Freshservice vs Jira Service Desk vs Jitbit

Freshservice

Freshservice and Jira Service Management are the two tools most mid-sized IT teams end up shortlisting. Freshservice's strength is ease of use: the interface is clean, the Workflow Automator is a visual drag-and-drop builder that admins actually enjoy, and asset discovery fills the CMDB without much manual work. Employees can raise tickets from Slack or Microsoft Teams, and most teams get a working service desk running in weeks rather than months.

The cost is the weak point. Problem, change and release management start at the Pro plan, $99 per agent per month - about $17,800 over 3 years for 5 agents. Only 100 asset units are included, and the Freddy AI Copilot is another $29 per agent. There's no self-hosted option.

Jira Service Desk

Jira Service Management covers the same ITSM ground - incidents, requests, changes, problems and an asset database - and its biggest advantage is the link to Jira Software. When an incident turns out to be a bug, it becomes a developer ticket in the same system, which is hard to beat for IT teams that work closely with engineering. The Standard plan comes to about $6,000 over 3 years for 5 agents, and a Data Center version is still available for self-hosting.

The downside is complexity. Jira is highly configurable, which also means someone has to configure it, and teams without an Atlassian background face a real learning curve. Advanced change and problem management features sit on the pricier Premium plan. Pick Jira Service Management if your engineers already live in Jira. Pick Freshservice if you want ITSM that non-specialists can run.

Detailed feature comparison

	Freshservice	Jira Service Desk	Jitbit
	Modern ITSM service desk from Freshworks	Customize everything to suit your needs	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$17820	$6000	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$35640	$12000	$8367
Active Directory	✅ SAML SSO with Entra ID / ADFS, plus user sync from AD and Entra ID	✅ Not on the SaaS version	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Customizable dashboards with real-time widgets	✅ Ability to create custom dashboards	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	✅ CMDB with agent-based and cloud discovery; 100 asset units included, more sold in packs	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ Canned responses and scenario automations that update several fields at once	❌	✅ You can also assign canned responses to specific ticket categories if you need to
Community Forums	❌	❌	✅ Ideas Forum comes out of the box
Custom Fields	✅ Custom and dependent fields for tickets, assets and the service catalog	✅ Various custom field options	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	✅ Custom ticket statuses with SLA timer control	✅ You can create custom statuses and customize how your customers see them	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	✅ Built-in CSAT surveys with reports	✅ CSATs come out of the box along with the necessary reports	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Self-service portal branding and theming; the agent interface is fixed	✅ Customize colors and upload a logo. No custom CSS or JS	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	✅ Editable templates for every notification	✅ A lot of template settings and customization	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ SLA-based escalations and multi-level reminders	✅ Multiple ways to set up a ticket escalation	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	✅ Microsoft 365 mailboxes connected via OAuth	❌	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ CSV import for assets and users, ticket export to CSV or Excel	✅ Import and export to CSV or JSON	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	✅ Multilingual UI, portal and knowledge base	✅ Translate email templates and field names	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	✅ PinkVERIFY-certified ITIL processes; problem, change and release management start at Pro	✅ Jira is ITIL certified	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Solution articles in the self-service portal, with approval workflows	✅ Full-featured and searchable customer self-service portal	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	❌	❌	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	✅ iOS and Android apps for agents and requesters	✅ Great mobile apps for all platforms	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	✅ Email, portal, phone, Slack and Microsoft Teams	❌	✅ Possible to add unlimited channels via integrations and API
On-premise Version	❌	✅ Comes with an installable version built on Java	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ Curated reports and a custom report builder; advanced analytics on higher plans	✅ Ability to built custom reports	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ REST API v2 covering tickets, assets, changes and more	✅ Complete API with oAuth	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ SAML 2.0 via the Freshworks organization account, plus Google and Microsoft login	❌	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ Multiple SLA policies with business hours per group	✅ SLA support out of the box	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Embeddable help widget for raising tickets and searching solutions	✅ Web widget for your site	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Freshworks Marketplace with hundreds of apps	✅ Marketplace with hundreds of apps, paid and free	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	✅ Agent collision detection, private notes, child tickets and @mentions	❌	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	✅ Visual Workflow Automator with approvals, conditions and web requests	✅ Support for simple WHEN/IF/THEN logic	✅ Automation Rules are very powerful and can go beyond simple if-this-then-that logic

Looking for help desk software? Check out Jitbit. We offer a fully-featured app at a very affordable price. It comes with all the must have features like knowledge base, two-way email integration (including native Exchange and Office 365 support), automation, hundreds of integrations with third-party apps and much more. Available both as a hosted "SaaS" version and an on-premises version you can install on your own server.