Issuetrak, Zendesk, Jira: How Much Should You Pay for Support?

How Much Should You Pay Software Vendors For Support?

Support should be included in your vendor price, no matter the tier. Issuetrak offers US-based, in-house support over the phone, email, chat, or webform. Our competitors cannot say the same. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a direct support line with Zendesk ($19-$115 per agent per month) or Jira ($47 per agent per month for 10 agents or fewer).

Issuetrak’s unlimited support is included in our transparent pricing, which sits at $69 per agent for Cloud or $998 per agent for on-premise hosting. Read on to see how this compares to Zendesk’s and Jira’s support, which is less obvious to navigate.

Price is a big differentiator for us in terms of what you get and what you pay for. The poor folks with other vendors have to pay for the privilege of a phone call or an email—yet don’t even get a response within 12 hours! Whereas with us, no matter which version of Issuetrak you pay for, the support is amazing.

Don’t Get Duped by Our Competitors Who Claim Top Notch Support

We WOULD say that our competitors charge you per call or per hour to access support—but it turns out our competitors don’t give away support that easily. For any complications you may face with their platforms, you might find yourself sifting through an over-crowded Help Center on your own.

Zendesk Support

When you’re looking for support, you want it NOW. Learning how to reach a support agent over the course of three video tutorials sounds a bit like a chore. Time is scarce. Who has any to spare on top of other responsibilities?

Apparently, Zendesk thinks their customers do.

You won’t find help right away, but you can spend the next 10 minutes of your busy workday watching these tutorials on how to get help. (Beware: there’s a front line of Z-bots to fight through before you can reach a person to help you.)

What’s worse, it seems Zendesk only deems you worthy of help if you pay a bit extra on top of their already extensive fees and prices:

Customers on any Zendesk plan have access to online support, as well as the Zendesk Help Center, on-demand training, and Community. For additional fees, customers can access prescriptive guidance, custom training, hands-on configuration, 24/7 support, and implementation services to ensure teams are set up for success. (Source) 

It turns out, trying to reach a Zendesk support agent is near impossible. We tried.

After following a FAQ link to their global support team, we were disappointingly redirected to two options: Sales or the Help Center. No agent in sight or on site. The video below is proof of our sad journey.

This was far too much angst for us. Zendesk’s software is already expensive, and with lackluster, non-existent support, the math just doesn’t add up. 

READ: Zendesk vs. Issuetrak

Jira Support

Customer frustration was palpable after a dive into Atlassian-owned Jira’s community: 

Basically, if you want any kind of support when you’re in a Jira pickle, you must be ready to pay for it. 

Support offerings are bundled with Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans. The Free plan has access to self help resources. Atlassian Access is available for any of these plans and includes the same level of support as Premium (whether or not you have a Premium plan). (Source)

We were glad for at least one redeeming quality: at least Jira is upfront about their unavailable support line and the need to pay a premium to get it:

Here’s another caveat: you can chat with one of Atlassian’s partners to get basic support—and you know what that means! 

Hiring third party vendors to serve as your customer support is pretty common—but often dissatisfying. It’s a rare occasion to get the answers you’re looking for when you’re forced to contact a support team that is miles away—physically and knowledge-wise—from the software product you’re using.

READ: Jira vs. Issuetrak

Of course, we all have businesses to run. Issuetrak on-premises customers must also pay maintenance fees to continue being supported by our team. Cloud customers reap the benefit of support that is already bundled into our competitive cloud hosting costs. Here’s the difference: our customers see the value of supreme, highly available support whenever they need it. While we appreciate Jira’s straightforward honesty, it’s worth it to compare the cost to benefit ratio of paying for support that gives you no roadblocks at any tier.

Issuetrak Support

Issuetrak prides itself on offering the best in customer support because we’re a people-first company. To us, we know getting down to solving problems requires hearing your story. How else could we provide you 100% satisfaction without being able to talk to you? 

Not only are we readily available by phone. You can fill out forms on our website, find us on social media, and reach out to your Account Manager. 

The best part is, our implementation process comes with 10 Professional Service hours, where you get specialized attention to setting up your site. This means that, because our team is able to cater to your process in the first place, you probably won’t need that much support down the road. 

“Issuetrak’s service is great, but honestly, it’s very rare that we have to call. Everything runs and does what we need it to do.” Issuetrak Customer Todd Krock, Technology Coordinator, Renaissance Academy

Customer support and service aren’t just buzzwords for us. They’re moral code. THAT’s the Issuetrak Advantage.