Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CircleCI VS ServiceNow

Compare CircleCI VS ServiceNow and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

CircleCI logo CircleCI

CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.

ServiceNow logo ServiceNow

ServiceNow automates and manages global enterprise service relationships. Create a single system of record for enterprise services, automate manual tasks, consolidate legacy ITIL systems.
  • CircleCI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • ServiceNow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-12

CircleCI

Release Date
2011 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Allen Rohner
Employees
500 - 999

CircleCI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    CircleCI offers a user-friendly interface and straightforward configuration, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users.
  • Scalability
    CircleCI easily scales with your project, allowing for flexible resource allocation and handling multiple workflows in parallel.
  • Extensive Integrations
    CircleCI supports a wide range of integrations with various tools and services like GitHub, Bitbucket, Docker, and Slack, enabling seamless workflows.
  • Speed and Performance
    With features like advanced caching, dependency management, and parallelism, CircleCI enables faster builds and quicker feedback cycles.
  • Customizability
    CircleCI provides powerful configuration options through YAML files, allowing users to tailor their CI/CD pipelines to specific project requirements.
  • Free Tier Availability
    CircleCI offers a free plan that includes several features, making it suitable for small projects and open-source contributions.

Possible disadvantages of CircleCI

  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While CircleCI is generally user-friendly, mastering advanced configurations and optimizations can take time and require a deeper understanding of the platform.
  • Cost for Higher Tiers
    The pricing for higher-tier plans can become expensive, especially for large teams or enterprises requiring extensive usage and advanced features.
  • Limited Concurrency in Free Plan
    The free plan has limited concurrent builds, which might not be sufficient for larger projects with high parallelization needs.
  • Occasional Stability Issues
    Users have reported occasional performance and stability issues, particularly during high-demand periods, which can slow down the build process.
  • Configuration Complexity
    If not properly managed, the YAML configuration files can become complex and difficult to maintain for larger projects, leading to potential misconfigurations.

ServiceNow features and specs

  • Comprehensive IT Service Management
    ServiceNow provides a wide range of ITSM functionalities like incident management, problem management, change management, and asset management, making it a robust tool for IT operations.
  • Customizable
    The platform is highly customizable, allowing organizations to tailor workflows, reports, and dashboards to meet specific business needs.
  • Integration Capabilities
    ServiceNow integrates easily with other enterprise systems like ERP, CRM, and monitoring tools, facilitating cross-departmental collaboration and data sharing.
  • Scalability
    The platform is scalable and can grow with your organization, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Automation
    ServiceNow offers powerful automation features that can streamline routine tasks and processes, reducing manual effort and errors.
  • Cloud-Based
    As a SaaS platform, ServiceNow delivers regular updates and patches, ensures uptime, and offers high availability, eliminating the need for on-premises infrastructure.

Possible disadvantages of ServiceNow

  • Cost
    ServiceNow can be expensive, particularly for small to mid-sized businesses, given its licensing and implementation costs.
  • Complexity
    The platform can be complex to implement and configure, requiring specialized skills and potentially leading to a steep learning curve for new users.
  • Performance
    There can be performance issues during peak times if the system is not properly tuned, which can affect usability.
  • Customization Challenges
    While highly customizable, extensive changes can lead to difficulties with future updates and maintenance, as customizations may need to be re-applied or re-configured.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Being deeply tied into ServiceNow's ecosystem can make it difficult to switch vendors or platforms without substantial cost and effort.
  • User Interface
    While powerful, the user interface can sometimes be seen as less intuitive compared to more modern, lightweight solutions.

Analysis of ServiceNow

Overall verdict

  • Overall, ServiceNow is considered a good choice for organizations looking to improve their IT service management and automate routine tasks. Its scalable and adaptable nature makes it a preferred option for medium to large enterprises. However, potential users should take into account the learning curve and implementation costs associated with this platform.

Why this product is good

  • ServiceNow is widely regarded as a robust and versatile platform that excels in IT service management (ITSM). It provides a comprehensive suite of tools that streamline processes, enhance operational efficiency, and improve service delivery. Its strengths include powerful automation capabilities, a customizable interface, and a strong integration ecosystem with other enterprise systems. Additionally, ServiceNow offers extensive reporting and analytics options, which enable organizations to gain valuable insights into their operations.

Recommended for

  • Enterprises seeking to enhance their IT service management processes.
  • Organizations looking to automate and streamline various business functions.
  • Companies requiring strong integration capabilities with existing enterprise systems.
  • Businesses needing customizable and comprehensive reporting and analytics tools.

CircleCI videos

CircleCI Part 1: Introduction to Unit Testing and Continuous Integration

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Setup CircleCI On Your Next Project (Vue, React, or Angular)

ServiceNow videos

User Experience | What is ServiceNow and How Can It Help Me Do My Job?

More videos:

  • Review - ServiceNow Product Review
  • Tutorial - ServiceNow Application Review - How to Disable All Mandatory Form Fields Simultaneously in Madrid

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CircleCI and ServiceNow)
Continuous Integration
100 100%
0% 0
Help Desk
0 0%
100% 100
DevOps Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Service Desk
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CircleCI and ServiceNow

CircleCI Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that has gained significant traction in recent years. With a focus on simplicity and ease of use, CircleCI offers a streamlined approach to automating your build, test, and deployment processes. One of its standout features is its strong support for Docker, making it a great choice for teams working with containerized applications.
Source: morninglif.com
Top 5 Jenkins Alternatives in 2024: Automation of IT Infrastructure Written by Uzair Ghalib on the 02nd Jan 2024
CircleCI– Get unparalleled performance and insights with CircleCI’s interactive dashboard and automatic upgrades – revolutionizing the way you build and deploy your applications.
Source: attuneops.io
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
CircleCI can be a Jenkins replacement for teams seeking a managed experience where performance and support options are priorities. CircleCI is also investing heavily in building new capabilities that cater to the pipeline requirements of apps using AI and ML.
Source: spacelift.io
35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
CircleCI is a complete CI/CD pipeline tool. You can monitor the statuses of your various pipelines from your dashboard. Additionally, CircleCI helps you manage your build logs, access controls, and testing. It’s one of the most popular DevOps and CI/CD platforms in the world.
10 Jenkins Alternatives in 2021 for Developers
CircleCI is generally recognized for its flexibility and compatibility. Customization is obviously an important factor when making the switch from Jenkins and CircleCI certainly takes an impressive swing at providing users with a solid collection of features.

ServiceNow Reviews

TOP RPA tools you should never miss | Octoparse RPA
ServiceNow RPA allows customers to build and run unattended automation natively within the ServiceNow platform. Its out-of-the-box connectors to over 50 apps that are commonly used alongside ServiceNow, such as Salesforce, Office 365, ZenDesk, and more. This enables easy automation of workflows across systems. It also has a visual interface for creating automation without...
13 tools to use for DevSecOps automation
💰 ServiceNow is a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for their operations. The ServiceNow node allows you to manage, among others, incidents, business services, and user roles.
Source: n8n.io
The Best Asset Management Software of 2017
Bottom Line: ServiceNow asset management is usable from a features perspective, but is burdened by a complex user interface that's mostly the result of it being part of a much larger business application framework.
Source: au.pcmag.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CircleCI seems to be a lot more popular than ServiceNow. While we know about 77 links to CircleCI, we've tracked only 2 mentions of ServiceNow. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CircleCI mentions (77)

  • Improving API Performance In Legacy Systems: A Guide for API Developers
    Tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and CircleCI offer capabilities for parallel testing and test caching, allowing multiple tests to run simultaneously. This approach significantly reduces overall testing time and prevents unnecessary delays in deployment. Industry leaders such as Netflix and Amazon employ these practices to minimize outages and maintain high service quality. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Top 17 DevOps AI Tools [2025]
    CircleCI is a leading cloud-based platform for CI/CD that automates the software development process, enabling teams to build, test, and deploy applications with efficiency and precision. By integrating seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, CircleCI enhances collaboration and accelerates development cycles. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Building a serverless GenAI API with FastAPI, AWS, and CircleCI
    GitHub and CircleCI Accounts: You will need a GitHub account to host your project’s repository and a CircleCI account to automate testing and deployment through CI/CD. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • CircleCI vs. Jenkins
    CircleCI is a CI/CD platform that automates the process of building, testing, and deploying software. It helps developers integrate code changes more frequently and efficiently, ensuring that software development teams can detect and fix errors quickly. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • AIOps, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps – What’s the Difference?
    CI/CD tools: Tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab CI to automate the build and deployment pipeline. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

ServiceNow mentions (2)

  • Case creation via email
    The instance email address is tied to the instance name. Rename the instance and the email address also changes. You cannot change the email address otherwise. However, as mentioned, you can have a custom email address [something@yourdomain.com](mailto:something@yourdomain.com) forward to the instance email address. From a user perspective, they wouldn't be using a servicenow.com email address and you have to... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Is there a payment service that can be used in the Caribbean?
    Wrong sub, friend. This is for the product servicenow. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CircleCI and ServiceNow, you can also consider the following products

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

Zendesk - Zendesk is a beautiful, lightweight help-desk solution.

Codeship - Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Delivery platform that scales with your needs.

Freshservice - Freshservice: the one-stop cloud solution for all your IT management needs.

Travis CI - Simple, flexible, trustworthy CI/CD tools. Join hundreds of thousands who define tests and deployments in minutes, then scale up simply with parallel or multi-environment builds using Travis CI’s precision syntax—all with the developer in mind.

Jira Service Desk - IT service desk and customer service software by Jira Service Desk. Powerful ticketing system used by 25,000+ organizations. Try it free today.