If you’ve spent some time in the ServiceNow ecosystem, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the ServiceNow store already. After all, it’s the best place to go if you want to customize and extend the functionality of your ServiceNow instance.
But it’s not always easy to understand what it offers and how to get the most out of it. To get you started, here’s your complete user guide to all things ServiceNow Store…
What Is the ServiceNow Store?
The ServiceNow Store is a marketplace for customers to download apps, integrations, add-ons, and plug-ins to install across the ServiceNow platform. It includes products made by ServiceNow itself, alongside third-party offerings from partners and independent software vendors (ISVs).
The range of apps available on the store is as broad as the ServiceNow platform itself. It can include everything from business continuity planning to security products, event management, and more. It also increasingly includes specific Gen AI capabilities or custom skills for Now Assist.
When the ServiceNow Store first launched in 2015, it initially offered just 80 certified applications. Since then, it’s gone from strength to strength, with ‘hundreds’ of products now available for customers to download.
In many ways, this does for the ServiceNow ecosystem what platforms like AgentExchange (Salesforce, formerly AppExchange) and Microsoft Marketplace do for other large tech companies. This is now a well-established business model for companies like ServiceNow, which are so large they’ve effectively become their own industry.
Key Benefits: What Does the ServiceNow Store Offer?
If you’re an everyday ServiceNow customer, there are plenty of good reasons to explore and download apps from the ServiceNow Store. Here are some of the most important:
- Bespoke functionality: The ServiceNow platform is vast, but it can’t provide the exact functionality that every business requires in every situation. But with the ServiceNow Store, you can choose from hundreds of apps and products built by independent partners around the world. If you’re struggling with a particular gap in Salesforce functionality, there’s a good chance a ServiceNow Store app has already solved the problem.
- Get quicker updates: This one is particularly relevant for products released by ServiceNow itself. By default, system updates come twice a year via ‘family updates’. However, new releases and security patches are often released more frequently via the ServiceNow Store. At the same time, ServiceNow often trials new or experimental products here before they’re released for general availability.
- Fully accredited: All third-party apps on the ServiceNow Store go through a rigorous testing and accreditation process. This means you can rely on a minimum level of quality assurance from the apps and products you download.
- ServiceNow-compatible: Apps available on the ServiceNow Store are specifically designed to work with your ServiceNow instance. This means they work with a single data model and workflow engine, and operate within ServiceNow’s built-in security controls. All product listings on the store also specify which current or previous ServiceNow releases the app is compatible with.
- Integrations: The ServiceNow Store is usually the best place to go to find out-of-the-box integrations between ServiceNow and third-party platforms. This is particularly useful for connecting ServiceNow to external security products in a safe and secure way.
- Industry-specific tools: Third-party apps are often very effective at extending/customizing ServiceNow functionality for specific industry needs.
As you can see, there are plenty of good reasons to explore the store. However, an important caveat: Even though all apps are verified and accredited, there’s still some variation in quality. It’s important to check the reviews and customer feedback to spot any issues that other customers have had. This is particularly true for third-party products.
What Types of Apps are Available on the ServiceNow Store?
At first glance, it can be difficult to wrap your head around everything that the ServiceNow Store has to offer. After all, there are a lot of apps, business models, and product categories. To help you get started, here’s an overview of the main types of apps you’re likely to encounter:
1. ServiceNow Products
As the name would suggest, these are apps built by ServiceNow itself. Often, this is the place to go for new updates of technology you’re already using in your ServiceNow instance. There are also plenty of add-ons and additional tools that don’t appear in the standard platform. Some of these are free, but others will come with an extra cost.
One example is Moveworks for Employee Center, an AI assistant based on technology from the recent Moveworks acquisition.
2. ServiceNow Technology Partners
This is the largest category of apps on the ServiceNow Store. They are built by third-party organizations, though formally certified/vetted by ServiceNow itself.
Even though they’re not built by ServiceNow, they’re purpose-built for the ServiceNow environment, live inside your instance, and follow ServiceNow’s update set schedule.
Here are some examples:
- 3CLogic brings VoiceAI and contact center functionality into ServiceNow.
- AutomatePro enables automated testing and quality management.
Many of these are delivered via ‘spokes’. These are ready-to-use integrations available through the ServiceNow store. They often come pre-built with particular actions, features, or workflows. This is particularly relevant to Flow Designer and Integration Hub. However, not all integrations are spokes, and not all spokes are integrations with third-party ISVs.
3. ISV Integrations
These are also products that aren’t built by ServiceNow itself. But there’s one key difference from the last section: These aren’t ServiceNow-specific. Rather than extending ServiceNow functionality, they essentially create a bridge between ServiceNow and an established third-party product, built by an independent software vendor (ISV).
This category is particularly important for security integrations like Splunk or Delinea. Generally, they involve moving information about your IT assets from ServiceNow’s CMDB into an external monitoring tool. Otherwise, you can find connectors for well-known third-party apps like Tableau, Salesforce, or Microsoft Teams.
4. Emerging ServiceNow Products
ServiceNow often also publishes experimental beta apps through ServiceNow Labs. This can be good for trying out new features before they reach general availability. However, they aren’t always production-ready, so be careful which apps you add to your production environment.
How Do You Pay for Apps on the ServiceNow Store?
There are several payment models that are common across ServiceNow Store apps. Some of these will be obvious from the product page, but aren’t as immediately obvious:
- Free: As the name suggests, these don’t require a license or payment. It can apply to both ServiceNow and third-party products. Apps are clearly labeled either ‘free’ or ‘paid’ on the app listing page. However, freemium and license-gated apps (see below) are often labeled as free, so the reality might be more complex.
- Freemium: These have a basic free tier, but require a license for advanced features. These are likely to be labeled as free on the ServiceNow Store – so it’s helpful to check the reviews for free apps if you’d prefer not to pay extra. You may find that an app looks good on the surface, but the basic tier isn’t robust enough for your use case.
- Paid/subscription: The most common option. For third-party products, this will generally involve a separate paid license. If it’s a ServiceNow product, you’ll likely have an additional surcharge or line on your existing invoice. Generally, these products are charged per instance, per user, or are tiered by company size.
- Consumption-based: This is similar to the paid/subscription model, except your monthly invoice will change depending on how much you’ve used the product. It’s increasingly common among AI products, where your bill will reflect the number of AI tokens you’ve used. You might also be billed per-transaction or per-API call, depending on the product you’re using.
- License-gated: This can be the most confusing model to get your head around, as these products are usually labeled free on the product page. And technically, that’s true – the app or integration itself actually is free. But they’re designed to work alongside an external product that isn’t free. In practice, a paid license is a prerequisite for using the product, so it’s really only free in theory. This is most common for integrations.
How to Navigate the ServiceNow Store
The ServiceNow Store is straightforward in concept, but not always in design. Crucially, the filtering system can be a bit of a challenge for newcomers to navigate. Here are some helpful pointers:
- The store homepage is the obvious place to start. Here, you can search for specific apps, browse by industry, or scroll through the featured apps.
- If you want a more robust search, head on over to explore. This is where you can browse all apps and solutions. You can also filter by ServiceNow product type, industry, category, release, price type, or whether the product is built by ServiceNow or a partner.
- The Agentic AI Marketplace lets you browse new industry and domain-specific AI agents.
- Otherwise, ServiceNow also publishes certain events featuring specific app vendors on the store, as well as help articles if you’re struggling to navigate the site.
It’s also helpful to run down what you can expect on individual app page listings. This information can help you assess whether the app is right for your use case and compatible with the technology you’re already using:
- Key features: A bird’s-eye view of what the app provides and how it works.
- Licensing requirements: More details on how the cost model works. This can help you tell the difference between genuinely free apps versus those using a freemium or license-gated model.
- Terms and conditions: The dry legal part. But you really should read it anyway.
- Links and documents: Product documentation, how-to guides, and other important resources.
- Reviews: Browse feedback from other previous customers. Reviewers have to provide a domain email and ServiceNow URL when adding the review – so you can be fairly confident these are genuine users.
- Key contacts: Contact details for support, sales, or other teams from the app vendor. This is where to go if you need to get in touch with follow-up questions.
Terminology: How to Speak ServiceNow Store Like a Native
Like with much of the ServiceNow platform, there are some terms on the store that you might not already be familiar with. It’s helpful, therefore, to clear some of these up, so you know what you’re dealing with:
- Procure/Entitle: These are used interchangeably to mean ‘get’ or ‘acquire’ an app. It creates a back-end connection between your instance and the app. This does not mean that a purchase is either required or completed.
- Product: A product (or ‘product suite’) is a group of related apps, often with different requirements or capabilities.
- Eligible/ Not eligible: This is used for product suite pages to list which apps are included in your contract. Generally relevant for ServiceNow apps.
- In-Product: Refers to a single app or component within a larger product suite.
- Dependencies: These belong to a larger main product. As the name suggests, the main app requires the dependent app to function. Usually, they are downloaded together. Dependent apps can’t be found independently through the store and aren’t designed to be downloaded or used independently.
- ‘Built on ServiceNow’: These apps are built natively on the ServiceNow platform. They generally have higher security standards and more scrutiny during the accreditation process.
- Platform-native/ in-instance: These terms are used informally and interchangeably. Generally, it means the same thing as ‘Built on ServiceNow’, that the app runs entirely within the ServiceNow instance.
All Aboard the ServiceNow Store
If you haven’t already had a good look around the ServiceNow Store – it’s definitely worth doing so. You’d be surprised how many common issues, challenges, and frustrations from around the platform have already been solved by tech companies around the world.
Hopefully, this article has given you a good grounding in what to expect from the store and where to find the right apps and products for your business.