ServiceNow Discovery vs Zabbix comparison

Read 103 Zabbix reviews

9,020 Views
7,017 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Discovery

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: December 2024).

ServiceNow Discovery vs. Zabbix

December 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 823,875 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Discovery

Ranking in Server Monitoring

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

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

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Network Monitoring Software (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 9.2%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 21.2%, down from 23.0% 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

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.

Read full review

ASM Naushad Alam

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

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

We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.

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

"It is a stable solution...The initial setup of the product is straightforward."

"The product provides great scalability features."

"Discovery enables us to get an accurate inventory that's updated daily. It eliminates human error and the need for people to update configuration changes manually. We have not implemented them yet but plan to set up alerts on CIs that are being audited to see if there are any changes."

"We mostly use the solution's ITSM and ITOM capabilities in most workflows."

"I find that the Discovery and scripting features are the most useful."

"I am impressed with the tool's incident problem change management."

"The service management and operations management modules are valuable."

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

More ServiceNow Discovery pros

"Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures."

"The solution is quite mature and very stable."

"We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix."

"It has improved our server performance monitoring overall. We know right away when there are problems. It has built-in statistics, so we can go back and see if there's spiking. We can check what's happening every day around the same time and check the configuration to see if there's something that's running and needs to be fixed."

"I really enjoy network traffic triggers that allow us to check traffic threshold from ISP."

"The most valuable features of Zabbix are flexibility and a single interface for different types of monitoring."

"There is a problems page that shows us every warning or problem that occurs on our VMs globally. The map screen is also really useful because this is something that was missing. I don't know every other tool in the market. So, I don't know if this is a good point of only Zabbix, or other tools are also doing it, but from my point of view, this is the most useful page that I use, along with the problems page that efficiently lists the problem, recovery time, ending hours, starting hours, and so on."

"The pricing of the product is reasonable."

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."

"Instead of AI, even GenAI should be introduced in ServiceNow Discovery."

"Discovery, while a bit pricey, integrates well with other tools and offers a centralized discovery solution. These aspects could be enhanced in the new release."

"Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough."

"ServiceNow is very costly."

"ServiceNow Discovery should be updated to provide its users with more out-of-the-box information and attributes to support the routers and switches from Cisco."

"What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools. Other tools have better reporting UI than what's currently in ServiceNow Discovery. What I'd like to see in the next release of ServiceNow Discovery is more user-friendly out-of-the-box reporting that would be helpful for non-technical users. Some users such as managers would want to just do a few clicks to access the reports and shouldn't be required to do search queries, but right now, reporting in the tool isn't very user-friendly."

"I find it valuable to enhance IP address management. I've been in this field since around 2011, and my experience since then has revolved around automation, deployment, distribution, and comprehensive inventory management, all crucial for deploying various components, including patches. When we talk about patch management or vulnerability management, it's more complex than just applying patches; sometimes, you need to undergo significant upgrades or phase out old components for new ones, and this can turn into a substantial project, explaining why vulnerabilities persist. Now, the role of ServiceNow Discovery and security operations, or at one point, looking at vulnerability management in ServiceNow Discovery, is crucial. It allows you to identify vulnerabilities on assets and, with the addition of discovery, service mapping, and event management, you gain a business context for these vulnerabilities. It's not merely about knowing they exist on a server; it's about understanding which services are responsible for critical business processes or transactions, like payroll. This knowledge changes the approach and execution of vulnerability remediation."

More ServiceNow Discovery cons

"I want Zabbix to improve the UX/UI. Zabbix doesn't use a JavaScript chart for images, and I want them to improve this."

"Implementing Zabbix is difficult. I've deployed many solutions over the years, and Zabbix is the hardest to implement. You have to do some development to get it to work with IBM, Micro Focus, or HP products."

"When using this solution in enterprise monitoring, you are able to see that there are some issues with equipment that could be causing a problem. Sometimes you want to make a root command that you do not want to be executed automatically. What we have tried to do is open an SSH session directly from the solution's interface but it is not possible."

"The APM monitoring has room for improvement, although I hear that the new 5.2 version has some improvements in that area, and I'd like to give that a go. I would like to see a few more templates out there for different styles of monitoring. I use the Grafana interface for reporting. I would also like it to have an out-of-the-box ability to email reports. You can create reports, but to be able to email those reports would be really helpful. I've got users who are not interested in logging in and generating a report. They want it all pre-canned and sent to an email address. It would also be really handy if we could pin certain reports up onto platforms such as Teams or SharePoint. A GUI for the proxy server would be cool to have for debugging purposes and for the support teams to have a look at, but I don't know whether that's really feasible to do. I get enough from the log files themselves."

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

"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."

"The product delivers false positives during reporting because of flapping. Other reasonably priced alternatives may have better performance."

"The product could be more secure and more stable."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is a paid option within the ServiceNow framework."

"There is a need to make payments every quarter of a year towards the licensing costs of the solution. ServiceNow Discovery is an expensive tool."

"The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten."

"The product is not cheap."

"ServiceNow Discovery is expensive, but the company has a monopoly and we need to use the solution. We use it because we do not have a choice."

"It costs a lot. It is probably close to over a hundred thousand. It's an expensive platform, but you can't compare ServiceNow's Discovery functionality to other discovery tools. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison of ServiceNow to a configuration management tool to an asset management tool because it does those things, but it's not those things."

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

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

More ServiceNow Discovery pricing and cost advice

"It is open source. If you want to have a subscription or official support, you can pay for it. They have different plans, which are not that expensive. The plans are based on per monitoring server, not per monitored equipment. So, it is not at all expensive, and you can also live without the support if you want a cheaper option."

"There is no license but we need to pay for support."

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

"Zabbix is an open-source tool, and it's free to use."

"We’re using the free version, which covers all our current needs."

"The solution is free. However, many open-sourced tools start out free but eventually start charging."

"There is a license required for this solution and we pay annually for our license."

"It’s free of cost."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing 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.

Tanium vs ServiceNow Discovery

Comparisons

Compared 30% of the time

Lansweeper vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 12% of the time

BMC Helix Discovery vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 7% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs ServiceNow Discovery

Compared 3% of the time

More ServiceNow Discovery Competitors

LibreNMS vs Zabbix

Compared 9% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 7% of the time

Checkmk vs Zabbix

Compared 7% of the time

Centreon vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

More Zabbix Competitors

Product Reports

Download ServiceNow Discovery product report

ServiceNow Discovery

November 2024

Download Zabbix product report

November 2024

Learn More

Video not available

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