PagerDuty vs. ServiceNow IT Service Management

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PagerDuty
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
PagerDuty is an IT alert and incident management application from the company of the same name in San Francisco.
$25
per month per user
ServiceNow IT Service Management
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
ServiceNow is a fast-growing service management provider that went public in 2012. Built on the ServiceNow Now Platform, the IT Service Management bundle provides an agent workspace with knowledge management, and modules supporting issue tracking and problem resolution, change, release and configuration management, and (on the higher tier ITSM Professional plan) ITAM and software asset management.
$10,000
per year
Pricing
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Editions & Modules
Professional
$25
per month per user
Business
$49
per month per user
Digital Operations
Contact Sales
Starting Price
$10,000.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details16% discount for annual pricing. AIOps Add-On available for $499 for 10k events per month. Add-On Runbook Automation for Incident Response available at $71 per user / per month.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Considered Both Products
PagerDuty
Chose PagerDuty
While both products showed promise, ultimately PagerDuty had a proven track record that spoke to us.
Chose PagerDuty
Through our evaluation, we selected PagerDuty, mainly because of its user interface and the ability for support managers to configure it without additional support.
ServiceNow IT Service Management

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
PagerDuty
-
Ratings
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.2
67 Ratings
0% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.866 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.650 Ratings
Service restoration00 Ratings7.655 Ratings
Self-service tools00 Ratings9.064 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.662 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.359 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards00 Ratings8.861 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
PagerDuty
-
Ratings
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.5
60 Ratings
3% above category average
Configuration mangement00 Ratings8.259 Ratings
Asset management dashboard00 Ratings8.658 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement00 Ratings8.752 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
PagerDuty
-
Ratings
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.0
61 Ratings
5% below category average
Change requests repository00 Ratings7.561 Ratings
Change calendar00 Ratings7.355 Ratings
Service-level management00 Ratings9.157 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Freshservice
Freshservice
Score 8.7 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Freshservice
Freshservice
Score 8.7 out of 10
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(138 ratings)
8.2
(78 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(6 ratings)
9.0
(13 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(4 ratings)
6.3
(11 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(85 ratings)
7.3
(22 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(2 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
PagerDutyServiceNow IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
PagerDuty
I've used ICM in the past which has been a very Microsoft product with everything thrown into a blender. So, PD implementation is a breath of fresh air with focused pages to achieve the end goal. If the goal is to collaborate on issues across the organization, PD might not be the best solution but within specific teams, PD excels at it.
Read full review
ServiceNow
In our organization, we are using ServiceNow extensively. Change Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Time tracking are few modules which we use extensively. This sort of model will work for any product or service based companies as the product is built on ITIL framework. So this product will be suited for small or large scale companies to better organize and add controls and track SLA's for technology or business process.
Read full review
Pros
PagerDuty
  • Alerting notifications is its best attribute; it will continue to make contact until the alert is acknowledged by a user.
  • The calendar view provides valuable information regarding who is on call by the team and their full contact information.
  • The application also lets you initiate a tech bridge meeting instantly and notifies all on-call users.
Read full review
ServiceNow
  • When I have a number of requests to make, for example a request to add a dozen or so user accounts to more than one group account in Active Directory , I can put all the needed information into the initial form, add it to my "shopping cart" and all of that information remains on the screen for the next item for which I only need to edit a few items (like the AD group name in this example), and keep adding them to the shopping cart until I have them all. When I "Check Out" each of those items is generated as a separate task under the one request. It simplifies and expedites the creation and tracking of these kinds of requests.
  • I can easily and quickly see what tickets are currently assigned to me in order to prioritize them and remain aware of my workload.
  • Numerous fields for CIs can be used when trying to find the entry for a particular item. For example, IP Address, server name, raw text, classification, and so on.
  • To help with making sense out of related tasks, when a task is assigned to me and I need to open another task for a different team to work in order to complete my task, I can open a sub-task from my ticket so that the relationship between the two can be pulled up later into reports. For example, I may have a task to build a new vm, and need to open tasks for networking, security accounts, software installation and so on. By opening sub-tasks from my assignment, the time spent by all parties concerned is tied together for more meaningful cost accounting.
Read full review
Cons
PagerDuty
  • When getting a phone call, PagerDuty doesn't seem to allow acknowledgments of alerts through the phone, which it says it does. I constantly receive a message that it was updated by another person - when in reality, it wasn't.
  • Smarter notifications. If an alert was snoozed for a time, when it comes back, it sends out another alert. It should, I think, send a message asking if the alert is still an issue and give the option to close.
  • Make schedule changes more intuitive.
  • One button to acknowledge and close an alert.
Read full review
ServiceNow
  • It is hard to find areas for improvement, the tool is very powerful. That said, building the CMDB still involves some manual interaction which was not how it was presented in demos.
  • The CMDB data is almost too deep and detailed. When you build the relationship map it can be so large that it is overwhelming. You can limit this, but the default maps are massive if you are discovering lots of device classes.
  • The product is expensive. Since they are the leader in the industry and the product has tons of features, they definitely charge for it!
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
PagerDuty
They have been rock solid for us thus far and are not very expensive and to be honest no time to evaluate other software at this point.
Read full review
ServiceNow
To be completely honest setting up a new ticketing system can be a pain in the ass. Once you have it setup and customized the way you want it, you don't want to switch unless you're unhappy with the product. Unless future releases and updates really muck the system up, I wouldn't change.
Read full review
Usability
PagerDuty
The UI is more complex than I would like. Part of the challenge is that most users use PagerDuty infrequently; I don't remember how I changed a policy last time. Another part of the challenge is that some users expect alerting to be a trivial feature, and are reluctant to invest any time in reading the documentation.
Read full review
ServiceNow
The dashboard is so confusing, [there are] many clicks to open a task and search by a ticket. The Enterprise customisation [we did] has finished to kill the software and creates a really bad experience on a daily basis. [It is] So slow, and so many clicks to process a ticket. Works only on IE so, that [should] make you realize that [it] is a bad idea.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
PagerDuty
No answers on this topic
ServiceNow
We have never had any issues with ServiceNow's availability that I am aware of in the two years I have been using it.
Read full review
Performance
PagerDuty
No answers on this topic
ServiceNow
For a massive system, page loads are reasonably quick, including searches.
Read full review
Support Rating
PagerDuty
PagerDuty is reliable and easy to set up. It gives an effective way to notify the team about critical incidents which results in a faster turnaround time on issues. users can customize their alerts rules based on their preferences. Overall it's effective and easy to use which adds great business value.
Read full review
ServiceNow
I would give it this rating because we have had no major issues with the support for ServiceNow after we implemented it at our organization. They seem to respond promptly and efficiently if we ever do need to open a support case with them about an issue we are having.
Read full review
Online Training
PagerDuty
No answers on this topic
ServiceNow
To type in what should be a text box, you have to click an empty cell, a tiny text box pop up opens with a check box and an X. You the. Type in the text box and have to click the check mark. If you have a bunch of fields to fill out, doing this is very annoying. Absolutely know thought went in to this. I'm sure somebody in marketing thought it was a good idea. It wasn't.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
PagerDuty
When I setup notifications to PD thru the Python API I was impressed with the ease with which I could set up the software/service.
Read full review
ServiceNow
Without exception, every client I have worked with has been very happy with their resulting product. While this is partly due to my work, I must point out that the platform is the winning decision, not the implementer.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
PagerDuty
I have not use the 2 technologies for as long as I have used PagerDuty but in my opinion PagerDuty makes things a lot easier. The other tools got the job done and got alerts out but PagerDuty just seemed to make the setup for on-call alert schedules and integrations easier than the others. This isn't to say the others are difficult, just that PagerDuty was slightly better. I also have noticed that more tools have options to integrate to PagerDuty over the other tools.
Read full review
ServiceNow
We used to use Jira to handle service tickets but it's way too robust for something this straightforward. Due to the nature of Jira, you needed to already have a lot of documentation and knowledge about who should be assigned the ticket, so the lift of creating a ticket was time consuming.
Read full review
Scalability
PagerDuty
No answers on this topic
ServiceNow
ServiceNow works as an enterprise solution.
Read full review
Return on Investment
PagerDuty
  • Allow our service to be available 24/7 with minimal downtime, improving customer experience
  • Monitor incidents and allow us to customize/schedule alert notifications, making engineers' jobs easier and preventing turnover
  • Prevent SEVs that could deteriorate, bring down our service, and cost us millions of dollars from loss in bookings
Read full review
ServiceNow
  • Overall ServiceNow has a positive impact on getting the SLA of tickets down in supporting our customers.
  • One negative impact has been the amount of time to get the product to produce an ROI, it's almost too big to fail and too big to replace. You almost become committed to the product. Good or bad.
  • Another negative impact would be if you track metrics of employees and time tracking, there is a lot of scenarios where engineers will track time on tickets but not get credit for closing them as the assignee function of tickets can only be tied to one user and credits only the engineer who closes the ticket.
  • Another positive impact would be the level of security for permissions and scaling the workloads is robust and you will get out of the system what your team is willing to put in.
Read full review
ScreenShots

PagerDuty Screenshots

Screenshot of Similar Incidents [Apple iPad], Open Incidents [iPhone 8], On-Call Schedule Menu [Apple Watch])Screenshot of the Machine Learning with Technical Service Dependencies, used to better understand related incidents.Screenshot of a glimpse of service health and team performance via PagerDuty’s Intelligent Dashboards.