Jira Pricing for Software, Service Management, and Core Licenses

Jira is a popular project management tool built by Atlassian that organizations can use for everything from agile software development to IT support. Those interested in purchasing a Jira license must choose between the available hosting options for Jira — Server and Data Center — as well as decide which version of Jira best suits their needs — Core, Software, or Service Management. They should also consider free trials, service plans, standard and premium subscription models, and payment schedules.

Let’s take a look at how you can navigate the Jira purchasing process to meet your business needs while minimizing costs, and cover the pricing details for all available hosting options and Jira products.

The first question any organization should ask before purchasing a Jira license is whether to obtain a quote from Atlassian or obtain assistance from an Atlassian Solution Partner. Solution Partners help customers with implementation, configuration, and management of Jira and other Atlassian products. They come in three tiers:

• Highly specialized vendors, or companies just beginning to build a relationship with Atlassian, are Silver Solution Partners.
• The Gold tier includes established partners who have provided high quality service and good customer value across many clients.
• Finally, Platinum partners like Contegix provide the highest level of service and meet the most stringent training requirements.

There are many benefits to purchasing through a Solution Partner:

• By picking a specific provider, organizations can better align purchases with their business needs, ensuring that pricing options and contracts make financial sense and provide the best return on investment.
• Bundling a license purchase with hosting, services, and support allows for more transparent pricing and possible discounts.
• Solution Partners also make renewal easier, with more proactive options for extending contracts and co-terming, so licenses never need to expire. The best Atlassian Solution Partners send customizable alerts anticipating expiration dates and have dedicated support teams who can reach out and prevent any interruption to service.
• Upgrading or downgrading your Jira instance to another user tier can be a complex affair. Solution Partners can accurately assess the factors that will affect your new pricing, calculate it, and ensure that you obtain maximum credit for your current purchases.
• Atlassian provides access to temporary and developer instance keys on a self-service basis, as do most external software providers. With dev and temp keys, license owners can freely select their own plugins and software to use with Jira. However it can be complex knowing how to retrieve, apply, and manage these keys. Solution Partners can help navigate and facilitate the process.
• Organizations can also get license keys faster through Solution Partners. Atlassian holds keys until payment has been received in full, while Solution Partners may release keys as soon as the software is invoiced.
• Atlassian will recommend Solution Partners for demo purposes, or Marketplace vendors for their own products. Solution Partners can provide a cohesive demo across the core Atlassian tools, as well as the various plugin set the client may want.

Regardless of the version of Jira you decide to purchase, you must choose between Jira Cloud and Jira Data Center. These two hosting options share a pricing scheme based on user tiers. The more users that need to be supported on the platform, the higher the monthly or annual cost.

For Jira Software and Core, users are quite simply employee accounts, or the number of unique individuals who will be logging in to the software, whether to manage a team, track bugs, or post updates and complete tasks. Multiple people cannot share a login, and even a person who simply has an account for monitoring purposes counts as a user.

For Jira Service Management, the pricing tiers are based on “agents,” because in this case the relevant employees are customer service agents, not end users and customers who contact an organization via the platform. There is no limit on the number of customers.

Jira Cloud Pricing

Jira Cloud allows organizations to use a Jira instance hosted by Atlassian, saving them the trouble of dealing with provisioning and managing their own hosting. Jira Cloud is most appropriate for small organizations that do not have the resources to host Jira themselves and lack any unusual performance or scaling needs. Organizations can always migrate to Jira Data Center down the road if their needs change.

Jira Cloud is available through both monthly and annual subscription plans, with a discount for the latter, based on the number of users who will be logging in to the platform. Monthly fees are determined by the daily average user count for the previous 30 days, while annual plan charges are based on a fixed maximum number of users.

Jira Cloud is also broken down into two additional subscription tiers: Standard and Premium. Jira Cloud Standard is the most popular distribution with a lower price point. Jira Cloud Premium is slightly more costly, but includes guarantees of 99% uptime, unlimited online storage, and 24/7 support.

Jira Data Center Pricing

Jira Data Center allows organizations to host instances of the tool using their own infrastructure or a variety of third party cloud providers with additional management options, greater flexibility, and improved security over Jira Cloud. Data Center provides the highest available levels of performance and scalability, and it is most appropriate for large, enterprise-scale organizations. Data Center is available only as an annual subscription. While Jira Software and Service Management can be used with Data Center, Jira Core cannot.

Free Jira Cloud options exist for all Jira products. The free Jira Software tier includes 2GB of storage and supports up to 10 users. The free Jira Core tier also supports up to 10 users, while Service Management’s includes up to 3 agents and unlimited end users.

Beyond the free options available, several discounts also exist for specific groups looking to purchase Jira licenses. Eligible academic institutions, such as schools, research groups, or public libraries can obtain a discount of up to 50% on Cloud products through an Atlassian Academic License. In addition, registered nonprofit organizations can purchase Cloud subscriptions at an even larger discount of 75% by applying for an Atlassian Community License.

Jira Software is Atlassian’s flagship project management suite, including both the basic functionality of Jira Core as well as a variety of newer agile project management features, which were formerly bundled separately as Jira Agile. Though Jira was initially geared towards developers and technical teams, adopting agile methodologies has made the platform useful for planning, tracking, and managing any kind of work. Nontechnical teams in fields like human resources increasingly find Jira useful for defining and enacting efficient workflows.

Jira Cloud

Below is a table outlining Atlassian’s licensing costs for Jira Software Cloud with a monthly subscription:

Source: Atlassian

Annual subscription prices are similar but somewhat discounted over the 12-month commitment:

Source: Atlassian

Jira Data Center

Here is an overview of pricing for a Jira Software instance using Data Center:

Source: Atlassian

Jira Service Management is designed for business and IT customer service desks. While Jira Software and Core feature a general focus on project management, Service Management creates a common platform to specifically address customer issues.

Jira Cloud

Below is the monthly pricing information for Jira Service Management Cloud Standard, based on agents rather than users:

Source: Atlassian

Prices are again discounted for an annual subscription:

Source: Atlassian

Jira Data Center

Here are the prices for Service Management with Jira Data Center:

Source: Atlassian

Jira Core lacks many of the newer features geared towards lean and agile management styles present in Jira Software, but it does include all of the functionality needed for most standard project management use cases. It is suitable for organizations that do not follow agile management practices or engage in software development.

Jira Cloud

The monthly pricing for Jira Cloud Core is split into four user tiers:

Source: Atlassian

The annual pricing is again discounted in comparison to the monthly payment schedule:

Source: Atlassian

Platinum Atlassian Solution Partners like Contegix make purchasing and managing Jira simple. Contegix provides focused and dedicated support for your Jira deployment and ensures that the platform is customized to meet your enterprise’s needs. Contegix can handle initial purchases, upgrading Jira, and hosting, so you can focus on completing workflows. Contact Contegix if you are ready to get started using Jira with minimal cost and effort.