying its higher price.

Features: Zabbix users appreciate its robust monitoring capabilities, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. ServiceNow Discovery users value its comprehensive asset management, integration with ITOM products, and extensive feature set, making it the preferred choice for larger organizations needing in-depth IT infrastructure insights.

Room for Improvement: Zabbix users frequently mention the need for a more streamlined setup process, better official documentation, and improved user interface design. ServiceNow Discovery users suggest improvements in the complexity of configuration, enhanced performance speed, and more intuitive user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zabbix deployment is often highlighted for its straightforward setup in user reviews, though some find support lacking in responsiveness. ServiceNow Discovery deployment is seen as more complex, but users praise its customer service for being highly supportive and efficient.

Pricing and ROI: Zabbix is seen as cost-effective, providing a high return on investment with lower setup costs. Conversely, ServiceNow Discovery has higher upfront costs but users feel the extensive features and integrations justify the investment over time.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Discovery vs. Zabbix Report (Updated: October 2024).

ServiceNow Discovery vs. Zabbix

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Helped 815,854 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Discovery

Ranking in Server Monitoring

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (5th), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)

Zabbix

Ranking in Server Monitoring

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (10th), Network Monitoring Software (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 9.1%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 21.1%, down from 23.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

RISHI GUPTA

Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 20, 2023

Valuable relationship building that discovers and auto-builds to make cleanup easy

Proof of concept for the solution doesn't make much sense. It totally depends on the capability of your partner. Choose the partner very carefully while you plan to use the solution. If you get a very competent and capable partner, then life will be easy. If you have a partner who only does technical implementations, then that won't help you. You need to have CMDB and CSDM experts on the team because the solution is for CMDB and CSDM. If you don't design your data model really well, then the solution will not give you much result. The solution is not fully automated so you still need to make some effort. You have to go through the complete remodeling cycle for non-useful data elimination whenever you add a new LAN segment or new mid-server on a new data center or service. It is a little bit of effort, but it is worth the effort. Based on the necessary but important effort, the solution is rated a seven out of ten.

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ASM Naushad Alam

Network Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 16, 2022

Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes

Our company is a financial organization and we use the solution to check connectivity, CPU utilization, and hard disk utilization for all of our servers. We monitor networks to learn traffic conditions. We use threshold features to compare servers or routers and find each server's size before it…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product provides great scalability features."

"It has given us an understanding of each layer from a server application."

"The biggest advantage of ServiceNow is the value that it brings."

"I believe one of the great functionalities or improvements in ServiceNow Discovery is its ability to gather information about any Configuration Items (CIs)."

"I like ServiceNow Discovery's overall structure and the way data comes in without creating a different dashboard or interface."

"The best part about ServiceNow Discovery is that it is included in the ServiceNow suite."

"The most valuable asset is relationship building because the solution discovers and builds auto relationships in a way that makes cleanup very easy."

"In the past, I found troubleshooting difficult in ServiceNow Discovery because I didn't have much exposure to the platform during that time, but then I explored some troubleshooting features, and I found that it wasn't that tough, so this is one of the qualities I like about ServiceNow Discovery. I also like that log reading in ServiceNow Discovery is much better than other tools. Another valuable feature of the tool is that you don't need to install many tools to deploy ITSM. You only need to subscribe to the modules to deploy the proper ITSM in your organization."

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."

"The initial setup, while not simple, is easier than other products."

"The most valuable feature is network traffic monitoring."

"The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring."

"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."

"The most valuable feature is monitoring."

"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."

"Zabbix is a cost-effective solution. We're a small organization with a few dozen devices to monitor, and it was available for free. We can see what we need. We haven't done an in-depth analysis on it, but we're currently okay with the product."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"We would like more flexibility with the licensing. Discovery is bundled with ServiceNow's ITOM license. It was more affordable when it was sold separately, but we bought a package license to get more functionality out of the CMDB. We'd prefer to buy only the pieces we need instead of taking things we don't want or solutions that aren't yet mature enough to use."

"Without improvement in the patters, applications can't be discovered"

"I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved."

"ServiceNow Discovery could improve the interface. The navigation bar could improve. It would be helpful to have a landing page to go to find all the elements in one place."

"ServiceNow has a constant development environment. Hence they get constant bugs which result in incorrect performance. It should also improve customer service."

"I believe there is room for improvement in ServiceNow Discovery, particularly in providing more detailed information about network usage and communication between ServiceNow and the infrastructure."

"They can expand on the plugins for some of the other tools."

"It creates quite a bit of duplication, so that needs to be fixed."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"Outside of the normal standard monitoring, I would like to extend patching, importing patching, and supporting patching for Windows Servers."

"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."

"To improve Zabbix, adding more features to support the monitoring of modern workloads like containers would be beneficial."

"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."

"There is a bit of a learning curve during installation."

"There are some features of Zabbix that are not good for reporting. The DX Spectrum solution has better reporting."

"The networking monitor is not too easy to work with."

"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."

"This is expensive, but it meets our needs."

"The product is not cheap."

"As per a general discussion I had with the stakeholders, I figured out that it is a costly tool. There is a need to make additional payments apart from the licensing fees for better support services from ServiceNow."

"I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten. We had availed some discount from the standard pricing. Even then, the tool's pricing is expensive. You have to pay some vendor service fees for the product's implementation."

"The pricing is determined based on the CIs."

"ServiceNow Discovery's licensing is not a very small investment, but it definitely pays off."

"ROI (Return on Investment) is good. ServiceNow don't disclose the price publicly. They'll assess your organization's needs and then come up with a price."

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"My manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything."

"I was using the free, Community Edition."

"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."

"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."

"We pay the subscription for support by year."

"This solution is open-source and free to use."

"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."

"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

39%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ServiceNow Discovery?

The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?

The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides. However, it is important to factor in the ongoing maintenance costs, as the system requires professional upkeep to ensure optim...

What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?

The continuous improvement in the quality and customization of the product features would be beneficial, particularly as more customers rely heavily on its capabilities.

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

I use the tool's free version.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

I'm using the free version of Zabbix, and I'd like to see more customization options, especially for setting trigger thresholds.

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Product Reports

ServiceNow Discovery

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Download Zabbix product report

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ServiceNow

Overview

ServiceNow Discovery finds applications and devices on your network, and then updates the CMDB with the information it finds. Discovery is available as a separate subscription from the rest of the Now Platform.

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

Sample Customers

York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY

1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba

ServiceNow Discovery vs. Zabbix