Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
7.0
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (2nd)
Kayako
Ranking in Help Desk Software
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Shared Inbox (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 7.4%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kayako is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JIRA Service Management7.4%
Kayako0.4%
Other92.2%
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

"In Jira Service Management, the most beneficial features are process improvement, workflows, and escalations."
"What I really like about this solution, is how it manages the queues, the tickets and the routing."
"This is a flexible tool for logging and tracking issues efficiently."
"We can track, monitor, and get all the details we need from the end-user's point of view for any service request."
"Auditing team uses this solution to track audit findings and follow-up."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is that it is free of cost, which is a significant advantage."
"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."
"Two features I like about Jira are its ticketing system and its compatibility with Confluence. Also, the Knowledge Base is one of the more valuable features that would really benefit us."
"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the user interface and the queues."
"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."
"There should be some AI integrations now as AI is in the picture."
"Field addition and removal features are not very intuitive in JIRA Service Management."
"The deployment can be a bit complex, especially for those who are not technical."
"JSD has some analytics, but it's pretty much basic and simple dashboards. There's no mobile application for JSD. It really would benefit from better implementation with other vendors. We're heavily reliant on some external marketplace applications."
"There is no notification regarding language upgrades."
"It has change management and incident management, but CMDB is not there. It's also not as user-friendly as ServiceNow."
"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

"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."
"For the people like us, the lower the price, the better. But when compared to other competitors, I think it's Jira's price is okay."
"The pricing is very competitive and I think that it is okay."
"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."
"I would suggest to always buy licenses through an Atlassian partner, so you can also rely on their expertise."
"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."
"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."
"Actually in Iran we don't have copyright or intellectual property, so we can use JIRA for free."
"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Help Desk Software solutions are best for your needs.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise33
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: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.