ServiceNow Orchestration vs Temporal comparison

ServiceNow and Temporal Technologies are both solutions in the Process Automation category. ServiceNow is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3, while Temporal Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6. Additionally, 92% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Temporal Technologies users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Orchestration

Read 16 ServiceNow Orchestration reviews

2,130 Views
1,563 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Temporal

Read 17 Temporal reviews

1,417 Views
1,108 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Orchestration

Temporal

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

ServiceNow Orchestration and Temporal are competing products in the workflow automation category. ServiceNow Orchestration has the upper hand in established enterprise environments due to its extensive integration capabilities, while Temporal offers more flexibility and scalability for developers.

Features: ServiceNow Orchestration includes robust integration options for multi-system environments, seamless automation of complex workflows, and strong support for enterprise ITSM transitioning to ESM. Its ability to spin cloud services automatically on approval and integrate with Microsoft products offers an edge for complex tasks. Temporal provides excellent support for long-running workflows, simplifies retry and rollback mechanisms, and handles distributed transactions efficiently in microservice environments. Its ability to manage retries and state durability is crucial for maintaining reliability.

Room for Improvement: ServiceNow Orchestration could improve on network connectivity testing and enhance user experience in scripting and UI tasks, which sometimes require expertise in Java. There are limitations in administrator connectivity testing for certain integrations. Temporal could offer more examples and streamlined onboarding for developers less familiar with event-driven architectures. Its complexities in handling signals, queries, and updates might pose challenges without prior knowledge. Providing more robust default settings and examples could enhance the initial learning curve.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow Orchestration provides a deployment model that integrates smoothly with existing systems, with dedicated support simplifying onboarding for enterprises. Temporal offers cloud-native deployment suited for developers building customized systems. Its community and documentation, while helpful, may require more initial adaptation than ServiceNow's structured support.

Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow Orchestration may involve higher upfront costs, yet delivers ROI through reduced integration challenges and streamlined enterprise processes. Temporal provides a cost-effective option prioritizing scalability, potentially resulting in substantial ROI as usage scales, though exact pricing is not publicly detailed.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Orchestration vs. Temporal Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Orchestration vs. Temporal

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 Orchestration

Ranking in Process Automation

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Temporal

Ranking in Process Automation

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

ShaheenKapery

Solutions Architect at Altron

Easy to integrate, stable solution and incredibly good customer service

It is a long setup. It was customized to our company's requirements. Bearing in mind that there is not just an IT team. You've got an IT team consisting of end-users, consulting, and user support sides. Install support, ServiceNow support, application support, and so on. What ServiceNow does is it's really good at getting the tickets to the right person. That's the power of it. There's no issue with it. But you need to set that up in advance. You need to know the structure and who is responsible for each task. The initial setup does take a long time, and the organization might face some issues. But once you've got that resolved, it's amazing.

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AbhishekDash

Senior Software Engineer at A.P. Moller - Maersk

Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management

Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

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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

"This is a user-friendly solution where scripts can be made with ease. There are also many integration options, including Microsoft products, which gives the product a competitive edge."

"It has competitive AI capabilities."

"There are a lot of ready to use orchestration custom packs."

"The product has a flexible interface for development."

"It's scalable."

"Orchestration is commonly utilized by major corporations. The process of linking methods in ServiceNow, known as the RTS chain to parent methods, is executed seamlessly and efficiently. It's quite impressive and significant in its impact."

"It is a very stable product, highly affordable."

"Great with IT processes and business processes."

More ServiceNow Orchestration pros

"The initial setup is easy."

"Temporal allows retryability for different workflows whenever they fail. It helps ensure idempotence and that things get done."

"It is very useful for long-running workflows."

"The most valuable thing about Temporal is that we can create multiple and child workflows. We can segregate work as we want, which is good for work organization. It's also easy to maintain. We're trying to generate and fill PDF forms with custom data, including digital signatures. We call AWS and do all activities through Temporal, like calling and saving data in buckets. We do this because we have a lot of load, with multiple users requesting data. We have two types of users: admin and customer. The admin creates forms, and employees or customers fill them out. When admin gets a form, it's stored in Temporal."

"Temporal focus on developers rather than business users."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to fix things quickly."

"What I like best about the tool is that it's easy to install, especially since it uses JavaScript. It's also easy to set up with Docker, and the documentation is easy to understand."

"When some jobs take a lot of time and fail midway, the solution’s retry feature automatically causes them to retry."

More Temporal pros

Cons

"Efficiency of some features could be improved."

"The flow rate for releases and updates is very, very slow and does not meet customers' objectives for scalability."

"The automatic remediation needs enhancement, particularly integrating ServiceNow with tools like SolarWinds and Logic Monitor. It is functional, but it needs improvement."

"There can be gaps in integration."

"ServiceNow Orchestration needs to improve multiple aspects in which their event monitoring system is one. The solution lacks event monitoring systems which makes them non-competitive. They need to include improvements in a similar manner that they did in Sweden."

"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."

"There should be connectors to cover at least the top industry applications, and they should be easier to configure in a plug-and-play fashion."

"From my space, the only thing that I can say is the spinning up with Google Cloud Services."

More ServiceNow Orchestration cons

"Temporal could be improved by making it more user-friendly for beginners and non-technical staff, ensuring easier integration and usability across different use cases."

"Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products."

"Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states."

"One issue is that we don't have enough resources in the community to get answers when we face problems. We once had a cross-cluster persistence issue, which we solved using different keys. I think Temporal is good right now, but I'm part of the community and will let you know if I think of any improvements."

"I don't like the limitations on data flow, particularly the difficulty of passing large amounts of data between different activities."

"We previously faced issues with the solution's patch system."

"One area where I think Temporal could improve is its dashboard, particularly in event tracking. Currently, the dashboard doesn't show a time-based view of events, meaning it doesn't display when an event started or went through the retry process. If this feature could be added in a future release, it would significantly enhance monitoring capabilities. Other than that, Temporal's overall performance is quite impressive, and we're confident we can migrate to the Temporal workflow."

"Configuring workflows can be improved —the solution could offer more options, but it's not a must-have."

More Temporal cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."

"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."

"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."

"Pricing is custom to every customer."

"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."

"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."

"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."

"It is not very expensive."

"It is worth the price."

"The savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."

"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."

"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."

"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

19%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?

The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...

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

The cost of ServiceNow Orchestration is considered medium; it is expensive but powerful. I would rate the pricing experience as a six out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?

The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow ( /products/servicenow-reviews ) partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?

Temporal OSS is expensive in infrastructure, but it brings back the reliability that companies need.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Temporal?

The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, p...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Temporal?

We [my company] use it to run a large workload. We have a set of security scans we want to perform, and we distribute them over a full day, that’s over 24 hours. We use it to orchestrate all the st...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 54% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Camunda vs Temporal

Compared 50% of the time

Flowable vs Temporal

Compared 16% of the time

Orkes vs Temporal

Compared 14% of the time

Pega Platform vs Temporal

Compared 5% of the time

Appian vs Temporal

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Orchestration

March 2025

Download ServiceNow Orchestration product report

Buyer's Guide

Temporal

March 2025

Download Temporal product report

Overview

ServiceNow is the fastest-growing enterprise cloud software company in the world above $1 billion (2018 revenue was $2.6 billion, up 36% year over year). We deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity to approximately 5,400 enterprise customers worldwide, including almost 75% of the Fortune 500.

ServiceNow

Temporal automates and manages workflows efficiently, offering resilience in distributed systems with features like retry and fault tolerance. Its capabilities in handling complex workflows and integrating with programming languages make it a valuable tool for managing diverse business logic.

Temporal excels in workflow orchestration, automating tasks across multiple platforms, and ensuring durability in asynchronous operations. It supports long-running workflows and simplifies handling distributed transactions, reducing boilerplate code. Temporal is noted for its durable execution and built-in retry policies, enhancing resilience. Despite its complexity and steep learning curve, it is valued for its integration with popular programming languages and relatively easy setup process, though it requires improvements in user-friendly features, documentation, community support, and security.

What are Temporal's key features?

Automation and Efficient Management: Automatically handles workflows without manual intervention.
Resilience and Fault Tolerance: Features built-in retry policies for increased reliability.
Integration: Supports various programming languages, easing development.
Distributed Transactions: Simplifies complex transaction handling with reduced boilerplate code.
Durable Execution: Ensures long-running workflows are reliably managed.

What benefits or ROI should users evaluate?

Scalability and Reliability: Enhances IT environments through robust workflow management.
Ease of Integration: Supports seamless multi-platform automation.
Improved Operational Efficiency: Reduces need for extensive coding, streamlining processes.
Durability and Fault Tolerance: Provides reliable asynchronous operations.

Temporal is implemented in sectors requiring robust workflow orchestration, such as managing data pipelines, API integration, and scheduling tasks. Organizations in a Kubernetes environment leverage it for its scalability and infrastructure management capabilities, securing integrations and enhancing reliability across IT operations.

Temporal Technologies

Sample Customers

experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Orchestration vs. Temporal

April 2025

Free Report: ServiceNow Orchestration vs. Temporal

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