What's the difference between Jira Service Management and Jira Software Licensing?

A question I was asked this week about Atlassian Cloud products;

What’s the difference between Jira Service Management and Jira Software licensing? And, if I use Jira?Service Management – do I also need a Jira Software License?

In this case, the person had been given some confusing information from someone in their team. To be fair to them, the licensing models are very different for these products, and people often get it wrong, so let's answer the questions here.

What is Jira Service Management, and how is it licensed?

Jira Service Management, formerly known as Jira Service Desk- is a Service Management solution for all teams – not just IT. Imagine you want a public portal for users to raise IT incidents, make a request to facilities management for a repair, or HR to onboard a new hire – Jira Service Management is the tool to use.

Jira Service Management is licensed per agent (monthly billing) or in agent tiers (annual billing). Agents are your (usually) internal users who are dealing with requests or need to access the internal functionality, e.g. setting up SLAs, viewing queues or administration functions. As with Jira Software, there’s no “concurrent user licensing”; a license is required for every agent who will use the software.

Customers/employees using your portal to raise requests do not need a license, and there are no limits on the number of customers you can have.?

Additionally, it’s worth noting that you can set up multiple Service Management projects under the same cloud instance without needing extra licenses.

What is Jira Software, and how is it licensed?

Jira Software has many uses, but typically it’s used by software development teams for managing projects.

Jira Software is licensed per user (monthly billing) or in user tiers (annual billing). Every user who interacts with Jira Software in any way will need a license (there is an exception, as the tool external share for Jira can work around this limitation).

Do I need a license for Jira Software if I use Jira Service Management?

No. While sharing a name, it’s best to think of these as separate products that can be tightly integrated. You do not need a Jira Software license unless you want to use the features there, e.g. interact directly with development issues. If set up correctly, Jira Service Management agents can even pass issues to developers and get updates on their process without needing a Jira Software license.

Anything else I need to know?

Approvers. In Jira Service Management, you might decide that some request types need an approver. When a request is sent to an approver, that approver will get an email notification with an option to approve or decline. Approvers do not need a Jira Service Management license.

Knowledge base/Confluence. If you want to create knowledge base articles with Jira Service Management, the users/agents creating or editing these will need a Confluence license. However, customers/end-users of your Jira Service Management Portal viewing these do not require a license.

Self-hosted versions (note - "Server" is being retired, so only Data Center is available to purchase) are licensed only in user tiers, with Jira Software starting with a minimum of 500 users and Jira Service Management with a minimum of 50 Agents.

Want more help?

We give free advice on all Atlassian licensing. Drop us an email or call us to discuss. [email protected] / 0113 5432679, or visit our website www.tribusit.co.uk