Freshservice vs. ServiceNow IT Service Management

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshservice
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Freshservice is a cloud-based service desk and IT service management (ITSM) solution that currently serves more than 10,000 SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers worldwide.
$29
per month per agent
ServiceNow IT Service Management
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Pricing
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Editions & Modules
Starter
$29.00
per month per agent
Growth
$59.00
per month per agent
Pro
$119.00
per month per agent
Enterprise
Custom
ITSM Standard
Custom Quote
ITSM Pro
Custom Quote
ITSM Enterprise
Custom Quote
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing.ITSM Pro and ITSM Enterprise also are available with optional "Plus" add-ons. These include AI Agents, an AI Agent Studio, and other features that augment the capabilities of the platform using AI Virtual Agents to automate tasks.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Considered Both Products
Freshservice
Chose Freshservice
Pricing and ease of implementation.
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice is far easier to configure than Service-now. While service-now is perhaps better suited for large enterprise organizations, it requires a dedicated to administer. Freshservice on the other hand, is relatively easy to configure, but certainly targeted to smaller and …
Chose Freshservice
It was from my previous employer.
Chose Freshservice
Mainly because of its very easy-to-use design, pricing, support and integration options. It is also very modern and fast in adopting new features.
Chose Freshservice
As we are a smaller IT team, and a medium sized organization, we found most options for an ITSM to be more robust and overkill for our needs. Freshservice hit the mark in terms of features and pricing.
Chose Freshservice
The search list is WAY too hard to use - I have used
Jira service management - Freshservice is WAY better
ServiceNow ITSM, ITAM (SAM, HAM), ITOM, Project, Change - SNow is WAY better but also WAY WAY more expensive
Chose Freshservice
I wasn't able to fully leverage ServiceNow in the past. I only used ServiceNow's ticketing portal. But by just basing the self-service portal and SNow's ticketing module, I'd say that Freshservices' interface is way more customer-centric and user-friendly. I may be wrong or …
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice is more cost-effective and adoption is easier than other solutions, it might not have all the integrations and features of other products but it either adds them over time as it has during my usage or gives a roadmap to when they might be available.
Chose Freshservice
Easier to implement as compared to other ITSM tool like Summit Symphony ITSM. Freshservice to be the perfect amount of customisable in the Admin portal and we can use it out-of-the-box without needing any coding knowledge to build anything, but we have used the settings to …
Chose Freshservice
It is always better than Remedy tool and also cheaper
Chose Freshservice
1. Cost - I have always had the best cost provided by Freshservice as compared to others
2. Functionality - far more functionality is provided by Freshservice
3. ITIL enabled ITSM tool with better support for different ITIL modules
Chose Freshservice
We are using SNOW at our parent company level but we find it quite complex in comparison to Freshservice and we do not have admin access to it in the same way we do to Freshdesk. Overall I prefer Freshservice but for larger corporations with large teams supporting the product I …
Chose Freshservice
I have selected to go with Freshservice since it seemed easy to configure and maintain.
Chose Freshservice
Automation, user friendly admin module, quick support and lucid knowledge base
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice was a lot cheaper and a lot more powerful out of the box than ServiceNow. Being a smaller company, we needed the out of the box functionality and limited administrator interaction for our solution. ServiceNow required a bit more work on the backend where …
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice is easy to configure, easy to use, evolves super quickly and comes at a very reasonable price. Other systems we tried or evaluated were super expensive, unstable or hard to configure. I was surprised by how easy it was to implement Freshservice and to gain adoption …
Chose Freshservice
For our use much better. So much cheaper and simple to setup, up and running is days not months# being able to configure in house is a massive advantage for us and SO MUCH CHEAPER..
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice' beats ServiceNow and Jira Service Management on two key areas: user experience and ease of use (for both users and agents) and out-of-the-box readiness.

We found that both ServiceNow and Jira Service Management require significant configuration and building to get …
Chose Freshservice
We found Freshservice to have the best balance between pricing and features. While you don't get nearly as many possibilities as with ServiceNow (e.g., the ability to build nearly any type of workflows from end-to-end), the solution is quite user-friendly with not much of a …
Chose Freshservice
We came from Zendesk, which worked well for us as a customer service interaction platform, but we needed a fully-fledged ITSM that would allow for asset management, documentation for internal changes and requests all in one. We found that with additional tools and automations …
Chose Freshservice
Brilliant for an ITIL Service Desk solution for use by IT department. Can be used to manage incoming IT emails automatically ticketing them and replying to users reducing work load of first line support. Can be
ServiceNow IT Service Management
Chose ServiceNow IT Service Management
The base cloud solution covers the majors needs of the organization, giving the opportunity to deploy the ServiceNow solution very quickly, in weeks, rather than months as is the case with with BMC Remedy.
Features
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
8.2
142 Ratings
1% above category average
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.9
68 Ratings
9% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.1142 Ratings10.067 Ratings
Expert directory8.3100 Ratings8.051 Ratings
Service restoration8.385 Ratings8.056 Ratings
Self-service tools8.1126 Ratings10.065 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.9103 Ratings9.063 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.6117 Ratings9.060 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards8.1122 Ratings8.062 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
7.7
114 Ratings
6% below category average
ServiceNow IT Service Management
8.3
61 Ratings
1% above category average
Configuration mangement7.4106 Ratings8.060 Ratings
Asset management dashboard7.5111 Ratings8.059 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement8.278 Ratings8.952 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
8.0
109 Ratings
5% below category average
ServiceNow IT Service Management
9.0
62 Ratings
7% above category average
Change requests repository7.7103 Ratings9.062 Ratings
Change calendar7.887 Ratings9.056 Ratings
Service-level management8.4102 Ratings9.058 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.2 out of 10
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(143 ratings)
10.0
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(7 ratings)
9.0
(13 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(13 ratings)
9.0
(12 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.8
(6 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(107 ratings)
7.3
(22 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.2
(3 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(8 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.5
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.1
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.3
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshserviceServiceNow IT Service Management
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Freshservice is well suited for companies looking to implement ticketing / case management across the organization, but only if IT will be using it. Otherwise, I'd recommend Freshdesk. IT departments that don't function in the ITIL style of incident, request, change, and project management may find it overkill if they are only looking for a simple Help Desk solution.
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
Freshworks Inc
  • The smartphone app is very well designed and adding assets from there is very easy
  • If you have questions or support, the support desk is fast to respond and setup a meeting to explain the features
  • Very customizable and everything can be easily changed with a wizard
  • Reporting feature does what it needs to do and is not complicated to work with
  • The overall ticketing system is very good and we have not run into any issues
  • The whole system is incredibly responsive and does not hang or freeze
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
Freshworks Inc
  • To have more options on what to do with the emails that arrive in the support mailbox (which goes to Freshservice), Setting some special rules or detailed filtering is not possible.
  • Non 3rd party tools to connect to Intune are missing. Additionally, the third-party tool available in the store is not satisfactory. It would be nice to have native support for importing devices from our Azure cloud.
  • The contract requires you to prolong your contract end-date by two years instead of just one year, which to us is a bit aggressive.
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
Freshworks Inc
We are pretty invested in Freshservice right now and have integrated it pretty heavily into our environment, so it would be hard to move away from it. For the most part, we are happy with Freshservice and the ease of use it gives us in managing tickets through the system. The only complaint we've had is customer service.
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
Freshworks Inc
The UI design of Freshservice is simple and intuitive. You don't have to be a technical expert to navigate your way into the different pages/modules available. There are no buttons that are hidden in plain sight. Even our HR team required little to no help when they started using Freshservice.
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
Freshworks Inc
Downtime is minimal (it does happen but not often)
Read full review
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
Freshworks Inc
Most reports are quick, however, it can take some time for emailed exports to come via email. It would be helpful to have the exports live in the system rather than having to wait on emails.
Read full review
ServiceNow
For a massive system, page loads are reasonably quick, including searches.
Read full review
Support Rating
Freshworks Inc
Support from OEM is decent but needs improvement. Sometimes OEM also needs to understand the criticality of the customer and help as an Ad-hoc, which is somewhat lacking at Feshservice. Although the normal support team is well-equipped and helps according to the matrix, if something critical for the partner or customer requires immediate attention, it still goes through the L1-L2-L3 levels, which wastes a lot of time.
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
In-Person Training
Freshworks Inc
Training was enough to use the base website
Read full review
ServiceNow
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Freshworks Inc
Their documentation is pretty good, but only available in English. This makes it difficult for some of our users to understand. There are also some basic video courses available.
Read full review
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
Freshworks Inc
Creating the correct groups for the stakeholders and enabling the right notifications are one of the most important aspect of the implementation. Creating Change templates will also help in the long run and it's a good practice to create one, if applicable.
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
Freshworks Inc
Easy setup and a lot of customization which can be made. They offer the full ITSM tool for 75$ per agent and all the PRO are included in the package, which makes it easy to calculate and use. There are only a few add-ins that you need to pay for, based on the number of agents or the number of executions.
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
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Freshworks Inc
Was not able to update us proactively about our renewal causing lost of access
Read full review
ServiceNow
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Freshworks Inc
The software is very scalable from a small to mid sized team. The features have seemed to scale exceptionally well.
Read full review
ServiceNow
ServiceNow works as an enterprise solution.
Read full review
Professional Services
Freshworks Inc
We did not have professional services.
Read full review
ServiceNow
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Freshworks Inc
  • We had no ticketing system at all so we had no idea of the workload, we now do
  • We have been able to go from nothing to seeing workload to identifying areas for improvement by having the metrics
  • We have lowered MTTR every month since turning on fresh service
  • We have increased 1st all resolution every month
  • We have been able to start talking about real SLA's with the business
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

Freshservice Screenshots

Screenshot of Android App SupportScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Project ManagementScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Change ManagementScreenshot of Project Management

ServiceNow IT Service Management Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of