JIRA Service Management vs Zendesk comparison

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7,718 views|5,427 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Zendesk Logo
3,257 views|2,091 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 21, 2023

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.

To learn more, read our detailed JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Anna Romanoff
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Provides excellent management features.""This is a flexible tool for logging and tracking issues efficiently.""The links between the help desk and Jira issues and between Confluence and Jira issues are most valuable. I can write requirements in Confluence and link them to user stories in Jira and test cases. I can see my test coverage and all that kind of stuff. The integration between these three is very useful. It is pretty customizable, and it integrates well. There are a lot of add-ins and a lot of connectors to third-party products. In my last company, we used Test Royal for managing all the tests, and it integrated perfectly with that. For any issue or bug, we could see what tests have been run and the complete history of the tests.""The customer portal with connection with our knowledge base has been most valuable.""Easily integrates with other tools.""The initial setup is pretty easy.""The simplicity is good for our clients. The price is good.""What I really like about this solution, is how it manages the queues, the tickets and the routing."

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"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team.""The initial setup is simple and straightforward.""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.""It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket.""It's a very stable tool, very powerful.""Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly.""It is a scalable solution.""Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."

More Zendesk Pros →

Cons
"In-built chat is missing in JIRA Service Management.""The product could improve its asset management.""I'd like to update the dashboard so that more features are available.""The way it handles subtasks can be improved. We would really like the ability to have different types of subtasks. If we have a user story for a feature, we would like to have a subtask for documentation, a subtask for requirements, a subtask for development, and a subtask for testing. Right now, we just make four subtasks, but there is no way to specify their type, so we have to add a custom field to specify what type of work is this. It just means you've got to look at more data. For logging time or time tracking, we would like to have something using which we can define the work type we're doing. We would like to log whether we're working on a bug, a new development, scope change, or rework. We've got a user story for which we do the dev, and then we have to do more dev. It is the same story, but some of it could have been a scope change, and some of it could be a rework because we either screwed up the first time or missed something obvious. Currently, we have to have a custom field and track that separately. It would be nice to have some kind of work type for logging time.""The initial setup is very complex.""The deployment can be a bit complex, especially for those who are not technical.""The interface could always be updated and improved.""JIRA Service could benefit from improvements to its voice support."

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"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,""The solution itself wasn't easy to set up.""The dashboard could be better.""There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us.""The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook.""As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests.""The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay.""It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."

More Zendesk Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Costs are about $50 per user per year. JIRA is sold in user tiers of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 2000, 10,000, and unlimited users. It is bad when you have 51 users then the price is based on that 100 user tier. Users at 100 will be the most cost effective."
  • "JIRA Service Desk has different pricing as it is based on agents. On average, the price is about $300 per agent."
  • "Do not forget to calculate add-on costs. These cost a percentage of the JIRA purchasing costs and are based on the number of JIRA users."
  • "Buying a software solution is only a half part of the solution (or even less). You need to optimize usage of the software by hiring professionals who will help you to make the most of the software, especially in the beginning."
  • "I would suggest to always buy licenses through an Atlassian partner, so you can also rely on their expertise."
  • "But about the plugins, I found one plug-in — its name is Actionable Metric I think — and it is $3000. That is very expensive for users in Iran."
  • "Actually in Iran we don't have copyright or intellectual property, so we can use JIRA for free."
  • "It's not really expensive, especially when you compare to ServiceNow or other solutions, and it's not expensive to maintain."
  • More JIRA Service Management Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."
  • "The price is very competitive."
  • "Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."
  • "There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."
  • "You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."
  • More Zendesk Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:JIRA Service Management is a very user-friendly solution.
    Top Answer:It is one of the premium products on the market, but it is very costly, especially in the Indian market. Smaller organizations cannot afford it. We pay monthly licensing costs. We only have to pay for… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well. The pricing is expensive. Back then, we were paying $51 per… more »
    Top Answer:As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me… more »
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    7,718
    Comparisons
    5,427
    Reviews
    35
    Average Words per Review
    543
    Rating
    8.2
    10th
    out of 59 in Help Desk Software
    Views
    3,257
    Comparisons
    2,091
    Reviews
    6
    Average Words per Review
    539
    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    JIRA Service Desk
    Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
    Learn More
    Overview

    JIRA Service Management is Atlassian’s IT service management (ITSM) solution. It unlocks all teams at high velocity by:

    1. Accelerating the flow of work between IT teams, development teams, and business teams

    2. Empowering teams to deliver their service more quickly

    3. Bringing visibility to their work

    Built on JIRA, JIRA Service Management enables best practices across request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, asset, and configuration management so that teams can streamline collaboration between themselves. More than 30,000 customers of all sizes rely on JIRA Service Management to deliver service.

    JIRA Service Management Features

    JIRA Service Management has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Request management: Allows businesses to manage work across teams with one platform so employees and customers get the help they need quickly.
    • Problem management: To minimize the impact of incidents, this feature groups incidents, fast-tracks root cause analysis, and records workarounds.
    • Change management: IT teams are empowered by richer contextual information around changes from software development tools. This helps them minimize risk and make better decisions.
    • Asset management: Manage inventory efficiently, track lifecycles and ownership, and reduce costs.
    • Configuration management: Attain visibility into the infrastructure that supports critical services and applications. Understand service dependencies to minimize risk.
    • Incident management: The solution brings development and IT teams together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and learn from incidents.
    • Knowledge management: While fostering team collaboration, the solution enables self-service, deflection of more requests, and management of knowledge articles.

    JIRA Service Management Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing JIRA Service Management. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • The solution empowers all teams across IT, development, and business with intuitive, flexible workflows.
    • Work is made visible through the open and collaborative JIRA platform.
    • Connect IT and development on a single platform to accelerate workflow.
    • Gain significant ROI with competitive pricing on useful features.
    • Benefit from faster time to value by implementing a full ITSM solution in just a few months.
    • Lower total cost of ownership without expensive ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
    • Enjoy a broad ecosystem of more than 4,000 best-in-class apps and integrations.

    Reviews from Real Users

    JIRA Service Management stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its stability, its easy customization, and its seamless integration with other solutions. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Abhishek S., a Program Lead at PureSoftware, writes of the solution, “You can scale the solution whether it is deployed to the cloud or the data center. While we might have up to 5,200 people using the solution, we do not require that many licenses, as only those dealing with the tickets are required to be licensed.”

    Andrew B., a Technical Engineer at a consultancy firm, notes, “One of the valuable features is that an automatic response or action can be taken on tickets. We can have certain responses for tickets that contain keywords or are logged and tagged with certain labels.”

    Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

    Sample Customers
    mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
    Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company35%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Retailer9%
    Transportation Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Construction Company10%
    Non Profit7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Educational Organization10%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    University6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise35%
    Large Enterprise19%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise56%
    Buyer's Guide
    JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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, BMC Helix ITSM, Freshdesk and Freshservice, 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.

    We monitor all Help Desk Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.