Groove vs Kayako vs Jitbit

Groove

Groove is built for small teams moving off a shared Gmail or Outlook inbox. Conversations look like email, there are no ticket numbers, and a new agent can be productive in an hour. At around $5,200 over 3 years for 5 agents it costs well under half of what Kayako does, and the knowledge base is good for the price. For a team of three to five people answering customer email, that simplicity is the whole point.

The ceiling comes quickly, though. Groove has no SLA management, only basic reporting and about 20 integrations. Once you need escalation rules, satisfaction surveys or support across several brands, Groove starts to feel too small.

Kayako

Kayako is the heavier tool here. It has SLA policies with breach triggers, monitors for time-based automation, CSAT ratings, a public and private help center, and a Messenger widget that combines live chat and self-service. The unified customer timeline shows every email, chat and social message from a customer in one place, which helps when the same people contact you on several channels. On top of that sits Kay, an AI agent that can resolve tickets and run actions such as refunds, billed at $1 per resolution.

That depth costs money and setup time. At the reported $79 per agent per month, Kayako comes to about $14,200 over 3 years for 5 agents, pricing is quote-only, and admins say complex routing rules take a while to learn. If Groove's limits are already a problem for you, Kayako covers them. If they aren't, Kayako is probably more than you need.

Detailed feature comparison

	Groove	Kayako	Jitbit
	A simple app to replace your shared mailbox	Veteran help desk rebuilt around an AI agent	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$5220	$14220	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$10440	$28440	$8367
Active Directory	❌	❌	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	❌	✅ Real-time dashboards for team workload and SLA status	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	❌	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ Has standard canned replies features	✅ Macros that insert replies and update ticket properties	✅ 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 fields for conversations, users and organizations	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	❌	❌	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	❌	✅ Built-in satisfaction ratings after conversations are completed	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Can only customize the web widget	✅ Help center and Messenger branding; the agent interface is not customizable	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	❌	✅ Customizable email templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	❌	✅ Escalation via SLA breach triggers and monitors	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	❌	❌	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ Only via API	✅ Migration from other help desks via the API or Kayako's onboarding team; no self-service CSV export	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	❌	✅ Multilingual help center and localized customer-facing content	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	❌	❌	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Good Knowledge Base with basic customization	✅ Public and private help centers	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	✅ Live chat via the widget	✅ Included in Kayako Messenger	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	❌	❌	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	❌	✅ Email, live chat, Facebook and X (Twitter) in one shared inbox	✅ Possible to add unlimited channels via integrations and API
On-premise Version	❌	❌	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ Some basic reports on tickets and KB	✅ Pre-built and custom reports; some users find custom reports hard to build	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ You are able to access most features via API	✅ REST API covering conversations, users and organizations	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	❌	✅ JWT-based SSO only. No SAML or Active Directory support in the current version	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	❌	✅ SLA policies with targets per priority and automated breach triggers	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Web widget with live chat	✅ Kayako Messenger widget with chat and help center search	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Around 20 integrations with the most popular apps	✅ Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Stripe and others; no large app marketplace	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	❌	✅ Private notes, @mentions and collision detection	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	❌	✅ Triggers, monitors and macros, plus AI actions via the Kay agent	✅ 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.