Kayako vs ServiceNow vs Jitbit

Kayako

Kayako and ServiceNow rarely compete for the same buyer. Kayako is a customer service help desk: a shared inbox for email, chat and social, Kayako Messenger on your website, public and private help centers, SLA policies and CSAT ratings. Kay, its AI agent, resolves routine tickets and can take actions such as refunds, billed at $1 per resolution. A small team can get it running in days, especially with Kayako's onboarding help.

Kayako's pricing is quote-only too, but at the reported $79 per agent per month a 5-agent team pays about $14,200 over 3 years. That's less than ServiceNow at small team sizes, and it's also simpler to run. What it doesn't do is IT service management: no change management, no CMDB, no asset discovery.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is an enterprise workflow platform where the help desk is one module among many. IT service management, a CMDB with automated discovery, change and release management, HR service delivery and custom apps all run on the same platform. For large organizations that need ITIL processes across thousands of employees, nothing else is as complete.

That breadth costs money and staff. A 5-agent setup comes to roughly $18,000 over 3 years at entry level, every new process is another licence, and most customers need a dedicated admin or partner to run it well. For customer support alone ServiceNow is overkill. It makes sense when the help desk is part of a larger IT and operations program.

Detailed feature comparison

	Kayako	ServiceNow	Jitbit
	Veteran help desk rebuilt around an AI agent	Enterprise-class ITSM solution	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$14220	$18000	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$28440	$36000	$8367
Active Directory	❌	✅ LDAP, SAML authentication	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Real-time dashboards for team workload and SLA status	✅ 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	✅ Macros that insert replies and update ticket properties	✅ 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	✅ Custom fields for conversations, users and organizations	✅ Custom fields via additional database columns	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	❌	✅ Custom statuses for tickets and incidents	✅ 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	✅ Separate satisfaction surveys, not tied to tickets	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Help center and Messenger branding; the agent interface is not customizable	✅ Custom forms layouts only	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	✅ Customizable email templates	✅ WYSIWYG/HTML templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ Escalation via SLA breach triggers and monitors	✅ 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	✅ Migration from other help desks via the API or Kayako's onboarding team; no self-service CSV export	✅ Import/export from Excel, export to PDF	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	✅ Multilingual help center and localized customer-facing content	✅ Extra languages via a plugin	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	❌	✅ Full ITIL/ITSM	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Public and private help centers	✅ Knowledge base and the self-service portal	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	✅ Included in Kayako Messenger	✅ Yes	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	❌	✅ Only via 'Now' mobile app	✅ 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	❌	✅ Yes, but only the highest pricing tier	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ Pre-built and custom reports; some users find custom reports hard to build	✅ Yes	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ REST API covering conversations, users and organizations	✅ Included	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ JWT-based SSO only. No SAML or Active Directory support in the current version	✅ SAML, LDAP	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ SLA policies with targets per priority and automated breach triggers	✅ SLA policies available	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Kayako Messenger widget with chat and help center search	❌	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ 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	✅ 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	✅ Triggers, monitors and macros, plus AI actions via the Kay agent	✅ 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.