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JIRA Service Management vs Kayako comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (2nd)
Kayako
Ranking in Help Desk Software
44th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Shared Inbox (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 9.7%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kayako is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Karim Yousef - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently track and document projects with seamless tool integration
We are a management warehouse that provides services to different customers in different sectors. Primarily, we serve the banking sector and the military sector. We manage all the software delivery projects through tools such as JIRA Service Management or TFS Confluence is a great tool for…
reviewer1712472 - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, straightforward implementation, and helpful support
We are in the process of switching from Kayako to ManageEngine Desktop Central. We went through a full review of our service desk processing and one of the solutions we purchased was a ManageEngine Desktop Central. When we were looking at the integrations into the Kayako system and how it works, we found that ManageEngine Desktop Central did very similar things. It had better layers of classification, other templating, and additional features that we did not have with Kayako. Our service manager made the decision to switch at that time. My advice to others wanting to implement Kayako would be for them to plan out their service processes first, prior to trying to implement them in the tool. We made the mistake of jumping in too soon back 10 years ago. I started using it in a way that we could have tooled it in a different way to make it better. We could have had more implementation process information to make sure we received what we wanted to out of the solution. I rate Kayako an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the best features is that I can share tickets with team members, at which point any team member is able to pick one up and work on it."
"The most valuable features are the management tools."
"It helps with time management and team management of the new tasks."
"Compared to other solutions, Jira Service Management is really reasonable regarding price and speed."
"This is a flexible tool for logging and tracking issues efficiently."
"It makes the IT department more transparent and helps the employees."
"This solution has helped us a great deal in project management tracking and forecasting."
"The most valuable features of JIRA Service Management are the service level agreement or management, and the ticketing system. Additionally, there are frequent updates that provide improvements."
"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."
 

Cons

"It has change management and incident management, but CMDB is not there. It's also not as user-friendly as ServiceNow."
"The interface could be made easier to use."
"In general, JIRA has no relation to customers or financials. Therefore, marketplace add-ons are needed to make it work for customer-facing systems."
"Its UI is a bit overwhelming for new users. That has been the problem with Jira for a long time. If they could put some fields that we could use to simplify the UI, it would be good."
"There is room for improvement in support."
"The initial setup of JIRA Service Management can be complex for new users. There is a lot of configuration."
"Instability happens sometimes - although not frequently."
"If JIRA were more of a substantial stand-alone product that covered more needs for project management, we wouldn't be using a suite of products."
"Some of the reporting in Kayako could be improved. It only has two levels of classification and if there were additional levels added for reporting purposes it would be awesome for our environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Service Management four out of 10 for affordability. The price could be better, especially for companies using more than one Atlassian product. It's suitable for SMBs that can afford it. I don't think there's another tool that's both better and cheaper. All help desk tools are relatively expensive."
"JSM's pricing is one of the best, starting at around $10 per user, per month, with volume discounts available."
"I price of JIRA Service Management is reasonable."
"The price for JIRA Service Management is reasonable and cheaper than other ITSM solutions, but the licensing model is different, so you cannot compare it with other solutions. Overall, the pricing for the solution is acceptable."
"The pricing is free for us because we are an associate partner for the product."
"The cost has recently increased. It might be around $20 to $25 per user license."
"On a scale of one to five, with one being really high and five being good, I would rate the price of this solution as a four."
"Licensing can become quite expensive."
"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Also Known As

JIRA Service Desk
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
Toshiba Canada, Disney, Avast, Namecheap, Texas Tech University
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.