ServiceNow Pricing: Is It Worth It in 2024?

Concerned about ServiceNow’s undisclosed pricing plans?

You’re not alone. Because of a custom pricing structure, the tool’s cost is nearly impossible to determine.

We asked around and read dozens of customer reviews to gauge ServiceNow’s pricing. 

In this guide, we will explain our findings to help you make an informed decision.

ServiceNow's Pricing Plans

ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that provides a suite of IT service management (ITSM) and business process automation tools.

Key features of ServiceNow:

• Comprehensive ITSM capabilities, including incident management, problem management, change management, and service catalog.
• Automation for various business processes beyond IT, including HR, customer service, and finance workflows.

ServiceNow's pricing plans are not publicly listed, as they offer consultation-based pricing through a 1:1 sales call.

However, understanding the factors that influence the pricing is crucial to get a near-accurate estimate of total cost.

Some of the major ones include:

• Number of users/licenses you require.
• Types of product required (IT Service Management, HR Service Delivery, or Now platform).
• Level of support needed.
• Additional features or configurations.

How Much Does ServiceNow Actually Cost?

Based on ServiceNow customer and public reviews, the average cost of ServiceNow contracts can range between $50,000 and $500,000 annually, depending on the number of licenses, features, and other configuration requirements.

So, to get a closer estimate of how much ServiceNow would cost your organization, it’s best to contact its sales for a custom quote.

Looking for a ServiceNow Alternative?

Users have shared their concerns about ServiceNow’s expensive pricing plans and lack of features for non-IT work management. 

This limits ServiceNow's use cases across the organization, leading users to seek alternatives.

Among the ServiceNow alternatives, SmartSuite is one of the most affordable, easy-to-use, and feature-packed platforms. This is why 👇🏼

• It has a forever-free plan with incomparable features, including workflow automation and 7+ task views.
• It offers a flexible and affordable four-tier pricing structure, with the lowest plan starting at $10 per user/month (billed annually).
• It offers advanced task management capabilities through 40+ fields, including a linked records field.
• It has built-in team collaboration tools like email integration, whiteboards, and a member directory.

There’s more.

SmartSuite offers three major features to help you stay on top of your due dates and deliver exceptional results to your clients.

SmartSuite’s Key Features

#1: Robust project management

With SmartSuite, you can plan, track, and manage projects of different sizes.

The platform comes with 7+ task views, including Gantt charts and Kanban boards, to let you get a real-time overview of your projects, tasks, and team performance in a visual format.

 Below are its key functionalities:

• Dependency Fields: This feature helps you build multi-step task sequences for an enhanced project workflow. You can define task relationships like predecessors and successors, which helps you monitor task performance more diligently.
• Gantt Chart View: This view creates a visual timeline of project tasks, showing their start and end dates and dependencies. This helps track project progress and ensure tasks are completed on schedule.

Additionally, SmartSuite’s Gantt view allows for customization of project templates and integration with other views, such as Kanban and Calendar, for comprehensive task management.

• Team-Based Dashboards: With dashboards, you can create a detailed overview of multiple tasks, projects, and workspaces. This helps you plan the team’s priorities and next steps, assess the team’s performance, and share updates with stakeholders.

• Files and Deliverables: Attach multimedia files such as files, documents, videos, or images within your workspace and quickly tag them using the Attachment field. This way, you can ask for approvals or feedback quickly, reducing the delays in task execution.‍
• Time tracking: You can view your team’s time entries and filter them in various ways to build customized reports.

#2. Integrated team collaboration

SmartSuite focuses on facilitating integrated communication with less contextual switching. Its comprehensive team collaboration feature is replete with tools to ensure team members get real-time updates, share feedback or approvals, and keep external clients updated.

Some of its key functionalities include:

• Comments and @Mentions: Team members can leave comments directly on tasks or documents and tag each other for instant feedback and discussion.
• Live Updates and Notifications: Changes made in the project are updated in real-time, and automated notifications keep everyone informed about updates, deadlines, and changes.
• Shared Workspaces and Document Editing: Multiple users can work on the same document or task simultaneously, with changes visible to all in real-time. This ensures seamless teamwork and productivity.
• Guest Role: This role is designed for external users such as contractors.‍
• Email integration: Integrate your email account with SmartSuite and easily send and receive emails within your workspace. Less contextual switch, more focused work.

The use cases spread across the whole organization, including IT teams. IT and DevOps teams can build custom dashboards to share real-time updates with coworkers and stakeholders and stay on top of their projects.

#3. Advanced workflow automation builder

SmartSuite’s automation builder is intuitive and lets you automate actions across workspaces—on a task or overall project level. It gives you more power to automate and build processes that handle recurring tasks such as status updates or approval sharing.

The automation builder offers no-code functionality to build simple one-liner sequences or multi-step flows through triggers, conditions, and actions. 

To configure the automation, you get multiple triggers and actions, such as when a status is changed to completed (trigger) and when you can send a Slack message to John Doe (action).

SmartSuite takes your automation a step further by offering ‘AND/OR’ based conditional logic.

Furthermore, you can choose to integrate SmartSuite with email, file storage, messaging, or SMS platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Suite, Slack, and Calendars to build custom actions.

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You can authorize your account by selecting the Google Gmail integration action, specifying your email addresses, and customizing your message, for example. 

This email will be sent when the trigger and its conditions are met.

Manage Your Project With SmartSuite Today

ServiceNow is best suited for enterprises that need to configure the tool as per their requirements. 

However, ServiceNow might not be the best solution for a team that wants a budget-friendly, easy-to-use project management tool to manage their day-to-day operations.

In contrast, SmartSuite is a compelling choice due to its flexible pricing plans and feature-rich work management solutions.

Here’s what's in it for you when you try any of SmartSuite’s plans:

• Generous free plan with features, including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automation/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
• No-code automation builder to set up to 500,00 trigger/action workflows.
• Built-in productivity tools, such as time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
• Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs.
• Resource management across projects and teams.
• 40+ field types, including custom fields.

Sign up for a free plan to try SmartSuite or get a 14-day free trial to explore all its amazing features.

Or, if you’d like to talk to our team of experts, schedule a demo.