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Hornbill Systems Supportworks vs JIRA Service Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 29, 2025

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

Hornbill Systems Supportworks
Ranking in Help Desk Software
33rd
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
32nd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of Hornbill Systems Supportworks is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 7.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Hornbill Systems Supportworks1.1%
Other91.6%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1262703 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Desk Team Leader at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Excels in call logging and call flows but is limited in terms of scalability
I'd advise others to map their processes out before starting with the solution. Hornbill has recently generated a new version of its product and it meets some of the requirements that we would have been looking for. It's a bit more scalable, a bit more responsive to a customer-focused model for support, and they've improved a lot of things like process flow and self-service. In terms of rating the solution, it's difficult to grade. It really depends on the size of the organization that's trying to use it as that tool. One of the reasons why we're looking to shift is because we've grown quite a bit over the years that we've had it, which makes it difficult for it to meet our demands. However, for an organization the size of what we were when we started our journey with it, I'd rate it ten out of ten. Where we are now, with our company size and needs, I'd rate it six out of ten.
Sohaib Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Service Delivery at quixel
Comprehensive workflows and data views have supported complex teams but still need cost improvements
JIRA Service Management is costly. The pricing structure needs improvement. When I add some plugins, I have to pay the cost for every user whether they are using it or not. For smaller companies, the detailed workflow editing and the kind of details that JIRA Service Management provides would be complex. For startups and smaller companies, JIRA Service Management would be complex. The cloud offering is easier because I don't have to manage the infrastructure. There are two templates of the project: company-managed and team-managed. Team-managed is a newer feature, which is good for startup-kind companies where they don't need control over data from multiple projects displaying in one dashboard. For startups, JIRA Service Management is somewhat complex with its schemes and everything. Capacity management should be improved in terms of additional features in the next release of JIRA Service Management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite user friendly to use and has a lot of very useful features that makes the analyst/technician's life easier."
"We've definitely seen an ROI; we've had the system in place for eight years, and it's provided a solid platform for us to deliver our services during that period."
"The solution's business process flow is quite strong. Its reporting is quite good. The standard, basic ITSM functionality like call logging and call flow, for example, are areas the solution really excels in."
"Service Management is great if you're an Atlassian shop already using JIRA for the development team and you want another tool for help desk ticketing. When it's all under the same umbrella, I can easily take a ticket from the help desk and move it to the development team. You can't beat that integration between two products."
"The Jira interface is very good."
"Jira is becoming quite popular and is well supported."
"JIRA is an excellent tool that can cater to multiple needs and purposes, and the fact that we can use it for multiple tasks alone makes it scalable and very good at what it does."
"This is the most complete and versatile enterprise task management product and issue tracker."
"Atlassian Customer service is some of the best I have experienced."
"Jira lets us customize the workflow to meet our requirements. The email and alert features are also handy."
"It is one of the best tools in the market right now."
 

Cons

"It's worked well for us for a significant period of time. However, we are kind-of outgrowing it at the moment. We're struggling a bit with making it meet our requirements."
"Customer Service: I'd rate it as a 5/10 or 6/10."
"It's worked well for us for a significant period of time. However, we are kind-of outgrowing it at the moment. We're struggling a bit with making it meet our requirements."
"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."
"JIRA Service could benefit from improvements to its voice support. We need to have quick customer care implementation for anyone trying to connect."
"Jira Service Management should be more user-friendly."
"It is pretty complex to move between the test environment and the production environment. There is potential for improvement."
"Generally requires the purchase of additional plugins."
"The solution should be more formalized. It could be more user-friendly."
"We have to worry about how they are increasing their price. Atlassian will increase the price by 5% for most of the tools. It's getting expensive."
"Include a split configuration in a layer part to allow cloud services to have almost full admin rights in SaaS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our organization pays about $40,000 annually. There are ongoing consultancy costs and if we want to change anything, we're charged a day rate. Other than that, there are no other extra costs involved in working with the solution."
"On a scale of one to five, where five is a good price and one is high, I would rate this solution as a three. It isn't cheap but it's not ridiculous."
"Right now, there are only two of us who are both agents on the help desk and developers. We might be on the free version because we're less than three agents or users. I'm looking at Zephyr tests, which have a $10 a month flat rate, so right now, it is $10 a month. There are lots of add-ons. They do a free version, a standard version, and a premium version. In the last company, we started on $50 a month. By the time I left, we were paying $4,500 a month. That was mainly because we had 100 users on Confluence. I bought an add-on for Jira software for which we had 10 users, and that was $5 per user per month. It was costing me $500 a month, whereas it should only be $50 a month. I don't know if licensing fee has changed. I'd like our whole company to use it, but the big problem is the licensing because the Confluence side is what is really useful, but if I add 30 users to Confluence and then buy an extension for Jira software, I've got to pay for 30 licenses, even though I've only got two users in Jira software. It is the one big disadvantage of cloud software. You always have to pay for the number of seats regardless of which product you are on. This will probably severely limit how many people would use it because I'm not going to start paying $10 per user per month for a Jira software add-on when there are only two people using it."
"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 price of JIRA Service Management could be reduced."
"We have paid $20,000 recently for a one-year license for our on-prem server."
"Licensing can become quite expensive."
"We need a license because we have a higher number than the free part."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with JIRA Service Management?
JIRA Service Management is costly. The pricing structure needs improvement. When I add some plugins, I have to pay the cost for every user whether they are using it or not. For smaller companies, t...
 

Also Known As

Supportworks
JIRA Service Desk, Atlassian Jira Service Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aylesbury Vale District Council
mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
Find out what your peers are saying about Hornbill Systems Supportworks vs. JIRA Service Management and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.