Best ServiceNow Alternatives for Optimal IT Management

In this digital age, most companies operate at least part of their services online. Whether it’s an online store or a ticketing system, these digital workflows can take up a lot of time.

That’s why businesses often turn to tools such as ServiceNow or Instatus to automate routine tasks and speed up their workflows.

However, while ServiceNow is a great IT management tool, no one tool is perfect for every kind of business. Fortunately, there are various ServiceNow alternatives you can use instead.

Read on to find out more.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is an automation tool that helps businesses streamline their IT management workflows. This includes tasks such as issue tracking, customer service, and DevOps processes.

How Does ServiceNow Benefit you?

Effective for Handling Repetitive Tasks

ServiceNow improves your work efficiency by automating repetitive activities, which include aspects of the DevOps lifecycle.

Eliminates Human Errors

Since ServiceNow is an automation tool, it reduces the need for manual interference, which in turn minimizes human error.

Quick Detection of Problems

You can optimize your DevOps testing and detect IT issues early on, allowing you to fix them before they affect other departments or halt your operations.

Supports Work Integration

ServiceNow allows for third-party integrations, such as Salesforce and Okta. This allows you to connect different workflows together — from HR and customer support to DevOps security tasks.

Features to Consider When Choosing a ServiceNow Alternative

Incident & Request Management

Make sure your ServiceNow alternative lets you track issues and customer requests so you don’t miss any tickets.

Knowledge Management

You should be able to provide customers with a help center (e.g., FAQ, guides, etc.) to reduce support tickets and encourage self-learning.

Customization

Your ServiceNow alternative must allow you to customize your workflows or automation to some extent.

Reports & Analytics

The best automation tools offer analytics on things such as your software performance, customer service, and uptime.

Best ServiceNow Alternatives for Optimal IT Management

Now, without further delay, let's move on to the best ServiceNow alternatives available in 2024. In this article, we’ll be discussing the key features and pricing of each tool, allowing you to make an informed decision about which one is best suited for your business.

• Instatus: Best for Automated Software Monitoring
• HaloITSM: Best for Incident Management
• Freshservice: Best for All-in-one IT Management
• Issuetrak: Best for Streamlining Ticket Resolution
• Zendesk: Best for Improving Customer Service

#1 Instatus

Best for Automated Software Monitoring

Instatus allows you to streamline your incident communication with a stunning status page. These fast-loading pages automatically monitor and display your uptime for various systems, such as API, website, and notifications. Customers can easily view your operational statuses and get notified about outages, reducing the number of support tickets you receive.

Any member of your team can update your status page, and all customers are notified of these changes via SMS, email, or other channels.

Key Features

Customizable Status Pages: You can personalize your status page to accommodate your brand. Any updates you make will load in a manner of seconds.

Display Your Uptime: Showcase your uptime (and uptime history) for systems such as databases, apps, and dashboards.

Incident Communication: Alert customers about downtime or outages on your status page. You can even include a reporting button so customers can easily notify you about errors you may have missed.

Pricing

Instatus allows you to create your own status page for free, which comes with unlimited subscribers and team members. However, we also offer premium plans for different types of pages:

• Pro ($20/month — Public Page)
• Business ($300/month — All Pages)
• Private Pro ($50/month — Private Page)
• Select ($100/month — Select Audience)

With our paid plans, you’re able to access features such as custom domains, SSO and IP allow listing.

Pros

• Free plan
• Yearly invoicing
• Customizable status pages
• Issue reporting button
• Fast-loading pages
• 99.9% uptime
• Able to notify customers via multiple channels
• No limitations for subscribers or teammates
• Fast setup
• Automates your incident communication
• Monitors your uptime for various online systems
• Displays historical uptime
• Teammate SSO
• Multiple types of status pages available

Cons

• No free plan for private status pages
• Limited customization options
• Expensive business plan

#2 HaloITSM

Best for Incident Management

HaloITSM is an IT service management tool allowing you to better organize and track your incidents, communications, and change control. You can also view analytics on your average response time and tickets to get insights into your work efficiency.

Key Features

Incident Management: Speed up your incident resolution with HaloITSM’s ITIL-aligned (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) workflows. Automate routine tasks, centralize communications, and more.

Service Catalog: Allow customers to access a self-service portal, where they can locate or request specific services.

Change Control: Use HaloITSM’s change management to easily plan and monitor changes across your organization. Keep track of deadlines and ensure all practices remain standardized throughout.

Pricing

HaloITSM’s prices vary depending on the number of users. Their lowest price is $49/agent/month for 500 agents, with full access to their entire system and in-house onboarding services. They also offer a custom plan, which comes with unlimited licenses, a sandbox environment, and more.

Pros

• Demo available
• Custom plan
• Free trial
• Streamlines incident management
• Centralizes communications
• Change control
• Self-service portal available for customers
• Analytics
• Asset management capabilities

Cons

• Limited flexibility regarding the amount of team members per plan
• High price per user for smaller businesses (the lower the number of agents, the higher the price)
• No free plan

#3 Freshservice

Best for All-in-one IT Management

Freshservice is an all-in-one IT management software which offers features for ITOM (IT Operations Management), ITAM (IT Asset Management), and ITSM. Streamline your digital workflows with their powerful AI and automation tools, such as automated alert grouping and auto-updating CMDBs (Configuration Management Database).

Key Features

Incident Management: Use Freshservice’s AI to speed up your incident management processes. You can also integrate with support channels, such as Slack, as well as chatbots to deflect tickets and automate your customer service.

On-Call Management: Streamline your incident resolution with 24/7 on-call support. Notify team members via their preferred channel and automatically escalate any unseen issues.

Unified Asset Lifecycle Management: Manage asset life cycles from one centralized platform. Integrate with tools such as Intune and Airwatch to automate parts of your asset management workflows.

Pricing

Freshservice has four pricing options:

• Starter ($19/agent/month)
• Growth ($49/agent/month)
• Pro ($95/agent/month)
• Enterprise ($119/agent/month)

As you upgrade your plan, you get access to more orchestration transactions/month/account, asset management capabilities, and more advanced analytics.

Pros

• Free trials
• 3-month payback period
• Audit logs
• On-call management (24/7 agent availability)
• Employee onboarding
• Release management
• Asset management
• Change management
• Analytics

Cons

• No free plan
• No custom pricing
• Many features only available for Pro and Enterprise

#4 Issuetrak

Best for Streamlining Ticket Resolution

Issuetrak lets you monitor issues and deliver ticket resolutions more efficiently via automation. Receive alerts whenever an update is made or a ticket remains untouched for too long. You can also assign tasks, perform mass updates, and automatically generate issues from email.

Key Features

Task Manager: Assign actionable tasks to different team members using Issuetrak’s simple task manager.

Surveys: Create online surveys and send them to specific audiences to collect user feedback. Discover how customers feel about your services and identify existing issues.

Manage Visibility & Security: Customize your permissions to control who can see what, how members interact with issues, and who gets notified about certain task completions.

Pricing

Issuetrak offers two paid plans and a custom plan:

• Cloud ($69/agent/month)
• On-Premises ($998/agent/month)
• Cloud+ (custom pricing)

Pros

• 24/7 customer support available
• Automatic updates
• Automatically converts issues from email
• Automated notifications
• Guaranteed uptime
• Unlimited issues
• Custom forms and form templates
• Enhanced security
• Access control

Cons

• No price transparency for add-ons
• Expensive pricing
• No free plan

#5 Zendesk

Best for Improving Customer Service

Zendesk allows you to elevate your customer service solutions with their AI assistant. Resolve tickets faster, promote self-service with chatbots, and view customer insights such as satisfaction score and resolution rate.

Key Features

Zendesk AI: Zendesk offers various AI capabilities, including chatbots that suggest solutions to customer issues and provide 24/7 support.

Agent Workspace: Manage all your conversations in one place and receive live updates about incoming messages. Respond in real-time via chat, email, or phone.

Data Collection: Collect customer data, such as their shoe size, and track their activity to create detailed profiles of each user.

Pricing

Zendesk provides four paid plans and a custom plan:

• Suite Team ($49/agent/month)
• Suite Growth ($79/agent/month)
• Suite Professional ($99/agent/month)
• Suite Enterprise ($150/agent/month)
• Additional Enterprise-Ready Plans (custom pricing)

The more expensive plans offer up to 500 AI-powered automated answers, customizable dashboards, and an advanced AI add-on.

Pros

• 1200+ integrations
• Zendesk chatbots
• Powerful automation
• Centralized communications
• Data collection
• Live updates about messages
• Free trial & demo
• Automates customer support
• Reporting & analytics

Cons

• No free plan
• Advanced AI costs extra
• Limited AI-powered automated answers

Conclusion

When it comes to IT management workflows, ServiceNow can be a great tool for automating your business operations. However, like with many tools, ServiceNow may not be the best fit for every company. In these cases, it’s best to look into alternative tools such as Instatus.

With the help of Instatus, you can create a beautiful status page in just 10 seconds and automatically track your uptime. Get your free status page today to automate your uptime monitoring.