We compared JIRA Service Management and Zendesk across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Ease of Deployment: Opinions on the initial setup of JIRA Service Management vary. Some users found it uncomplicated, while others found it to be more complex and time-consuming. Zendesk's setup process was considered to be straightforward and effortless.
Features: JIRA Service Management is praised for its ticketing system, compatibility with Confluence, customization options, and reliable performance. Zendesk is highly regarded for its flexibility, strong security measures, user experience, and collaborative features.
Room for Improvement: Jira Service Management could add customization options, improve its time-based automation, and enhance the integration of its modules and DevOps tools. Zendesk could offer better asset centralization and implement an image-resizing tool. Users would like a better knowledge base and more analytics.
Pricing: JIRA Service Management is generally considered to be reasonably priced, but some users say the solution can become expensive when scaling up. Zendesk is considered expensive, particularly for the Enterprise plan. Users noted that additional services require extra payment and have suggested reducing the overall price.
ROI: JIRA Service Management provides financial advantages, reduced communication volume, improved productivity, enhanced transparency, and cost-effectiveness. Zendesk minimizes customer inquiries and delivers immediate ROI for small businesses.
Service and Support: JIRA Service Management users reported mixed experiences with technical support, whereas Zendesk's support is generally deemed satisfactory, with prompt response times.
Comparison Results: JIRA Service Management earned high marks for its ticketing system and user-friendly interface. Zendesk is praised for its customizability and robust security. The pricing of JIRA Service Management has received mixed reviews, with some finding it reasonable and others suggesting it could be more affordable, whereas Zendesk is considered expensive by certain users. The customer service and support for both products have received mixed feedback.
"With Jira Service Desk, the simplicity of setting up a quick form and getting the service desk running quickly is very helpful."
"I'm mainly working in the ITSM module of JIRA Service Management, and the integration between the system incident and how you can link all the records to the change makes it quite powerful."
"Jira gets the basics right in terms of the product backlog and a scrum board teams can use to manage sprint backlogs."
"We can track, monitor, and get all the details we need from the end-user's point of view for any service request."
"Jira Service Management is flexible. It is easy to navigate without requiring extra learning. The user experience has been good."
"This is the most complete and versatile enterprise task management product and issue tracker."
"The SLA, speed, the comments from agents' side, and the dashboard for agents are the most valuable features."
"The automation feature in JIRA Service Management is beneficial, and that's yet to be available in ServiceNow. ServiceNow doesn't have the flexibility to automate processes."
"It's very convenient to use."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to use, and I haven't encountered any issues with delays or communication gaps in ticket resolutions."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."
"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."
"The most valuable features of Zendesk Support are collaboration, reports, and a self-service portal. The customer and team can see all the information needed from the portal."
"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."
"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."
"A lot of users have said that they want a feature that was on the on-prem version of Jira and the vendor can't deliver. They're either unwilling or unable to give feature parity."
"I don't think the program is very scalable."
"As a consultant, I have used the support. Some of the support I have received has been good and other times it could improve."
"Lacks an interface where the customer can report issues."
"The main issue with this solution is there's no limited subscription available for plugins we only use for a few people. If we only have a team of twenty using a plugin, we still have to purchase a subscription for the whole 200 users."
"They need to work on the speed of Jira."
"It would be useful to be ale to link tickets across different gantt charts in Jira and Confluence."
"The initial setup is very complex."
"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."
"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."
"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."
"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"
"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."
"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."
"The dashboard could be better."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
JIRA Service Management is ranked 2nd in Help Desk Software with 73 reviews while Zendesk is ranked 10th in Help Desk Software with 57 reviews. JIRA Service Management is rated 8.2, while Zendesk is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of JIRA Service Management writes "Customizable, stable, and integrates well". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zendesk writes "Straightforward, very transparent, and very well organized". JIRA Service Management is most compared with ServiceNow, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Freshdesk, BMC Helix ITSM and IBM Maximo, whereas Zendesk is most compared with ServiceNow, Atlassian Confluence, Freshservice, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Moveworks. See our JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk report.
See our list of best Help Desk Software vendors and best IT Service Management (ITSM) vendors.
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