Freshservice vs ServiceNow — Analyzed, Tested, and Reviewed

Posted by
Tetiana Belevska

Updated November 28, 2024

With new tools released every day, it is only natural that established vendors continue to improve their solutions. Updates are essential for staying relevant. But how exactly are these systems improved? And what is the general consumer response? To find out, we’ve compared two popular systems, Freshservice and ServiceNow.

However, unlike how we typically do it, we will also consider consumer pros and cons. We will look at the majority of reviews published online and see what most people seem to agree upon. Got it? Alright, now let’s get started!

Help Desk Tool Overview

Now, for those of you who are unaware, we decided that it would be great to cover the basics about the systems, as well as outline the core focus in regards to functionality. This will allow you to understand that tool better, as well as see what size of a company each tool serves.

Freshservice

Born to help IT companies manage hardware and software in an efficient manner, Freshservice is a service desk solution that incorporates a wide set of sub-systems that are designed to improve asset management, accelerate internal response time, and, ultimately, maintain stability across the board. Currently, the general overview of the brand looks like this.

Number of Employees: Approximately 1000;

Notable Clients: MoneyCorp, TeamViewer, Cordant Group, Honda, University of Oregon;

ServiceNow

Created for companies that want to maintain good security without sacrificing functionality, ServiceNow is a service desk solution designed to improve current operations through automation, systematization, and rules. Currently, the general overview of the brand looks like this.

Number of Employees: Approximately 6000;

Notable Clients: Allianz, Siemens, WayFair, Australian Catholic University;

Pricing

Now that we know some information about the companies, let’s take a look at their pricing offerings. After all, for many people, price-to-performance metrics will prove to be the deciding factor. For this particular case, we’ve opted to use the first paid plan as it will prove to be the starting point for many small organizations.

Before we start, we’d like to stress that ServiceNow does not provide any public information regarding pricing, but we managed to find out using Capterra.com as a reputable resource. Although we did find out the price, we couldn’t locate any specifics, meaning we will solely discuss Freshservice.

So, for just $19 per agent/month, you will get access to a dedicated knowledge base module, an incident management system, and even automation. Take for instance Zoho Desk, you get automation options starting from the Professional plan. While this isn’t the only benefit of the money paid you’ll get, it is the most notable one. This will prove to be invaluable for smaller companies (since every penny counts) and gives Freshservice an edge in the low-end market.

Features

Both systems have a set of unique features that will be helpful, but we cannot tell if they will work in your case. We suggest that you apply the features listed to your company to determine which tool will work best in your scenario. But for now, on to the features themselves.

Freshservice

We’ll start with Freshservice as it is the more expanded platform of the two, and it has more talking points. So, for those of you who are thinking about the tool but still on the fence, here’s what you will get access to:

Team Huddle

This feature will help your teammates to communicate within a ticket. It forms a simple chat UI where you can tag a person, reply to messages, and even highlight ticket information.

Source

Real-time Project Dashboard

The Project Dashboard was created to give you a complete overview of your project in a simple window that has all the metrics you might ever need. Furthermore, if you want more details, just click on the board itself. You’ll be able to see violated deadlines, the timeline of the project, and even tracking indicators.

Asset Auto-discovery

As the name suggests, this feature automatically scans your network to find new hardware. In addition to discovering, the system can also update the status of an asset and display what it is currently working on (further configuration is required).

Interactive Visualizations

This system will automatically visualize your data in a digestible manner. With it, you can effortlessly display insights, performance metrics, and even satisfaction rates across the board.

ServiceNow

Cost Tracking

As the name implies, this module can provide you with a financial overview of all of your expenses and incomes across multiple departments. If you seek granularity, you can set up the system to display specific expenses and specific income on a per-agent basis.

Source: GetApp

Incident Routing

This function will allow you to route specific incidents to specific people. In other words, it will automatically route the right people to the right ticket based on previous success or specialty.

Source

Real-time Dashboards

Similar to what you can find in Freshservice, this feature allows you to track information across various fields of operation. You can also share these dashboards with other team members and even export them to demonstrate later.

Source

Consumer Pros & Cons

For the last part, we’ll examine what other people think about the system. There’s not much we can discuss here, so just look at the data below to see for yourself.

ServiceNow Reviews

Source: capterra.com

Freshservice Reviews

Source

Bottom Line

So there you have it. As you can see, both we and the users think that ServiceNow and Freshservice are exceptionally good systems. They target the same company sizes and are pretty similar in terms of features. If you are unsure, we suggest that you give them a shot, as both offer a free trial. If you feel like you need help moving to any of the tools, just leave us a message, and our experts will help you out. But for now, thanks for joining us.

Frequently Asked Questions