ServiceNow Integration Hub Explained: A Guide [2025]

What is the ServiceNow Integration Hub?

The ServiceNow Integration Hub is a low-code tool, available within the Now Platform^® that helps enterprises connect different systems to ServiceNow and automate workflows between them. 

It allows users to create reusable spokes that support communication between the platform and external applications using integration steps for REST, SOAP, JDBC, JSON, and more.

The packaged integration solution for ServiceNow includes prebuilt automations for standard IT processes that help IT teams reduce ticket volume and streamline operations, among other benefits. 

With ready-to-use workflows, organizations trade flexibility for simplicity. They can minimize the need for manual intervention when carrying out service management processes, but only for standard use cases for which there is already support. 

Many organizations requirements are not fully met using pre-built integrations via the Integration Hub. In such cases, organizations can either create custom, Integration Hub-compatible integrations, build their own integrations from scratch, or rely on vendor-built solutions.

What are the Key Components of ServiceNow Integration Hub

Understanding the key components of the ServiceNow Integration Hub will help you better understand the tool’s capabilities and limitations. Let’s break down each of the key elements that make up this low-code tool. 

Pre-Built Spokes 

ServiceNow provides ready-made connectors and Spokes, allowing organizations to integrate data and automate thousands of actions across critical business systems. These Spokes eliminate the need for custom coding by offering plug-and-play integrations with popular platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, AWS, and Jira.

Custom Spokes 

When prebuilt Spokes don’t meet specific business needs, organizations can create custom Spokes using REST APIs, SOAP, JDBC, PowerShell, or scripting.

However, ServiceNow recommends that only organizations with appropriately skilled development resources should create custom spokes, or modify existing ones.

Spoke Generator 

For organizations without sufficient development resources to create custom Spokes, there is the Spoke Generator. This GenAI-assisted, low-code platform is aimed at opening integration development to business users who want to use a visual interface instead of code. 

However, such interfaces provide limited functionality, and are less efficient for supporting complex, multi-step integration scenarios.

Actions

Actions are individual tasks or operations executed within a workflow. When relating to a spoke, actions define specific operations, such as creating a record, sending data, or updating an external system. Actions are reusable and can be incorporated into multiple workflows, making it easy to integrate systems without needing to duplicate configurations.

Flow Designer

Flow Designer is the design and automation tool within Integration Hub that allows users to manage integrations with external systems. Spokes can be used as reusable actions in the Flow Designer. It is a central piece in ServiceNow’s ability to enable cross-platform workflows and data synchronization without third-party solutions.

Flow Templates 

Flow Templates are a core part of the Integration Hub because they simplify the process of automating tasks that involve external systems. You can use Flow Templates within the Integration Hub to create and manage integration flows without requiring in depth knowledge of Flow Designer or extensive development work.

Remote Tables

Remote Tables act as an extension of spokes. They enable Integration Hub to not just pull in data from external systems but also interact with that data in a structured, table-like format, similar to how data is handled in ServiceNow.

Connections Dashboard

The Connections Dashboard is a feature within the ServiceNow Integration Hub that provides a centralized view for managing and monitoring the various integrations and connections between ServiceNow and external systems. It plays a key role in simplifying the management of these integrations, offering a way to monitor the health, status, and performance of connections used within the Integration Hub.

REST API Trigger 

The REST API trigger enables ServiceNow to listen for incoming REST API calls from external systems or applications, which can then initiate predefined actions and integrations within ServiceNow. For example, when a new order is placed in an e-commerce system, a webhook can instantly create a ServiceNow ticket. It’s a simple way to keep systems in sync and automate processes in real-time.

Outbound REST and SOAP Messages

Outbound REST and SOAP messages allow ServiceNow to send requests to external systems. These messages enable ServiceNow to initiate actions in external systems, such as querying an API, updating a record in another system, or triggering an action via a web service.

Integration Error Handling and Monitoring

ServiceNow provides some built-in error handling capabilities within workflows to ensure that failures or issues in integration flows are captured and managed. Users can set up rules in Flow Designer to check for errors at regular intervals. Alternatively, they can review System Logs afterward to monitor the health of integrations.

Spokes For ServiceNow Integration Hub: How They Work

In the right circumstances, Spokes enable predefined application integrations to accelerate integration delivery and help organizations to focus their time and resources on more mission-critical initiatives rather than spending months on custom development.

In general, Spokes help automate common business processes, such as:

• Syncing customer records across CRM systems.
• Updating IT tickets in external service desks.
• Triggering approval workflows for HR and finance operations.

However, not all circumstances and/or integration scenarios are suitable for the Integration Hub’s Spoke-based integrations.

When pre-built spokes are not enough, create custom integrations. 

While prebuilt Spokes cover many common integration needs, organizations often require custom integrations to connect with legacy systems, industry-specific tools, or proprietary applications. 

Integration Hub allows developers to modify existing Spokes or build custom Spokes using standard integration protocols such as REST APIs, SOAP, JDBC, PowerShell, and command-line scripting. 

These custom integrations are packaged into reusable actions so that they can be used in various ServiceNow workflows. 

While there is some support for business users to create Spokes via visual interfaces, it is not always the most efficient or suitable option. This is particularly true when the integration must facilitate complex, multi-step processes. 

Developers can also create custom spokes via code, but may find it easier to meet particular requirements when designing their own integration from scratch and subverting the Integration Hub entirely. 

For organizations whose needs are not met by Spokes, and do not have or wish to use valuable developer’s time on implementing and maintaining integrations can also look to vendor-built and/or vendor-built and maintained solutions.

How to Activate the ServiceNow Integration Hub?

To use Integration Hub, your organization needs a valid subscription. 

Currently, ServiceNow offers four subscription levels for Integration Hub: Starter, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Each subscription pack comes with different Spokes and functions. 

The Starter Pack is free but comes with a 1,000,000 transaction limit per year. Higher-tier plans provide more Spokes and advanced capabilities to support larger integration needs.

	Starter	Standard	Professional	Enterprise
Purpose	Build integrations and automate developer operations.	Automate developer operations.	Automate IT operations.	Automate human resources, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and more.
Maximum Integration Hub transactions per year	1,000,000	1,500,000	3,000,000	6,000,000
Protocols included	SOAP step, REST step, Open API support, ZIP	Starter package+ JDBC step	Starter package+ PowerShell step, SFTP step, SSH step, JDBC step	Professional package
Features included	Payload Builder step, Retry policies, Remote Tables	Starter package+ XML Parser	Starter package+ JSON Parser+ XML Parser	Professional package+ REST API Trigger, Data Stream actions, introspection (dynamic inputs and dynamic outputs)

Activating Integration Hub on a company instance

To enable Integration Hub in a company instance, an official request must be submitted through the Request Integration Hub link. 

Activating Integration Hub on a developer instance

If you’re using a developer instance, the activation process is self-start:

1. From any page on the Developer Site, click the Account menu.
2. Select the Activate Plugin instance action. 
3. Click the Activate button for the ServiceNow IntegrationHub Installer to activate all IntegrationHub plugins. The plugin activation takes about ten minutes to complete.

Once activated, Integration Hub is ready to help your enterprise streamline workflows and automate integrations.

Advantages of Using ServiceNow Integration Hub

Here’s how Integration Hub adds value to your organization:

• Connects ServiceNow to Other Enterprise Systems: Integration Hub connects ServiceNow and a wide variety of external systems to support a consistent flow of data across the organization, improve efficiency and enhance collaboration between departments.
• Mitigates the Need for Complex Coding: With a low-code/no-code interface, organizations can set up and manage basic integrations without relying on extensive development work. This allows developers to focus on more strategic, mission-critical initiatives rather than spending time building and maintaining integrations.
• Reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Instead of investing heavily in custom-built integrations that require ongoing maintenance, organizations can leverage Integration Hub’s prebuilt Spokes and automation tools. This lowers the total cost of integration for organizations whose needs are met by pre-built spokes.
• Supports Business Users Building Basic Integrations: Business users can create, modify, and share basic, re-usable integration actions without a deep understanding of code or integration development.

Limitations of The Integration Hub

As organizations grow, integration requirements tend to evolve and become more complex. This means large and/or growing organizations will eventually find that relying on the Integration Hub leaves gaps in their requirements. 

While ServiceNow Integration Hub simplifies integrations and automates workflows, it does have limitations, particularly when it comes to handling large-scale data transfers, process complexity, and cost considerations. 

Here are a few limitations you should know. 

Performance Degradation with Large Data Transfers

The Integration Hub relies on web services and ServiceNow’s processing resources to execute integrations. When large volumes of data need to be transferred, especially in bulk, it can lead to noticeable performance slowdowns within the ServiceNow platform.

Since every integration request consumes system resources, heavy data loads can affect overall platform performance.

As a point-to-point solution, performance degradation is more pronounced when multiple integrations are active, as each one competes for ServiceNow’s resources, further straining the system.

Complex Multi-Step Processes for Simple Actions

When relying on a visual interface to create integrations, multiple steps and actions need to be pieced together to execute a workflow – even for relatively basic integrations. Unlike fully automated, plug-and-play solutions, Integration Hub often requires users to manually configure each step of a process. 

This can add unnecessary complexity, requiring IT teams to build and manage multi-step flows just to complete a single action. In environments where speed and efficiency are critical, this additional overhead can be a drawback.

The more integrations introduced, the more steps there are to manage and troubleshoot should an issue arise. 

Limited Out-of-the-Box Capabilities

Integration Hub comes with prebuilt Spokes, but these Spokes often support only a limited set of standard integration actions. 

If an organization needs to perform customized or complex integrations, it may need to extend existing Spokes or develop entirely new ones, which could require extensive coding or significant time when using a visual interface. This contradicts the platform’s low-code/no-code promise and adds development effort, especially for businesses that rely on custom workflows.

May Require Additional Subscriptions

Integration Hub’s pricing structure is based on transaction volume and the number of Spokes available in each subscription level. This can result in:

• A need for multiple subscriptions to access different prebuilt Spokes since they are not all included in a single package.
• Higher costs associated with pulling data from multiple endpoints, as each request counts toward transaction limits.
• Unexpected pricing increases if an organization’s data integration needs scale beyond what its subscription covers.

For organizations that require frequent, high-volume integrations across multiple systems, these pricing factors can make Integration Hub an expensive option compared to alternatives.

Perspectium: A Scalable Alternative to ServiceNow Integration Hub

When it comes to integrating ServiceNow with other systems, traditional API-driven approaches like the ServiceNow Integration Hub come with serious limitations. Every API call consumes system resources, and as data volumes grow, these API requests can throttle your ServiceNow instance, causing slow performance, bottlenecks, and delays.

However, Perspectium takes a completely different approach. 

Instead of relying on APIs for data movement, it uses a Publish-Subscribe (pub/sub) model designed to scale with your organizations demand for data and handle massive data transfers, without straining your ServiceNow environment.

Whether you are dealing with 10,000 data transactions to a single target, or millions of transactions across several targets, Perspectium’s pub/sub model helps maintain peak ServiceNow performance.

Here’s how it works:

• No API Bottlenecks: Instead of making repeated API calls to fetch data, Perspectium uses its native installation within ServiceNow and its Push technology, to replicate data into a message bus in real-time. This means no API rate limits, no waiting for batch jobs, and no system slowdowns.
• Scalable Data Replication: With Perspectium’s Pub-Sub model, you publish data to the message bus once, and can then allow multiple systems to subscribe to updates without increasing the load on ServiceNow. Whether you need to replicate ServiceNow data for reporting, AI, BI, or compliance, Perspectium ensures continuous, high-speed synchronization.
• Real-Time Notifications: Perspectium can be configured to dynamically detect changes in ServiceNow and trigger immediate updates to connected systems, ensuring all connected systems stay in sync without adding strain to your instance.
• Enterprise-Grade Performance: Capable of handling 40 million+ transactions per day, Perspectium’s architecture is built for organizations that need to avoid delay and disruptions when delivering and requesting data.

In short, if you’re dealing with high data volumes and mission-critical workflows, Perspectium provides the efficiency, scalability, and reliability that web-services solutions like the Integration Hub simply can’t match.

No-Code, Vendor-Implemented and Maintained

Like the Integration Hub, one of the key benefits of using Perspectium is that it allows organizations to benefit from integrations without requiring in-house development resources to build and maintain custom solutions.

However, Perspectium extends this benefit by also allowing organizations to meet their specific, complex integration requirements without requiring in-house development resources. 

This is because Perspectium is delivered – and maintained – as-a-service.

By choosing Perspectium, businesses can tap into the resources and expertise of an established integration vendor, freeing up valuable internal IT resources. 

Instead of dedicating time and effort to developing and maintaining integrations, organizations can rely on Perspectium’s managed services to deliver end-to-end solutions. This includes seamless integration with external systems, ongoing maintenance, and proactive monitoring, ensuring that integrations continue to run smoothly without requiring constant attention from in-house teams.

For organizations with more demanding integration needs, Perspectium offers flexibility and scalability that may be difficult to achieve with native Integration Hub solutions alone. Whether it’s real-time data streaming, complex data transformations, or integration with non-standard or niche systems, Perspectium provides a level of expertise and customization that can better align with the unique requirements of your organization.

Moreover, by offloading the responsibility of integration management to Perspectium, businesses can focus more on their core operations and strategic goals. This approach significantly reduces the risk of performance bottlenecks or system downtime that can occur when managing complex integrations internally.

In conclusion, if your organization has specific integration requirements that go beyond what the ServiceNow Integration Hub offers, or if you prefer to leverage the expertise of an integration vendor for ongoing support, Perspectium is a strong alternative. It allows you to integrate with confidence, knowing that you have the backing of a specialized vendor to meet your needs and keep your integrations running smoothly.

Want to know more about Persepctium? Click the links below:

• Learn more: Perspectium for transferring and replicating ServiceNow data in bulk
  • Use cases: Reporting, Analysis, AI, BI, ML, and more
• Learn more: Perspectium for dynamic data transfers (eBonding)
  • Use cases: Bidirectionally synchronize ServiceNow with ServiceNow or ServiceNow with third-party applications

To learn more about Perspectium’s Data Sync or ServiceNow Integration, contact us.