Jira Service Desk vs ServiceNow vs Jitbit

Jira Service Desk

If you’re trying to wrangle support tickets without losing your mind, Jira Service Desk slides in as a practical companion. It starts with a clean Support Widget you can drop on your site, so customers can submit issues in a familiar form and you can track requests without hunting down emails. The real work happens behind the scenes, where the REST API lets you pull in data, automate routine tasks, and connect Jira with other tools you already use day-to-day.

People often land here for the clarity of the workflows. You’ll see how tickets move from intake to resolution, with clear statuses and queues that keep teams aligned. The Reports and Analytics section is where you get a sense of what’s slowing things down or where you’re getting the most questions, so you can tweak processes rather than guess at what’s wrong. And there are Mobile Apps, so agents can stay in the loop on the go, replying to tickets, updating statuses, and keeping conversations concise. It’s not flashy, but it feels like a tool that actually fits into real support rhythms.

ServiceNow

Sounds like you’re trying to wrap your head around what ServiceNow does without drowning in marketing chatter. At its core, it’s a help desk tool that tracks issues from the moment someone emails a ticket or submits a form, through every step of the remediation process. You’ll see a clean flow of requests, assignments, and updates, so nothing slips through the cracks. The system keeps conversations and status changes organized in one place, which makes it easier to pick up where someone else left off.

A few features tend to stand out in day-to-day use. Email Notification Templates let you tailor the messages folks receive, so ticket updates feel relevant instead of generic spam. Asset Management helps you map hardware and software to tickets, which makes it easier to see who’s using what and where it lives. Escalation rules push urgent issues up the chain when things aren’t moving, so they don’t stall. And with Exchange Integration, you can synchronize calendar and email activity, making it simpler to coordinate with IMs and reminders. All told, it’s a practical toolkit for keeping IT support visible, accountable, and a bit less chaotic.

	Jira Service Desk	ServiceNow	Jitbit
	Customize everything to suit your needs	Enterprise-class ITSM solution	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50 + countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$6000	$18000	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$12000	$36000	$8367
Active Directory	✅ Not on the SaaS version	✅ LDAP, SAML authentication	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Ability to create custom dashboards	✅ Live activity dashboard	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	❌	✅ Full fledged asset management with automated discovery	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	❌	✅ Response templates	✅ You can also assign canned responses to specific ticket categories if you need to
Community Forums	❌	✅ Yes	✅ Ideas Forum comes out of the box
Custom Fields	✅ Various custom field options	✅ Custom fields via additional database columns	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	✅ You can create custom statuses and customize how your customers see them	✅ Custom statuses for tickets and incidents	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	✅ CSATs come out of the box along with the nessesary reports	✅ Separate satisfaction surveys, not tied to tickets	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Customize colors and upload a logo. No custom CSS or JS	✅ Custom forms layouts only	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	✅ A lot of template settings and customization	✅ WYSIWIG/HTML templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ Multiple ways to set up a ticket escalation	✅ Manual or via triggers	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	❌	✅ Native integration via a plugin	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ Import and export to CSV or JSON	✅ Import/export from Excel, export to PDF	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	✅ Translate email templates and field names	✅ Extra languages via a plugin	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	✅ Jira is ITIL certified	✅ Full ITIL/ITSM	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Full-featured and searchable customer self-service portal	✅ Knowledge base and the self-service portal	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	❌	✅ Yes	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	✅ Great mobile apps for all platforms	✅ Only via 'Now' mobile app	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	❌	❌	✅ Possible to add unlimited channels via integrations and API
On-premise Version	✅ Comes with an installable version built on Java	✅ Yes, but only the highest pricing tier	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ Ability to built custom reports	✅ Yes	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ Complete API with oAuth	✅ Included	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	❌	✅ SAML, LDAP	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ SLA support out of the box	✅ SLA policies available	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Web widget for your site	❌	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Marketplace with hundreds of apps, paid and free	❌	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	❌	✅ Transfer and CC, but no live updates and collision detection	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	✅ Support for simple WHEN/IF/THEN logic	✅ Automation Designer in the 'Now' platform	✅ 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.