JitBit Help Desk vs. Kayako

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
JitBit Help Desk
Score 8.1 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
JitBit Help Desk from JitBit Software is a cloud-based or installed help desk solution with a ticketing system, knowledge base, and related features.
$2,199
one-time fee
Kayako
Score 6.7 out of 10
N/A
Kayako is a help desk and customer support platform that helps businesses automate workflows, improve agent productivity, and deliver personalized customer experiences across email, chat, and social media.
$79
per month
Pricing
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Editions & Modules
Small
$2,199
one-time fee
Company
$3,799
one-time fee
Enterprise
$6,499
one-time fee
Kayako One
$79
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Considered Both Products
JitBit Help Desk
Chose JitBit Help Desk
JitBit Help Desk is more modern and easy to use (web-based). Customizing different areas is also simpler. Product is still receiving feature updates.
Chose JitBit Help Desk
JitBit just had the feature set at the cost point we were willing to spend. Nothing against the other products, but this one just fit our model better.
Chose JitBit Help Desk
We've looked at several different Help Desk solutions, but the names escape me at the moment. We looked at Spiceworks and didn't find it to be bad but we didn't like the ads. There is a purchase version for about $500/year, but we still decided against it--I can't recall why. …
Chose JitBit Help Desk
JitBit is great. The price is great. The support is great. You can feel that it's growing in the right direction.

JitBit is one of those tools that I mention in converstaion. There's lots of systems that I hate talking about because you just think of the headaches, regret, and …
Kayako
Chose Kayako
Basecamp is more for client project management and implementations.
Chose Kayako
Jira is much more pricey but more complete. It integrates with our Scrum Board and Agile Software Development platform. So we can much more easily turn Tickets into User Stories, and our techs and devs only have to live in one software platform instead of having to switch …
Chose Kayako
Kayako is way more scalable than Spiceworks' helpdesk offering. We had trouble visualizing our current layout within their environment.

Zendesk was priced quite a bit higher than Kayako while offering similar functionality. It didn't make sense to want to migrate to a new …
Chose Kayako
Kayako's interface is far less complex than Zendesk, so it looked like a good platform. Unfortunately, the features didn't work and their support team is the worst. I went back to Zendesk and I got everything to work including their chat function. Zendesk just works. You don't …
Chose Kayako
Kayako beats the competition with the price but unfortunately loses the battle on all other fronts. Simply not enough options, not enough customisability, very nice and friendly customer support but not the most capable. If the code was less buggy it could be a stronger …
Chose Kayako
Based on cost, Kayako is by far the better solution.
Chose Kayako
Kayako is a great tool for the service industry. I think it is better suited for businesses that do 1-off interactions rather than using it to manage and maintain a larger repeat customer base. This was just our opinion based on the industry we are in. We are in the hosting …
Chose Kayako
We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale …
Chose Kayako
Tried Zen desk and just felt Kayako had many more controllable features.
Chose Kayako
Kayako is the only ticketing system I have used. I found it easy to learn and use.
Chose Kayako
Kayako is the only helpdesk software that I've ever used. In the past we only used a Gmail inbox.
Chose Kayako
This is the only product that I have used for a Help Desk or Case management system
Chose Kayako
We went with Kayako at the time of purchase because there was a much more cost effective self-hosted option that we have been able to leverage to our benefit. That option has become much more expensive now, but we feel like we'd still make the decision again.
Chose Kayako
We only looked at a few. For a small software company, that only wanted to provide better support, it was affordable and easy enough to assimilate into our system.
Chose Kayako
I choose Fusion over OTRS because of the simple nature of the set up and management of Fusion. OTRS required a lot of initial setup and the company was looking for a reliable base system to build onto over time rather than a complex help desk system up front. If you are looking …
Chose Kayako
Kayako's interface is definitely better in the "ease of use" category.

I find that the functionality of Kayako trumps Numara in a few different ways, and the search functions are a little bit easier to navigate.
Chose Kayako
We evaluated Spiceworks and it tried to do too much. Kayako addressed our need for email support and distributing/tracking work without trying to introduce direct monitoring, knowledge base, and all kinds of other tools. It was much simpler to configure for our needs.
Features
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
JitBit Help Desk
9.6
Ratings
18% above category average
Kayako
2.0
Ratings
120% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets10.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications10.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation10.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Ticket response9.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
JitBit Help Desk
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Kayako
1.0
Ratings
155% below category average
External knowledge base8.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
JitBit Help Desk
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Kayako
1.0
Ratings
154% below category average
Customer portal8.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Email support9.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
2.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
JitBit Help DeskKayako
Likelihood to Recommend
Helps to create a continuous conversation between our team and the user. It was clean and easy to understand, training was less than a day for most newbies. Your Devs, Sales, Marketing Support, Management can all use one hub to talk to your users and gather feedback. Helped us expand our teams and realize what directions we needed to expand in. Support supports, Sales sells, Marketing markets... It's like a beautiful dance! It's hard to say that JitBit is right for you, but I can't imagine the industry that JitBit wouldn't work in. You put it in front of an employee, and they know what to do next.
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Kayako is suited for a small company that is just getting started. We are in the web-hosting industry and it was very hard to fully adapt the system the way we would have liked to. Kayako would be very good if you were hosting an ecommerce shop or customer service business where you can look at each customer interaction as separate and not over a long-term period.
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Pros
  • Flexibility.
  • Customizability.
  • Effective communication.
  • Historical tracking of issues and requests.
  • Reporting.
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  • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
  • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
  • Nice dashboard view.
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Cons
  • JitBit HelpDesk is not free. There is no free version. It would be nice if they had a free, limited version that would allow 100 tickets to get used to it before buying as it is pretty expensive, even for the lowest end implementation.
  • I wish it were easy to integrate forms into. I've seen numerous questions around the Net about integrating Google Forms or creating forms.
  • There is a strong push from JitBit to use the cloud version but some companies really have to use an on-premise solution.
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  • I have not tried to use the actual Workflow function for awhile so this issue may have been resolved. When we tried to use it, it was cumbersome and did not offer much flexibility as to meeting the needs of different departments.
  • This may no longer be an issue but if someone was knowledgeable about KQL and knew how another department was set up, they could write a report accessing their data even though they do not have permission to view/edit that departments data.
  • Perhaps adding the function of "Read Receipts" to end-users when opening a ticket.
  • When a ticket is closed, automatically include information from the initial creation of the ticket so the end user knows at a glance what issue has been resolved without looking up the Ticket ID.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
I am no longer with the company that was using this, and they were recently bought out by a larger organization that uses an internally developed software suite. It is unlikely for that reason that they will renew or keep any service with Kayako.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
  • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
  • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
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Alternatives Considered
We've looked at several different Help Desk solutions, but the names escape me at the moment. We looked at Spiceworks and didn't find it to be bad but we didn't like the ads. There is a purchase version for about $500/year, but we still decided against it--I can't recall why. JitBit's reviews and history are both very good. And if two years worth of no issues is any indication of how well it works, then that alone speaks for itself. I have used other Help Desk applications over the past 20 years and none are perfect, but a hassle-free experience gets a gold star from me.
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Kayako is way more scalable than Spiceworks' helpdesk offering. We had trouble visualizing our current layout within their environment. Zendesk was priced quite a bit higher than Kayako while offering similar functionality. It didn't make sense to want to migrate to a new platform. We have also evaluated various Sharepoint-based help desks, but their speed and reliability did not match our standards for what a help desk should be.
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Return on Investment
  • Our old Help Desk product was outdated so JitBit Help Desk improved our helpdesk productivity
  • We can also offer help desk product to other groups besides IT
  • End users are better serviced with modern product
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  • Kayako has helped our business to grow by allowing us to scale our help desk to accommodate more client companies in an efficient manner.
  • Kayako has allowed our customers to have more direct control over their help desk tickets and has made it easier for them to interface directly with our help desk staff.
  • The built-in chat features in Kayako that tie to our main website has allowed prospective customers to chat with our sales teams right away, resulting in more business.
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ScreenShots