Jira Software vs. Zendesk Support Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Jira Software
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
JIRA Software is an application lifecycle management solution for software development teams. It allows users to create, prioritize and track the progress of tasks across multiple team members, and offers a wide range of integrations. It is offered via the cloud and local servers.
$10
per month
Zendesk Support Suite
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$19
per agent/month billed annually
Pricing
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Editions & Modules
Standard
$7
Per User Per Month
Premium
$14
Per User Per Month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Team
$49.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Growth
$79.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Professional
$99.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Enterprise
$150.00
per agent/month billed annually
Additional Enterprise-Ready Plans, starting at...
$215.00
per agent/month billed annually
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Considered Both Products
Jira Software
Chose Jira Software
Jira Software is like Backlog on steroids, but that has [drawbacks] such as slower responsiveness, a cluttered interface, and features smaller teams may not need, but still have to pay for them. [The] backlog doesn't have as much expansion or customizability nor does it allow …
Chose Jira Software
Among the solutions to develop projects, Jira stands out because it is a very solid tool for project management, problems can be tracked throughout the development life cycle. It can be integrated with other common tools, which adds an additional benefit of this.
Chose Jira Software
JIRA is the ultimate in project management software. Nothing else out there comes close to a complete solution that is customization the way you want, and integrates with almost every other application out there.
You can write custom reports, you can set up workflows the way you …
Chose Jira Software
I've only ever used JIRA, so I can't speak to the competitors.
Chose Jira Software
In the past I have used a variety of engineering ticketing systems and project management systems but this one is undoubtedly one of the most flexible and fastest to get going on.
Zendesk Support Suite
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
We used Kayako and it was pretty basic in terms of workflows and ticket management. It wasn't multichannel and it didn't have a mobile app. Ticket categorization wasn't as robust and effective, but it was easy to learn. JIRA is as robust as Zendesk, but it is also not easy to …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
At Onshape we have used this from the start but personally I have used a number of tools that were much more a part of the CRM packages like Sage and Zoho CRM and both are lacking in the API, User interface customization and tools that you can integrate. Other systems like …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
In comparison of tracking tickets, I found Jira to be more confusing than Zendesk. I have not used Jira in many years and I know that others in our organization use Jira in addition to Zendesk. Of all the support platforms, I think Zendesk is the best and most used, which is …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
I prefer Zendesk, though I find engineers are often in Jira. Zendesk is, in my opinion, far easier to navigate, but that might just be my personal preference and comfort with the application. Both maintain a history/record of who and what, but I think Zendesk is more intuitive, …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
We used Zendesk Support Suite for adding Customer Community to increase customer engagement and decrease company support costs by decreasing customer support executives. Zendesk is a great platform for community development and information circulation. It offers a lot of …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk has a more simple and modern look and feel while ServiceNow seems less intuitive and more antiquated. Zendesk has a better UI and sleeker design. Zendesk fits our company's needs, serving both the external and internal customer.
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
I have used a lot of very old ticketing systems which aren't on here. Zendesk being cloud-based gives us automatic updates and keeps us with the newest features. It is super simple to configure and has a lot of customizable features. It is also very easy to put your own …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk is a customer support tool that offers the best features, is intuitive, dynamic and easy to use. Allows the use of macros to optimize messages to customers. This platform makes it possible to optimize and organize the services we offer to our customers, which are …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk is far superior because it can cater to any size company. Also, regardless of which package you purchase, you get to set up a multi-channel and extensive self-service support, which was very beneficial for us. Finally, the self-service portal hosts a rich knowledge base …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk is currently on par with both of these services in that they are great ticketing software programs but are light in Contact/Sales management. The autoresponder with Zendesk is much easier to implement and customize compared to the other options. The option of the mobile …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk was a lot more user-friendly than Service Cloud or Desk.com. We ultimately chose Zendesk for that reason. We felt like all of the platforms we were considering were going to be able to help us accomplish our main goal of handling inbound support tickets, but we felt …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk is much cleaner, simpler, and the support staff is faster to respond with actual solutions than the larger solutions. It is also a lot cheaper, both in license cost and in cost to implement. There are also a number of additional support channels (which I am not …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Salesforce is a more robust tool with back-end SQL reporting functionality and numerous plugins, but with this comes cost. Most startup organizations do not want the expense, at least not at the beginning of the product life cycle.
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zoho does have a ticketing system, however, the user-interface is not as logically laid out as Zendesk's. Zoho is also based in India, which can make receiving customer support difficult. Zendesk also has a proprietary voice system, while Zoho relies on integration with RingCent…
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
In my searches I have come across a lot of alternatives and I try to keep and open mind on each of them, here are a few of the tools I heard and saw a lot of chatter about while reviewing a looking for Helpdesk tools.

SpiceWorks -
This was a freeware program that i had used in …
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk, Desk.com, Jira
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Mojo HelpDesk, Zoho... I picked Zendesk because it felt the most intuitive, powerful and seemed more polished.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Jira Software
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.9
88 Ratings
32% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings6.587 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings4.754 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings4.962 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings5.258 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings7.288 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings7.087 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Jira Software
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.5
78 Ratings
37% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings5.874 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings5.369 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Jira Software
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.4
86 Ratings
40% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings5.569 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings3.528 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings5.853 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings6.584 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings5.963 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Small Businesses
GitLab
GitLab
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
GitLab
GitLab
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
GitLab
GitLab
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(180 ratings)
6.3
(126 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(35 ratings)
10.0
(39 ratings)
Usability
4.8
(27 ratings)
10.0
(19 ratings)
Availability
5.3
(6 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(20 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(41 ratings)
8.7
(49 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(35 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.7
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Jira SoftwareZendesk Support Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Atlassian
The Jira software works well for managing scrum boards and allocating resources to a task. When your Epics and Issues are set up properly, it can give you a good idea of where your team stands and the trajectory of your project. It is not the ideal solution if you need to provide documentation and support to people outside of your product teams or organization. It would benefit from having a public documentation or repository feature.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Support Suite implementation means an industry-class help desk with a dynamic interface that brings together all customer interactions from almost any channel allowing agents to respond faster to customer queries and with the right context. It is more than just a help desk since it also acts as a CRM by allowing us to organize workflows, processes and track customer engagement.
Read full review
Pros
Atlassian
  • Agile software development management and micromanagement with Scrum and Kanban.
  • Agile planning and agile management with Kanban boards and custom boards, for projects and daily work.
  • Agile and old-school bug tracking.
  • Helpful reports on work done, workload, time tracking, Scrum sprints, planned vs. executed, etc.
  • Super friendly setup on the cloud, with just one Gmail account (less than 2 minutes).
  • Powerful on-premise alternative for large companies.
  • You can mergen boards from different workflows!
  • Really free full edition for 10 users.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Zendesk makes it easy to see if a question/ticket has already been answered/updated (and to see who answered it).
  • Zendesk makes it easy for users to indicate if they are available to respond or not.
  • Zendesk also makes it easy to respond as you can respond within the software/system. A one-stop process!
Read full review
Cons
Atlassian
  • Management of the software is very difficult at times, although has improved.
  • Ability to manage resources is really non-existent, there are some plugins but they are ALL buggy (I've tested them all).
  • Better integration with Trello, would love to see this happen. Right now it's very clumsy.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Allow each user to customize the look of their Dash, rather than being hemmed in by company selections
  • Provide a way for Suspended tickets (created by emails from non-users) to be better managed
  • Set a timer for tickets to reopen on a more individual ticket basis.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Atlassian
While there are no fundamental problems with JIRA, I'm unsure that I will be working myself very closely with users of Atlassian Confluence. The client base I am concerned with tend to be more integrated with Amazon, IBM BlueMix / Watson, open source LAMP/PHP (WordPress, MediaWiki) & those that rely on more proprietary CMS would tend to use Sharepoint not Confluence. JIRA seems to me to stand or fall with the rest of the Atlassian silo or suite, as it is not closely integrated with Sharepoint or mediawiki based reporting or knowledge management. Data interchange standards in this area are weak so Microsoft, open source LAMP projects using Phabricator, and Atlassian JIRA seem to be three distinct silos, with Amazon, Google & IBM offering their own tools for similar needs.
Read full review
Zendesk
There has not been a reason to consider anything else as the core functions work perfectly for ticketing. Also Zendesk continues to focus on new functionality, growth of the API and Apps framework and add more partner application to the list. Not only will be renew but it is likely we will add seats as we grow and expand our customer focused teams.
Read full review
Usability
Atlassian
JIRA Software is a pretty complex tool. We have a project manager for JIRA who onboarded us, created our board, and taught us the basics. I think it would have been pretty overwhelming to learn without her. JIRA offers so much functionality that I'm not aware of -- I constantly need to Google or ask others about existing features. Also, although they are all under the Atlassian umbrella, I find it difficult to switch between JIRA Software and Confluence.
Read full review
Zendesk
As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
Read full review
Performance
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
Read full review
Support Rating
Atlassian
Our JIRA support is handled internally by members of our Product Support team. It is not supported by a 3rd party. Our internal support will always sent out notifications for downtime which is usually done on the weekend unless it is required to fix a bug/issue that is affecting the entire company. Downtime is typically 3-4 hours and then once the maintenance is complete, another broadcast email is sent out informing the user community that the system is now available for use.
Read full review
Zendesk
Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.
Read full review
Online Training
Atlassian
One of their strong points i stheir documentation. Almost all of the basic set up needed within JIRA is available online through atlassian and its easy to find and very precise. The more critical issues need to be addressed as well and hence the rating of 8 instead of a 9.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Atlassian
Take your time implementing Jira. Make sure you understand how you want to handle your projects and workflows. Investing more time in the implementation can pay off in a long run. It basically took us 5 days to define and implement correctly, but that meant smooth sailing later on.
Read full review
Zendesk
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Atlassian
Jira Software has more integrations and has more features than many of its competitors. While some of its competitors do have better UI/UX than Jira Software, they have improved this greatly over time. Atlassian also acquired Trello years ago, so that adds better user interfaces to the system. They do also offer a pretty in-depth library of how to customize the platform that others don't.
Read full review
Zendesk
I have not used any other support software, but also evaluated FreshDesk. For our needs at the time, Zendesk was more polished and had the ability to support multiple websites in a single instance, while allowing customization for each brand separately. That was crucial to us, and is why we went with Enterprise.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Atlassian
  • Jira has positively made our company's daily activities much better organized
  • With Jira we can track progress and follow up on tasks
  • Jira has great reporting tools which aggregate various data and give us a good overview of our teams capacity
Read full review
Zendesk
  • The main part of the IT department is able to quickly prioritize and delegate tickets as they come in.
  • Tickets can be linked to each other and support articles, creating opportunities for more efficient responses.
  • Central location for users to ask for tech help when they don't need to know which staff member is the appropriate person to ask.
Read full review
ScreenShots