Jira Service Management or/and Customer Case

Conclusion

Jira Service Management provides a comprehensive set of features and is suitable for organizations with larger support teams, complex workflows, and budgets, which requires enterprise-grade features. On the other hand, Customer Case offers a simpler and more intuitive solution with a cleaner interface and overall experience, making it ideal for small teams looking for essential helpdesk functionality. The core focus is on simplicity, giving users the features they need without overcomplicating things. You can use both tools primarily to help unlicensed teammates submit bugs or requests in Jira Service Management project via the Customer Case portal. 

If your team is convenient with a current helpdesk tool, you can use Customer Case as a feedback platform where your customers can submit ideas that are automatically directed to the relevant Jira project. It helps you keep ideation and implementation processes in one tool for

• faster feedback loops
• faster feature delivery
• fewer disconnects between support, product, and dev teams.

Our customers find Customer Case is quicker to set up, and has less of a learning curve than other feedback and helpdesk tools on the market.

Fundamental Differences

• In the Customer Case app, any licensed user can be an agent. That means everyone can contact the customers.
• Jira Service Management helps to set up a customer service portal, while Customer Case for Jira Cloud app provides both - feedback and helpdesk portals. 
• In Jira Service Management, you can create a portal for one project type. With Customer Case, you can use Work Management and Software projects for mapping a customer portal. Or even add the portal to Jira Service Management project type.
• In Jira Service Management, it's impossible to see any ticket on the customer portal unless you open a ticket in Jira and click on "View request in portal." In the Customer Case app, agents can work similarly with tickets on the portal and in Jira.
• There are no portal-only customers in Customer Case, unlike in Jira Service Management. Any user can visit the Customer Case portals without creating a portal-only account, as in Jira Service Management.
• In the Customer Case app, you can set up a forum with access (email or/and email domain) restrictions for a specific client. In this case, all the tickets on the portal are available for users specified in the restrictions. In Jira Service Management, it's only possible when adding customers to an organization. Even though you've enabled account creation for customers with specific email domains in Jira Service Management, it doesn't mean customers will see all the tickets of other customers with the same domain on the portal.
  • However, in Jira Service Management, you can create multiple organizations within one project. If you restrict a forum for a company using email domain restrictions in the Customer Case app, any company mentioned in the restrictions will have access to the portal and see the tickets in it. Thus, it's recommended to create a separate forum for each client in the Customer Case app.
• While the features on the portal are quite similar in both solutions, the features for agents are more extensive in JSM (read the section below). The Customer Case app works more for small teams providing the most essential functionality as a helpdesk solution.
• All the requests submitted via the Customer Case portal have a default CustomerC user as a reporter in Jira. However, you can find out who submitted the request on the Customer portal tab or the portal itself. 

Can I use both Jira Service Management and Customer Case?

Yes, you can!

• For example, some companies need to allow specific portal-only customers access to a Jira Software project to track project-related tickets. Due to security issues and additional costs when licensing those customers that need access to a Jira Software project, this approach doesn't work for many organizations. As a workaround, they can create a private portal for a Jira software project and restrict access to specific user emails or/and email domains. A portal works as a 'Jira mirror,' which means all the tickets submitted in the relevant Jira project (or only specific ones using JQL) will be exposed on the portal. Customers can track activity and have a chat with a team in comments on a specific issue.
• In Jira Service Management, it's only possible to create one site per Jira project. The Customer Case portal can be mapped to a similar Jira Service Management project as a second portal, for example, for collecting bugs or requests from teammates without the Jira licenses.
• Or you can use Jira Service Management as a support solution and Customer Case as a feedback portal for another Jira project.

Features

The feature availability varies depending on your subscription in Jira Service Management. Check out the feature availability for your subscription here.

Feature	Jira Service Management	Customer Case for Jira Coud	Comments
Jira
Number of portlas per Jira project	One	One
Helpdesk Portal
Feedback portal
Queues
SLAs
Channels	Portal Email Widget	Portal Email
Chats
Canned responses
Forms and workflows			A request form and workflow on the Customer Case portal reflect a relevant Jira issue form and workflow in the relevant project. Read more on how to customize a form on a portal.
Internal Comments			Read more about internal comments in Customer Case.
Work Categories
Customer satisfaction
Jira Automation			Read the automation tips for Customer Case.
Similar requests			You can use the JQL field "text" as in text ~ "some words" to search for similar issues in the issues list. It searches an issue's Summary, Description, Environment, Comments.
Configuring customer notifications
Dashboards and Reports			Some out-of-the-box Jira Service Management reports are available as gadgets in the dashboards section. You can set them up for other types of Jira Cloud projects.
Compliance settings
Services
Issue collector			Only available for company-managed projects.
Language support
Data & Insights			Find out more information about the features included here.
Security and Controls			Find out more information about the features included here.
Incident, Problem, and Change Management			Find out more information about the features included here.
Asset and Service Configuration Management			Find out more information about the features included here.
Portal
Customization of the portal
Customers can edit requests			In the Customer Case app, a customer can edit an idea/ticket description and their own comments. Agents can edit an idea or ticket description and comments of customers as well.
Custom portal domain name			Read more information on how to issue it.
Authentication	Email and password - for portal-only customers Licensed Jira users can sign in using both Atlassian account and business accounts (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Slack, Apple)	Email and password Google account Atlassian account and Jira Service Management portal-only customer account	Read more about authentication in Customer Case.
Seeing all ideas/tickets			In Jira Service Management, the only way to see other customers' requests on the portal is to be added as a participant to other reporters' requests or be a part of an organization. Customer Case allows agents to see all the requests submitted by other users on a portal. Customers can see all the ideas on a feedback forum, but only those submitted by them on a helpdesk forum.
Voting
Knowledge management features
Viewing the list of ideas / tickets
Tracking user activity			In a feedback forum type, it's possible to track the activity of any user on the portal. Read more.
Pinning a comment
Related Ideas			The block with Related Ideas is only available for feedback forums during idea creation.
Sharing request			In Jira Service Management, who you can share a request with depends on the relevant project settings. In the Customer Case app, a user not included in the restrictions on a private feedback forum can't access an idea on it as a participant. But they can track the activity on a ticket in email notifications from a portal.
External resources
Sorting and filtering requests			The filters provided are different in both solutions. In Customer Case, there're filters that help track progress on a ticket for both agent and customers, unlike in JSM. In Jira Service Management, there's no option to sort tickets on a portal. Read more about sorting and filtering in Customer Case.
Resolve or cancel a request			In the Customer Case app, only an agent can make all the portal status transitions.
Searching for requests			Read more about this feature in Customer Case.

Licensing

Customers: Portal-only customers are free of charge in both Jira Service Management and Customer Case for Jira Cloud.

Agents: While Jira Service Management has a specific licensing model (per agent), Customer Case uses the standard Cloud apps' licensing approach: you must purchase the app license that matches the number of licensed users in Jira. For example, if you have a 100-User Jira Software license and a 50-Jira Service Management license, your Customer Case app must be at the 100-User level. Also, the pricing depends on your subscription period: monthly or annual.

Price Comparison. Monthly subscription (June 2023).

The price for Jira Service Management is provided for the Standart subscription plan.

Price Comparison. Annual subscription (June 2023).

The price for Jira Service Management is provided for the Standart subscription plan.

So the price efficiency can vary depending on the number of agents and your instance's maximum user tier. The higher the number of your agents in relation to the maximal user tier – the more money-saving will be Customer Case for you.