The Jira Service Management Alternative
Built for Multi-Client Teams
Outgrowing a Trello board usually means being pointed at Jira Service Management — the same vendor, one tier up. It is a powerful engine, but it is built around projects inside one site, not around client companies. It is also no longer sold on its own: JSM now ships inside the Atlassian “Service Collection”, cloud only, priced in agent tiers. If each of your clients needs their own branding, their own SLAs, and their own data, projects are the wrong unit. StrataDesk makes the client the unit.
Why Teams Look Beyond Jira Service Management
Per-agent pricing
At 4-5 agents, Standard is $1,250/year and Premium $2,850/year (roughly $21 and $48 per agent per month). Your bill tracks headcount, not client count.
Projects are not tenants
Every client is a project inside a single Atlassian site, sharing one data store. There is no per-client database and no per-client restore.
Priced in agent tiers, in USD
Pricing steps by agent count rather than per seat, and is published in USD — so the cost of your sixth technician is a tier jump, not a line item.
Admin overhead
Schemes, permissions, request types, and workflows are powerful and genuinely time-consuming. Solo operators pay that cost in hours.
StrataDesk vs Jira Service Management
| StrataDesk | Jira Service Management | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Per client space — agents free | Per agent, tiered ($1,250/yr at 4-5) |
| Database per end-client | Separate PostgreSQL DB | No — one site, projects |
| Per-client backup | pg_dump per client | Site-wide backup only |
| Branded portals | Included | Custom-branded help centre (Standard+) |
| Asset management | Dynamic custom types | Included, but $0.02/object/month |
| Recurring tickets | Native, with per-asset fan-out | Via scheduled automation rules |
| Self-hosted option | Docker-based | Cloud only — Data Center sold separately |
| Free tier | Yes, stays free | Free forever, 3 agents |
To Be Fair: What Jira Service Management Does Well
- +An exceptionally powerful workflow and automation engine — few tools match its depth
- +The obvious choice if your team already lives in Jira and Confluence
- +Mature incident management, on-call scheduling, and a large marketplace
If you are one company running internal IT — or a software team already invested in Atlassian — Jira Service Management is a strong pick. If you are an agency or MSP supporting many separate client companies, StrataDesk was built around that shape from the start.
Switching Is Our Job, Not Yours
Request a space and we provision it within 24 hours — with a dedicated database per client. Founding customers get their data migrated by us, free: boards, tickets, contacts, the lot.
Jira Service Management is a trademark of its respective owner; StrataDesk is not affiliated with or endorsed by it. Competitor prices are annual-billing list prices where published and may vary by contract, team size, region, and billing cycle. Feature statements reflect the vendor's public documentation, last verified in July 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we'll fix it promptly.