Are you trying to determine whether ServiceNow or Freshservice is the better ITSM solution for your organization?
Both ServiceNow and Freshservice are well-established in the IT service management space, each bringing unique strengths: ServiceNow with its enterprise-grade depth and Freshservice with its modern simplicity.
Choosing the right fit isn’t easy, as the decision depends on your team’s size, budget, and ITIL maturity.
➡️ In this comparison, I’ll break down the key features, pricing, and customer feedback for both platforms to help you decide with confidence.
💡 I’ll also introduce you to a third alternative that blends flexibility, affordability, and ease of use in one solution: SmartSuite.
TL;DR
✅ ServiceNow is ideal for enterprises that need a highly customizable, ITIL-aligned solution. It features modules for incident, change, asset, and service management, as well as powerful automation and integrations.
Despite this, the platform is expensive, complex, and comes with a steep learning curve.
✅ Freshservice offers a modern, intuitive ITSM tool that’s easy to set up and ideal for SMBs and mid-sized IT teams. With built-in automation, asset discovery, and an AI assistant, it streamlines IT support without overwhelming users.
However, advanced features are often locked behind higher-tier plans, and pricing can scale quickly.
✅ SmartSuite delivers strong value with an all-in-one work management platform that goes beyond ITSM. It combines customization, templates, and built-in communication features at a lower entry price.
While its integration depth is more limited, it’s an excellent fit for teams of all sizes looking for flexibility and affordability.
ServiceNow vs. Freshservice vs. SmartSuite: ITSM Features
TL;DR:
- ServiceNow offers advanced modules for incident, change, problem, and asset management. Its strength lies in deep ITIL alignment and extensive customization, though it requires significant setup and expertise to use it.
- Freshservice offers a modern and intuitive ITSM solution with automations, asset discovery, and AI-driven ticketing capabilities. It’s designed to be easy to deploy and manage, making it ideal for SMBs and mid-market IT teams, but it lacks the same enterprise-level depth as ServiceNow.
- SmartSuite delivers a no-code, all-in-one ITSM and work management platform that streamlines service requests, ticketing, asset tracking, and internal IT projects. While it doesn’t match ServiceNow’s ITIL-specific depth, it stands out for IT teams that want flexible, fast-to-deploy ITSM.
Let’s go over the 3 tools’ features, starting with SmartSuite: 👇
SmartSuite’s ITSM Features
SmartSuite offers a no-code, easy-to-use ITSM software that helps you streamline critical IT processes, organise projects, and eliminate traditional obstacles in the tech landscape.
Here’s a quick walkthrough of the tool and our solution for IT leaders:
Let’s go over the features that make SmartSuite the best choice for small and large IT teams looking for an ITSM platform: 👇
All-In-One IT Service Management
SmartSuite helps enterprises manage their IT processes, projects, and assets in a single, unified solution.
Our no-code, easy-to-use platform lets you automate all technical processes with ease.
Here are the use cases that your IT team will get with SmartSuite:
- Manage critical IT processes: Manage IT data and workflows in one place, from deploying help desk and issue management solutions to ensuring core business operations stay uninterrupted.
- Track tickets & issues: Deploy a help desk and issue management solutions to ensure your business operations are not interrupted.
- Manage your IT assets and licenses: Track all of your IT assets, to whom they are deployed to and what software versions are deployed.
- Manage internal IT projects: Plan deployments, schedule your teams, and monitor progress to ensure you deliver on time and under budget.
- Integrate with your existing systems: Integrate with existing systems and data to consolidate and centralize your data.
- Automate for accuracy and efficiency: Remove inefficiencies and the chance for human error by automating repeatable workflows.
- Monitor and report on your work with customizable IT dashboards: Slice and dice data, track help tickets, work requests, and more in dynamic interactive dashboards.
Standardize Your Team’s IT Workflows
You can standardize your IT request workflow with a centralized work request process.
Our tool lets you prioritize tasks, assign IT staff and ensure that you achieve SLAs.
You’ll also be able to monitor your team with flexible reports and dashboards that keep you updated in real time.
Apart from that, SmartSuite's no-code automation builder provides IT teams with a visual interface that makes it easy to respond to events and take action.
That means you can customize your ITSM workflows without technical resources.
💡 Are you working from mobile? Stay connected to critical IT information, tickets and device information with our native iOS and Android apps.
Your team can use our mobile apps to share files, images, updates and other feedback to resolve problems and close tickets.
Out-of-the-box ITSM Templates
Our team has prepared a few ITSM templates for IT teams looking to get started right away, instead of building everything from scratch, such as an IT Help Desk.
Our ITSM template includes a:
- IT Service Request Management, where you can streamline work requests, automate repetitive tasks, and manage IT assets.
- IT Help Desk, which we built for internal IT departments looking to capture and resolve internal technology issues.
- IT Asset Tracker, where you can keep track of IT assets issued to employees or implemented in networks, facilities and workspaces.
You can customize our ITSM management templates here for various use cases, such as IT Security Policies, IT Security Audits, and IT Work Requests.
ServiceNow’s ITSM Features
Incident & Problem Management
ServiceNow provides an incident management system that lets IT teams capture, prioritize, and resolve issues through a centralized interface.
The platform supports automated workflows for escalations and SLA tracking, ensuring critical tickets are addressed promptly.
Its built-in problem management module helps you identify root causes of recurring incidents and maintains a known-error database, so fixes can be applied more quickly when similar issues arise.
➡️ What I like about this functionality is that, together, these tools streamline issue resolution and reduce downtime by enforcing ITIL best practices and providing agents with all the context needed to properly close incidents.
Change & Asset Management
ServiceNow’s change management capabilities let you plan and authorize IT system changes with minimal risk.
It provides structured change request workflows, integration with a Change Advisory Board (CAB), and a visual change calendar to avoid conflicts and schedule updates safely.
Alongside change management, the platform also includes a full asset management module that automatically discovers hardware/software and tracks inventory throughout its lifecycle.
➡️ Your team can monitor warranties, licenses, and contracts to ensure compliance and optimize usage.
CMDB & Service Mapping
At the core of ServiceNow’s platform is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which is a single source of truth for all IT components.
The CMDB enables relationship mapping so your team can see dependencies between devices, applications, and services.
➡️ Before making any changes, your engineers can use the CMDB to predict how an update to one component might affect others (i.e., change impact analysis).
ServiceNow also offers service mapping that visually ties CIs (configuration items) to the services they support, providing you with a holistic view of the IT infrastructure.
💡 This means you can quickly drill from a service outage down to the underlying components and respond with minimal guesswork.
Freshservice’s ITSM Features
Ticketing and Incident Management
Freshservice offers an intuitive, modern ticketing system that handles incidents, service requests, problems, and changes from one place.
Tickets can be created via email, portal, or chat and are immediately triaged, categorized, and prioritized according to your rules.
➡️ Your agents will be able to see SLAs and escalation rules built in so they can stay on track.
Workflow Automations
Freshservice includes strong automation engines (the Workflow Automator and Scenario Automator) that let you automate repetitive tasks with no code.
Your team can set triggers on any ticket field.
➡️ For example, automatically route high-priority incidents to specific teams, send alerts to managers, or assign follow-up tasks when a ticket is updated.
These workflows can span ticketing and asset management to help you reduce manual work.
💡 In practice, that means everyday processes like resetting passwords, approving requests, or updating records can be handled automatically.
Service Catalogue & Self-Service Portal
Freshservice provides a built-in service catalogue and knowledge portal so end users can help themselves.
You can create a custom service catalogue with drag-and-drop forms to make it easy for employees to find and request what they need (e.g., software installs or new hardware).
Each catalogue item follows an approval workflow that you define, so service requests are routed and fulfilled consistently.
➡️ The integrated self-service portal allows users to search FAQs and knowledge base articles to solve common issues without filing a ticket.
Integrations: ServiceNow vs. Freshservice vs. SmartSuite
SmartSuite’s Integrations
SmartSuite integrates directly with ITSM-related tools and offers additional connectivity through Zapier, Make, and native API support.
The platform covers the essentials for IT managers looking to centralize service workflows, compliance, and incident management without heavy setup, including:
- Microsoft Teams and Slack for communication.
- Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for productivity.
- Okta for identity and access management.
- Jira for development and issue tracking.
- Zapier & Make for extended workflow automation.
ServiceNow’s Integrations
ServiceNow offers one of the broadest integration ecosystems in the ITSM market, with native connectors and APIs for virtually every enterprise system.
From HR and finance to security and DevOps tools, its ServiceNow IntegrationHub allows IT teams to unify workflows across business functions:
- Microsoft Teams and Slack.
- Jira and Confluence.
- AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Splunk and Datadog.
- Okta and Active Directory.
➡️ Note: Keep in mind that ServiceNow’s integrations can require technical expertise and additional licensing costs.
Freshservice’s Integrations
Freshservice focuses on simplicity with pre-built integrations for commonly used IT and collaboration tools.
Its marketplace includes over 1,000 apps, covering monitoring, identity management, and productivity platforms, such as:
- Microsoft Teams and Slack.
- Jira, Trello, and Asana.
- AWS and Azure.
- Google Workspace and Office 365.
- PagerDuty and SolarWinds.
➡️ Note: Integrations are easier to configure than ServiceNow’s, but depth may be limited for complex enterprise use cases.
Pricing: ServiceNow vs. Freshservice vs. SmartSuite
SmartSuite’s Pricing
Unlike ServiceNow & Freshservice, SmartSuite offers a free-forever plan with access to 250+ automation actions, team collaboration, multi-dashboard views, and more.
There are four paid plans with a 14-day free trial (no CC required):
- Team: Starts at $12/user per month, including Gantt charts, timeline views, 5000 automation runs, and native time tracking.
- Professional: Starts at $30/user per month and adds two-factor authentication, Gmail & Outlook integrations, and unlimited editors.
- Enterprise: Starts at $45/user/month and includes access to audit logs, data loss prevention, and 50,000 monthly API calls.
- Signature: A custom plan tailored to your needs and team size with no predefined limits.
ServiceNow’s Pricing
ServiceNow’s pricing is not publicly disclosed, so you’d have to book a demo with their team to get a quote.
I did find ServiceNow customer and public reviews, which show that the average cost of ServiceNow contracts can range between $50,000 and $500,000 annually.
According to insiders, the pricing structure depends on:
- The number of users/licenses you require.
- The types of product required (IT Service Management, HR Service Delivery, or Now platform).
- The level of support that you’ll need.
- The additional features or configurations.
Freshservice’s Pricing
Freshservice offers 4 paid plans with no free plan, all of which have a free trial:
- Starter: $19/agent/month billed annually, or $29 billed monthly, which includes workspaces, incident management, and a self-service portal.
- Growth: $49/agent/month billed annually, or $59 billed monthly, which adds asset management, purchase order management, and business rules.
- Pro: $95/agent/month billed annually, or $115 billed monthly, which adds problem management, change management, and release management.
- Enterprise: $119/agent/month billed annually, or $145 billed monthly, which adds a sandbox, audit logs, and access to beta features.
What are customers saying about ServiceNow, Freshservice, & SmartSuite?
TL;DR:
- ServiceNow users praise its enterprise-grade ITSM capabilities, powerful automation, and deep ITIL alignment. However, the platform can be complex, expensive, and requires significant time and expertise to implement.
- Freshservice customers value its intuitive interface, fast deployment, and AI-driven ticketing automation. Complaints focus on limited advanced customization and reporting compared to platforms like ServiceNow.
- SmartSuite users appreciate its user-friendly design, no-code customization, built-in collaboration tools, and strong value for money. That said, some reviewers note fewer native integrations for enterprise tools.
ServiceNow Reviews
G2 Rating: 4.4/5.
What users love:
- Powerful incident/workflow automation.
- Comprehensive tracking and reporting.
- Wide array of built-in ITIL processes and integrations.
‘’ServiceNow ITSM is very user-friendly and customizable. It helps automate repetitive tasks, manage incidents and requests smoothly, and improves overall productivity.’’ – G2 Review.
Common complaints:
- Steep learning curve and need for training.
- High licensing and implementation costs have pushed some organizations to remove roles to keep costs down.
- Complexity of customization.
‘’As per my understanding, the per-user cost is very high for ServiceNow. We needed to remove a few of the roles because of the high cost.’’ – G2 Review.
Freshservice Reviews
G2 Rating: 4.6/5.
What users love:
- Modern, intuitive UI for both IT staff and end users.
- Strong workflow automation and solid out-of-the-box features.
- Integrations with popular apps like Slack, Jira, and Google Workspace.
‘’Freshservice is intuitive and easy to use, both for our team and our end users. Implementation with other services is relatively straightforward, and Freshservice offers a broad range of integrations that suit our ecosystem well.’’ – G2 Review.
Common complaints:
- Complex licensing model.
- Advanced features are locked behind higher-tier plans.
- Some reports could be more customizable and detailed to further facilitate performance analysis.
‘’Although Freshservice is a very efficient tool, I believe that some reports could be more customizable and detailed to further facilitate performance analysis.’’ – G2 Review.
SmartSuite Reviews
G2 Rating: 4.9/5.
What users love:
- Intuitive, spreadsheet-like interface.
- Extensive customization and pre-built ITSM templates have helped teams get started in days and not months.
- Built-in collaboration and strong value for money.
‘’I love how intuitive SmartSuite is from the moment you log in. It's easy to navigate, and the templates really made it simple to quickly realize all the potential ways to utilize the software. I love how easy it is to see progress on a project at any point, and how all files, communication and calendar are tied in within the task. So insanely simple, but there is so much you can do.’’ - Capterra Review.
Common complaints:
- Learning curve for advanced features.
- Per-user pricing can add up.
- Limited out-of-the-box integrations compared to ITSM leaders.
‘’While SmartSuite offers a good range of automation tools, we find that some essential automation features are not yet available. Enhancements such as more customizable workflow automation and integration with other automation platforms would be beneficial. These additions would reduce the need for manual interventions and increase efficiency across our operations.’’ – G2 Review.
Which platform should you choose for IT service management?
If you’ve read through the article so far and still haven’t decided, here’s a quick use case summary to help you see the 3 tools from a bird’s eye view: ⬇️
SmartSuite is the right choice if you:
✅ Want an all-in-one ITSM platform with a user-friendly, no-code interface and drag-and-drop customization.
✅ Need to centralize IT ticketing, issue tracking, asset management, and internal IT projects.
✅ Are looking for an affordable ITSM solution that scales from small IT teams to enterprise IT departments.
✅ Want ready-to-use ITSM templates (help desk, service requests, asset tracker) to get started quickly.
✅ Prefer built-in automation and customizable dashboards to monitor SLAs, tickets, and IT projects in real time.
✅ Need mobile access for IT staff to resolve tickets, manage assets, and stay connected on the go.
SmartSuite isn’t the best option if you:
❌ Require a legacy ITSM vendor with a decades-long enterprise track record like ServiceNow.
❌ Need deep, pre-built ITIL workflows.
❌ Expect hundreds of native enterprise integrations (ServiceNow and Freshservice currently offer broader ecosystems).
ServiceNow is the ideal choice if you:
✅ Manage IT operations at a large enterprise or across many departments and need a single, unified platform.
✅ Require a highly customizable, ITIL-aligned solution with enterprise-grade workflows.
✅ Have the budget and resources for a full-featured platform that can scale globally.
✅ Need advanced automation, AI-driven capabilities, and extensive integration options.
ServiceNow isn’t the best choice if you:
❌ Run a small or lean IT team and prefer a simpler, quicker setup with lower cost.
❌ Don’t need extensive customization or formal ITIL processes.
❌ Have tight budget constraints, as licensing and implementation costs are high, which is why some IT leads have been looking for ServiceNow alternatives.
Freshservice is the ideal choice if you:
✅ Are a small-to-medium business or mid-market team that needs an ITSM tool that’s fast to deploy and easy to learn.
✅ Prefer a modern, user-friendly interface (for both IT staff and end users).
✅ Want built-in automation and an AI assistant to help auto-tag and prioritize tickets.
✅ Value strong customer support and need integrations with tools like Slack, Jira, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams.
Freshservice isn’t the best choice if you:
❌ Need the absolute most comprehensive, enterprise-scale ITSM capabilities or extreme customization.
❌ Have a very tight budget, which is why some lower-budget teams have been looking for Freshservice alternatives.
❌ Require on-premises deployment, since Freshservice is cloud-only.
Set Up Your ITSM Workspace In Days & Not Months With SmartSuite’s Templates
If you’re an IT lead looking to build IT service management workflows, you can give SmartSuite a chance with our free plan and pre-built ITSM templates.
SmartSuite’s platform offers just the right customization, native collaboration capabilities and a library of 200+ project management templates to help teams create and maintain a project management workflow.
Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:
- Access to a free plan with features including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automations/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
- No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
- Built-in productivity tools, including 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 the option to add your custom fields.
Sign up for a free plan to test the water 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.
