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JIRA Service Management vs Kayako 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

JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (2nd)
Kayako
Ranking in Help Desk Software
61st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Shared Inbox (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 6.5%, down from 10.5% 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 Management6.5%
Kayako0.4%
Other93.1%
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1712472 - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations and Support Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
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

"The most valuable features are the management tools."
"Everyone knows how to use it, so there's no need to teach new members."
"One of the main advantages of JIRA is that it can be customized for our solutions. I live in Iran and we translated some parts of it into Persian and customized it with extra features. We hid other features to customize it right to the point. We provide this solution for our customers."
"It's a good experience."
"It makes the IT department more transparent and helps the employees."
"Confluence is a great tool for documentation and tracking."
"Jira lets us customize the workflow to meet our requirements. The email and alert features are also handy."
"Jira gets the basics right in terms of the product backlog and a scrum board teams can use to manage sprint backlogs."
"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if we could turn comments into subtasks or other JIRA tickets directly."
"The interface could always be updated and improved."
"Usability needs improvement. To configure it, you need to be well versed in Jira administration. It's not very intuitive."
"When you raise a ticket with Jira, there's no ability to see your other JIRA tickets."
"The initial setup is very complex."
"They need to work on the speed of Jira."
"The platform should be more user-friendly. JIRA's user interface needs training to understand and utilize."
"The licensing model could be improved."
"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

"We may upgrade the license that we have. The license that we currently have is good for 500 agents, and it's not full yet."
"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."
"JSM's pricing is one of the best, starting at around $10 per user, per month, with volume discounts available."
"We have an annual license with JIRA Service Management, but it is billed monthly."
"The price of the solution is becoming expensive and it should be reduced."
"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."
"It costs around $150 to $200 per user."
"I price of JIRA Service Management is reasonable."
"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

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

Also Known As

JIRA Service Desk, Atlassian Jira Service Management
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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.