Jira Service Management vs. ServiceNow: Feature Comparison 🔍

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The success of every company depends on customer satisfaction. To ensure this, the right IT Service Management (ITSM) tool is essential. The market leaders in ITSM solutions are Jira Service Management and ServiceNow. According to the latest Apps Run The World report, they together make up 58% of the ITSM market.

Both Jira Service Management and ServiceNow offer a variety of features, including incident, request, problem, change, SLA, and configuration management.

In this article, we compare the key aspects of both tools to help you make an informed decision when choosing the best ITSM software for your organization.

What is Jira Service Management?

Dashboard reports

Customer portal

Jira Service Management (JSM) is a service management solution for any high-velocity team looking to streamline their processes to resolve issues faster. JSM is built on the established Jira platform and integrates seamlessly with Jira Software. Although now known as a flexible ITSM solution, JSM can also be applied beyond IT teams in Enterprise Service Management (ESM).

Through its ITIL-compliant focus and integration of fundamental IT service management best practices, Jira Service Management enables organizations to improve the efficiency and quality of their IT services. JSM’s service management functionalities, including self-service portals, service-level agreements (SLAs) and queues, support the seamless implementation of the ITIL framework.

What is ServiceNow?

IT Dashboard https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/product-screenshots.html

Customer Portal https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/product-screenshots.html

ServiceNow also provides a powerful solution for IT departments looking to accurately handle requests, issues, and changes. With Operations Management (ITOM), ITSM and IT Business Management (ITBM), ServiceNow helps organizations efficiently manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions. Although ServiceNow’s cloud-native SaaS platform is known for its comprehensive ITSM/ITIL capabilities, it can also be applied to ESM solutions.

From workflow automation to incident and problem management to configuration and knowledge management, ServiceNow covers a wide range of business needs.

Jira Service Management vs. ServiceNow: Feature Comparison 🔧

Both service management solutions are suitable for similar requirements. But it’s worth taking a closer look to find out which tool can best optimize your processes.

Features	Jira Service Management	ServiceNow
mplementation	Simple configuration without required support	Configuration is complex and hard to do without developer help
Implementation time	Average 1.57 months	Average 5.19 months
Pricing	Transparent and easy to understand pricing, cheaper than ServiceNow 20 dollars per month per agent	Confusing pricing with different packages, more expensive than Jira Service Management 100 dollars per month and user
Availability	On-premise and cloud	Cloud
User interface	Interactive, users find their way around easily	Users have a sharper learning curve
Scalability	Great scalability due to continuous development as well as more than 600 available Atlassian Marketplace Apps	Lack of scalability due to inflexible architecture
Encourage collaboration	Seamless collaboration between development and IT through strong integrations of Jira Software and Jira Service Management	Lack of visibility and integration capabilities as service desk operations and DevOps teams are separate entities
API for applications	Well-documented APIs for creating plug-ins	Well-documented APIs for creating plug-ins
Updates	Regular updates	Two releases a year and patches in March and September
Knowledge base	Available with Confluence
Coding development	No visual environment for users, code must be developed in IDE	Visual environment in low code
Incident/problem management	Customize incidents, resolve problems faster	Powerful incident and problem management modules
Configuration management	Flexible data structure for registration of important services	Logically structured asset and service representations through CMDB
Reporting functions	Predefined solutions for generating reports and integrating powerful reporting tools	Reporting function with limitations, performance analytics are chargeable
Mobile deployment
DevOps integration	Available with marketplace apps	Integration possible with additional effort
ITIL compliant
SLA management
Chats

For a detailed analysis and listing of all features, as well as customer reviews, see the Gartner comparison: Jira Service Management vs. ServiceNow.

Choosing between Jira Service Management and ServiceNow 🔄

Although ServiceNow has strong features as a ticketing tool and 24/7 support is available, the user interface can occasionally be perceived as rigid and cause delays. For organizations with a high volume of ticket requests, the need for specific tags to identify tickets and their occasional failure to update could make them difficult to keep track of.

Jira Service Management is comparatively more user-friendly and integrates ideally with other Atlassian products, enabling seamless collaboration and breaking down silos in organizations. In contrast to other ITSM platforms, JSM users save 80% on costs and benefit from a transparent pricing model with no hidden fees or expiring discounts. The uncomplicated adaptation to (growing) business requirements is also one of the advantages of Jira Service Management.

ServiceNow Dashboard https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/product-screenshots.html

JSM Dashboard: overview of all projects, also for Jira Software, Jira Work Management and more

When to use ServiceNow 📊

ServiceNow may be suitable for you if you focus mainly on complex ITIL processes and use many features of the software – otherwise, the performance is inadequate in terms of high costs as well as configuration efforts.

When to use Jira Service Management 🚀💡

Choose Jira Service Management if you are looking for a flexible solution that leads the way in collaboration, workflow automations as well as integrations, according to surveys. JSM is beneficial for all types of businesses, especially if you already use other Atlassian products like Confluence and desire seamless collaboration within your organization.

[Prabhu Palanisamy _Onward_]

Good summary. In our detailed analysis Atlassian Marketplace really stood out. Enterprise deployments will invariably require customization and Atlassian Marketplace offer a quick way to review & deploy apps. ServiceNow Store as the name suggests is more of window store with no real transactions and no transparency in pricing.

[Andrey Kiyanovsky]

Thank you for the article. But how it looks - it's a shame. Why do you use this useless narrow mode?

[Andreas Springer _Actonic_]

Thank you so much, @Andrey Kiyanovsky !
I didn't recognize that. Did some adjustments. Does it look like this for you now as well?

[Andrey Kiyanovsky]

Thanks @Andreas Springer _Actonic_  Now it's much better!