JIRA Service Management vs Zendesk comparison

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JIRA Service Management

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

JIRA Service Management and Zendesk compete in the service management category. Zendesk often seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive ticketing features and customer service advantages.

Features: JIRA Service Management integrates robustly with agile workflows, enhancing team collaboration within agile environments. It also supports seamless integration capabilities for various tools, increasing its adaptability within diverse systems. Zendesk is known for its flexible customer interfacing configurations and comprehensive ticket management, facilitating streamlined issue resolution. Additionally, Zendesk's interface is designed for quick problem solving, giving it an edge in user experience.

Room for Improvement: JIRA Service Management requires enhancements in its reporting capabilities, which are currently limited. Users also seek better customization options to tailor workflows effectively. Zendesk needs improvement in user access control to secure permissions efficiently. Users also note that its reporting functionality could be more robust. Better user management efficiency is another area where Zendesk could see improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: JIRA Service Management has an efficient deployment model, making it accessible for teams. However, it needs more streamlined technical support to assist users effectively. Zendesk provides straightforward deployment procedures which facilitate quick setup, coupled with superior customer service access that provides responsive assistance. Despite this, users would benefit from more efficient technical configurations.

Pricing and ROI: JIRA Service Management is considered cost-effective, offering a positive return on investment post-initial setup, though some users report concerns with hidden costs. Zendesk carries a higher price tag but offers significant ROI especially for larger organizations, justifying the investment with its strong feature set and comprehensive services.

To learn more, read our detailed JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: November 2024).

JIRA Service Management vs. Zendesk

November 2024

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Helped 815,854 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

JIRA Service Management

Ranking in Help Desk Software

2nd

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

11th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (21st), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Community Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 11.1%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 4.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Shambuling-Doni

Sr Manager IT at L&T Technology Services

Nov 22, 2023

Easy to use, offers good stability and visibility for operational efficiency

We use Jira Service Management (JSM) to manage tickets. It enables us to track, monitor, and manage user requests from initiation to resolution. We use it for the end-to-end process. We can add comments, and close requests., so our primary use case for JSM is ticketing. The interface is good and…

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Ahmed Nassar

Technical Consultant at Spectrum Group

Oct 17, 2023

Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup

It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The centralized feature allows us to track test cases and integrate with automation and bug fixing."

"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."

"This service management solution has a good user interface. It helps improve your IT request requirements and makes tracking requests easier."

"Easy to use and user-friendly."

"One of the valuable features is that an automatic response or action can be taken on tickets."

"What I really like about this solution, is how it manages the queues, the tickets and the routing."

"The tool's stability is very good."

"I like the history, the dimensioning, and how I can configure a space based on my preferences or the project circumstances."

More JIRA Service Management pros

"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."

"It is a scalable solution."

"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"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."

"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"Usability needs improvement. To configure it, you need to be well versed in Jira administration. It's not very intuitive."

"Field addition and removal features are not very intuitive in JIRA Service Management."

"The search function could be improved. We have to search a certain way. There is no generic search; it is more object-oriented search."

"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."

"What needs to be added in Jira Service Management is the user screen. You'll find it very weird if this is your first time using the solution. The user-friendliness of its interface needs improvement."

"It is difficult to navigate if you don't have any prior knowledge."

"The queries are weak and lack advanced functionality. You can do rudimentary queries, but you can't aggregate. You can't filter for a lot of things that would be useful, so you need to use plugins to write writing advanced queries. I run into problems when working with different organizations because they always have restrictions on what kind of plugins they allow."

"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."

More JIRA Service Management cons

"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."

"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."

"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."

"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."

"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."

"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"

"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."

"The dashboard could be better."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the free version, but my clients are paying for it. When they start, they evaluate it for 30 days, and after seeing the value, they move to its paid version."

"The license we use is on a yearly basis. As a Solution Partner, we were using the free one and were using the free plugins. We were also giving our own plugins to the Atlassian Solution Partners for free. We don't pay anything to Atlassian."

"It depends on the number of users but it starts at $20 per month per user. I would rate them a three out of five for pricing."

"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."

"This is pricey solution. Should we move to using all cloud solutions in our business, we may move to different tools that have multiple functionality versus having a solution for each area. This would be too pricey and we would need to replace Jira with a different solution that also offers other features."

"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."

"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."

"JIRA Service Management's pricing is pretty decent compared to competitors. I rate the pricing an eight to nine on a scale of one to ten."

More JIRA Service Management pricing and cost advice

"The price is very competitive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

Educational Organization

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your favorite Help Desk Software and why?

JIRA Due to its agility.

What do you like most about JIRA Service Management?

JIRA Service Management is a very user-friendly solution.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JIRA Service Management?

The pricing for Jira Service Management is reasonable and not expensive. It feels fair because there are opportunities for discounts through resellers.

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

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 ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive. One of the reasons for shifting from Zendesk to Talkdesk was cost efficiency.

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

Sometimes, the calls do not record, and your conversation is cut midway. When you want to do a call calibration, you realize that the call is incomplete. Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could ...

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Product Reports

Download JIRA Service Management product report

JIRA Service Management

November 2024

Download Zendesk product report

October 2024

Also Known As

JIRA Service Desk

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Learn More

Atlassian

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