Quick answer: You don’t need Jira Service Management (JSM) to keep using Jira. Spike, PagerDuty, SolarWinds Incident Response and Xurrent IMR are on-call tools that keep an incident and its Jira issue in sync both ways. For a team of 10 on monthly billing, Spike Business is the most affordable of the four at $140 a month. JSM costs $269 a month on Standard and $616 on Premium for the same team. Staying on JSM makes sense if your company runs its service desk there.
TL;DR
- OpsGenie stops working on April 5, 2027. If you move into JSM first, OpsGenie turns off 120 days after the migration.
- In JSM, each engineer on an on-call schedule needs a service desk agent licence. For a team of 10 that’s $26.90 a person a month on Standard, and OpsGenie-style escalations need Premium at $61.60.
- A “Jira integration” can mean a one-off ticket or a full sync. incident.io has no direct status sync, and Rootly’s updates to Jira are one-way unless you build a workflow.
- Spike’s two-way Jira sync is on the Business plan. Standard doesn’t include Jira.
- Spike’s team imports your OpsGenie schedules and escalation policies for you. If you’d rather do it yourself, Spike’s API, MCP server and Terraform provider work too.
| Tool | Best for | Incident sync with Jira | Cost for 10 people a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jira Service Management (JSM) | Companies that run a JSM service desk and want on-call in the same product | Native | $269 Standard, $616 Premium |
| Spike | Teams that want OpsGenie-style on-call and two-way Jira sync at the most affordable price for 10 people | Status and comments both ways, on Business | $140 on Business |
| PagerDuty | Teams that want Jira priorities mapped to incidents and budget for add-ons | Status both ways, optional notes, from Professional | $250 on Professional |
| incident.io | Teams that run incidents in Slack and track follow-ups as Jira tickets | Ticket per incident, follow-ups sync back, no direct status sync | $290 on Team with on-call |
| Rootly | Teams that want to script every Jira update with workflows | Rootly updates Jira, Jira changes come back through a workflow you build | $400 for Incident Response and On-Call |
| SolarWinds Incident Response (Squadcast) | Teams already using SolarWinds | Status and notes both ways, from Pro | $150 on Pro, billed annually |
| Xurrent IMR (Zenduty) | Teams already on Xurrent’s service desk | Status and notes both ways, on every plan | $160 on Growth |
| xMatters | Teams that run ServiceNow alongside Jira | Jira issues open alerts, and responses update the issue | $150 on Starter |
Prices checked on each vendor’s pricing page in November 2026. Billed monthly unless marked.
This guide is for teams that work in Jira and need on-call and alerting outside JSM. If you’re looking for a help desk to replace JSM’s service desk, tools like ServiceNow, Freshservice and Zendesk belong on a different list.
If your team runs on Jira and used OpsGenie for alerts and on-call, Atlassian’s answer is to move into JSM. That works, but it costs more per person. Each engineer on an on-call schedule needs a JSM agent licence, which is priced for service desk work. For a team of 10 on monthly billing, that’s $26.90 a person on Standard and $61.60 on Premium. OpsGenie teams rely on escalation rules like alerting the next person in the rotation or repeating a policy. In JSM, those start on Premium.
The search results for “JSM alternatives” don’t help with that choice. They list help-desk tools, and none of them checks how an on-call tool works with Jira. That integration decides whether you can leave JSM and still keep your tickets in sync.
So I compared seven on-call tools on the Jira integration first. I set up five of them myself while testing OpsGenie replacements: Spike, PagerDuty, incident.io, Squadcast and Zenduty. For every tool, the Jira behaviour comes from the vendor’s own docs and the prices from its pricing page.
We built Spike, and it’s included in this list. It sits in the same tables and uses the same comparison criteria as others.
Should you stay on JSM?
There are three ways this can go. Which one fits depends on what else your company runs in JSM.
Stay on JSM for everything. This probably suits you if IT or customer requests already run through a JSM service desk. Requests, assets, alerts and on-call stay in one Atlassian product. Incidents link to Jira work items and code changes without a second vendor.
Keep the JSM service desk and use another tool for on-call. Your help-desk agents stay on JSM. Your engineers go on-call in a separate tool, so you don’t pay JSM agent licences for them. You also don’t need JSM Premium for OpsGenie-style escalations.
Leave JSM and keep Jira Software. This fits teams that used OpsGenie only for alerts and on-call. Jira stays where engineers track work, and an on-call tool opens and updates the Jira issues.
The cost of the move into JSM comes in three parts:
- Agent licences for on-call. Standard costs $269 a month for 10 agents and Premium costs $616, on monthly billing. Annual billing comes to $2,700 and $6,200 a year. These are from Atlassian’s pricing page in November 2026. Our JSM pricing breakdown covers 25 and 50 agents.
- Premium for OpsGenie-style escalations. Alerting the next or previous person in a rotation and repeating a policy aren’t on Free or Standard. Our JSM review shows where each one breaks on the lower plans.
- Usage billing. From December 3, 2026, Atlassian bills for automation and AI usage on top of the per-agent price.
Why does the Jira integration matter for on-call?
An alert starts the work, but the Jira issue is where the fix gets tracked. If the two don’t sync, someone copies the status and notes across by hand during the incident. Updates that never reach Jira are easy to lose after the incident is resolved. OpsGenie had this integration built in, so teams leaving it usually notice the gap first.
The phrase “Jira integration” on a pricing page can mean different things. One tool opens a ticket and never touches it again. Another keeps the status and comments in sync on both sides. That difference is what the table below checks.
How I compared the alternatives
- The Jira integration while an incident is live. Can it create a Jira issue from an incident? Do status changes sync both ways? Do comments sync both ways? Can a Jira issue open an incident? Which plan is it on? Follow-up work after the incident is noted in each tool’s section where its docs cover it.
- Cost for 10 people. The plan a rotating team with Jira needs, on monthly billing where the vendor publishes it. JSM’s agent price is the baseline.
- How familiar it feels after OpsGenie. Schedules, escalation policies, overrides and how alerts reach each person.
Jira sync compared
| Tool | Creates an issue from an incident | Status syncs both ways | Comments sync both ways | Jira issue can open an incident | Plan with Jira |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spike | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Business and Enterprise |
| PagerDuty | ✅ | ✅ | PagerDuty to Jira | ✅ | Professional and up |
| incident.io | ✅ | ❌ | Follow-ups only | Not in docs | Team and up (Basic allows 2 integrations) |
| Rootly | ✅ | With a workflow you build | Rootly to Jira | ✅ | Not stated |
| SolarWinds IR (Squadcast) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Pro and up |
| Xurrent IMR | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Every plan |
| xMatters | ❌ | Responses update Jira | xMatters to Jira | ✅ | Not stated |
Sources: each vendor’s Jira docs, linked in its section below.
Four tools sync status both ways as a setting. What separates them is the price for 10 people: $140 a month on Spike, $160 on Xurrent IMR, $150 on SolarWinds IR billed annually and $250 on PagerDuty.
The 7 best JSM alternatives for teams that keep Jira
1. Spike
Best for: teams that want OpsGenie-style on-call and two-way Jira sync at the most affordable price for 10 people.
Jira integration: Spike’s Business plan syncs incidents and Jira issues both ways. A status change or a comment on one shows up on the other. You can create a Jira ticket from a button on the incident page, or let a playbook create one when an incident triggers. The same ticket holds follow-up work like root cause analysis. New Jira issues can also open incidents in Spike, so a bug logged by support can alert whoever is on-call.
What stands out in Spike: each escalation step can alert people in different ways. In one step you could call Alex, send an SMS to Bilal and post in a Slack channel with an @here mention. Alex can still switch their calls to SMS with an alert override, without editing the policy. On-call overrides take a comment, so the next person knows why a shift changed. Every plan includes a public status page and unlimited Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp and Telegram alerts.
Coming from OpsGenie: escalation policies, schedules and alert routing work on the same ideas and carry over. Spike builds schedules from layers, where OpsGenie stacks rotations. Our team gives dedicated support through the move and can import your schedules and escalation policies for you. If you’d rather do it yourself, Spike’s MCP server, API and Terraform provider all work. Our OpsGenie migration resources cover the export, a concept map and a parallel-run plan.
Cost for 10 people: $140 a month on Business, billed monthly. Annual billing gives one month free. Standard is $70 a month but doesn’t include the Jira integration. OpsGenie users get 20% off their first year on an annual plan.
Watch out: Spike has no postmortem templates, so postmortems go out through a playbook to your docs tool. If you need a help desk with requests, assets and change management, JSM is built for that.
What customers say: HitPath moved from OpsGenie to Spike and ran both before switching. Its CTO Mark Brody said:
We ran OpsGenie and Spike together for about a month, and everything lined up, just to make sure nothing was falling through the cracks. Once we were confident, we canceled our OpsGenie service and opened the gates on Spike.
2. PagerDuty
Best for: teams that want Jira priorities mapped to incidents and have the budget for PagerDuty’s add-ons.
Jira integration: PagerDuty’s Jira Cloud integration syncs status both ways and can map PagerDuty priorities to Jira priorities. Notes can sync too, if you turn that on. Issues can be created on every new incident or with a button on the incident page. A JQL rule can open incidents from Jira. One limit: a change in Jira can’t move an incident to Acknowledged. The integration starts on Professional, and the Free plan doesn’t create Jira tickets.
My hands-on testing notes: creating services and escalation policies felt straightforward. Phone calls and SMS can go to different numbers, and Slack alerts carry a long list of actions. Getting alerts into a specific Slack channel meant digging through integration settings. Email alerts can’t be acknowledged by reply.
Coming from OpsGenie: each person’s notification rules decide how they’re alerted, as in OpsGenie. A team lead can’t pick the channel for an escalation step. You gain repeat escalation and lose the history of past overrides. Our OpsGenie vs PagerDuty comparison covers the differences in more detail.
Cost for 10 people: $250 a month on Professional billed monthly, or $210 billed annually. AI noise reduction, extra status pages and live call routing are add-ons.
Watch out: the price climbs once you need the add-ons. Overrides have no comment field.
3. incident.io
Best for: teams that run incidents in Slack and track follow-ups as Jira tickets.
Jira integration: incident.io can create a Jira ticket for each incident and keeps it updated as the incident changes. Its strongest Jira feature is follow-ups. You can export them from the dashboard or Slack. The ticket’s title, assignee and completion sync back. Direct status sync isn’t available. Their own docs suggest a workaround with a custom field and Jira automation.
My hands-on testing notes: escalation policies work like flowcharts with if-else conditions for working hours and priority, which I found intuitive. Alerts can wait in triage until a responder declares them real. There was no button on the incident page to open a Jira ticket. Tickets came from a “Create tickets for incidents” toggle with conditions.
Coming from OpsGenie: each person’s settings decide how they’re alerted, as in OpsGenie. The importer brings over schedules and escalation policies. Its Opsgenie Rescue Program lets you run both tools at no extra cost until your OpsGenie contract ends.
Cost for 10 people: $290 a month on Team with the on-call add-on ($19 plus $10 per user), billed monthly. Pro with on-call is $45 per user.
Watch out: with no direct status sync, a resolved incident and its Jira ticket can drift apart unless you build the workaround.
4. Rootly
Best for: teams that want to script every Jira update with workflows.
Jira integration: Rootly creates a Jira issue when an incident is declared and can update it as the incident changes. Its docs call that update “one-way: changes flow from Rootly to Jira only.” Jira events can still update incidents, but only through an alert workflow that you build. Action items export to Jira too. The docs say only two Jira changes come back to the action item: summary edits and deleting the issue. Comments go from Rootly to existing issues only.
Coming from OpsGenie: Rootly’s team imports schedules, escalation policies and users on every plan. It also runs both tools side by side during the move. On-call is a separate product from incident response, so you buy both to replace OpsGenie.
Cost for 10 people: $400 a month for Incident Response and On-Call at $20 each per user. The pricing page doesn’t say whether that’s monthly or annual billing. Startups under 100 people can ask for up to 50% off.
Watch out: two-way status sync is something you build with workflows, not a setting. A status change in Jira doesn’t reach a Rootly action item.
5. SolarWinds Incident Response (formerly Squadcast)
Best for: teams already using SolarWinds.
Jira integration: the Jira Cloud extension maps statuses both ways, and notes on a Jira ticket show up on the incident and the reverse. It needs the Pro plan or higher. If Jira is also an alert source, their docs suggest a filter so tickets don’t loop.
My hands-on testing notes: I tested it under the Squadcast name. Both team leads and individuals can control how alerts arrive, and the schedule view flags coverage gaps in red. There was no button to open a Jira ticket from the dashboard or Slack. Tickets came from workflows.
Coming from OpsGenie: schedules use rotations, which is close to OpsGenie. A free migration tool on GitHub turns your OpsGenie users, teams, schedules and escalation policies into Terraform files.
Cost for 10 people: $150 a month on Pro, billed annually. SolarWinds doesn’t publish a monthly price.
Watch out: every step has many options, which made setup slower. There’s no record of past overrides.
6. Xurrent IMR (formerly Zenduty)
Best for: teams already on Xurrent’s service desk.
Jira integration: the two-way Jira integration creates an issue for each incident and keeps status and notes in sync in both directions. Xurrent says it doesn’t gate features by plan, so this works on every plan.
My hands-on testing notes: I tested it under the Zenduty name. Alerts can be acknowledged or resolved from email, and a “Move to next rule” option keeps an escalation moving if a step has nobody in it. Jira tickets came from outgoing rules, with no button on the dashboard.
Coming from OpsGenie: IMR is Xurrent’s on-call and incident product. It’s sold separately from Xurrent’s ITSM help desk, which is the product other JSM lists name. Xurrent’s migration scripts move users, teams, schedules and escalation policies. It runs free alongside OpsGenie for up to 12 months.
Cost for 10 people: $160 a month on Growth billed monthly, or $140 billed annually. Starter costs less but covers only 5 users.
Watch out: a status page is a $10,000 a year add-on on Growth. Repeat escalation runs just after one minute, which is a very short time interval.
7. xMatters
Best for: teams that run ServiceNow alongside Jira. ServiceNow and other ITSM integrations come on every plan, Free included.
Jira integration: in xMatters’ Jira Cloud integration, a new or updated Jira issue alerts the right people. Their response goes back to Jira: Accept assigns the issue and Resolve resolves it, with a comment on the issue. It doesn’t describe creating Jira issues from xMatters incidents.
Coming from OpsGenie: xMatters is now part of Everbridge. It has an OpsGenie replacement page but no importer. Schedules and escalation policies are rebuilt by hand.
Cost for 10 people: $150 a month on Starter, which covers up to 25 users. The pricing page doesn’t say whether that’s monthly or annual. Starter includes 50 SMS and 10 voice alerts per user a month.
Watch out: status pages start on Advanced, which has no published price.
Cost for 10 people compared
| Tool | Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually |
|---|---|---|---|
| JSM | Standard / Premium | $269 / $616 | $2,700 / $6,200 a year |
| Spike | Business | $140 | $1,540 a year |
| PagerDuty | Professional | $250 | $2,520 a year |
| incident.io | Team with on-call | $290 | $3,000 a year |
| Rootly | Incident Response and On-Call | $400 (billing not stated) | Not stated |
| SolarWinds IR | Pro | Not offered | $1,800 a year |
| Xurrent IMR | Growth | $160 | $1,680 a year |
| xMatters | Starter | $150 (billing not stated) | Not stated |
Each plan is the one a rotating team of 10 needs for its Jira integration. Prices checked on each vendor’s pricing page in November 2026. Other sites quote different JSM prices because they use other team sizes or billing terms.
How to keep Jira when you leave OpsGenie
OpsGenie stops working on April 5, 2027. If you move to JSM first, OpsGenie turns off 120 days after the migration. Our OpsGenie shutdown guide covers each date.
A few checks often help before you switch:
- The new tool is connected to your Jira site, with incident tickets landing in the right project.
- Statuses are mapped, so resolving an incident moves the Jira issue to done.
- A comment added on each side shows up on the other.
- Both tools run side by side until every alert shows up in both. HitPath ran both for about a month.
If you’d still like to see what moving into JSM looks like, our guide on migrating from OpsGenie to JSM walks through Atlassian’s tool.
Which JSM alternative fits you?
The first question is where your team runs an incident. An incident can run in a Slack channel. It can also start from the alert and the on-call rotation, or stay inside Atlassian.
| Where your team runs incidents | If this sounds like you | Consider |
|---|---|---|
| Inside Atlassian | Your company runs requests in a JSM service desk | Stay on JSM |
| From the alert and the rotation | You want two-way Jira sync and OpsGenie-style on-call for under $150 a month for 10 | Spike |
| From the alert and the rotation | You want Jira priorities mapped to incidents and have budget for add-ons | PagerDuty |
| From the alert and the rotation | Your company already uses SolarWinds | SolarWinds Incident Response |
| From the alert and the rotation | You already use Xurrent’s service desk | Xurrent IMR |
| In Slack | Your follow-up work after incidents lives in Jira | incident.io |
| In Slack | You want to script every Jira update with workflows | Rootly |
| Next to ServiceNow | You run ServiceNow alongside Jira | xMatters |
FAQ
Do I need JSM to keep using Jira?
No. Jira and JSM are separate products. On-call tools like Spike, PagerDuty and SolarWinds Incident Response connect to Jira directly. Our post on what JSM is explains how the two differ.
Can Jira be used for incident management?
Jira can track incidents as issues, but it doesn’t alert anyone or run on-call schedules. JSM adds alerting and on-call inside Atlassian. The other route is to pair Jira with an on-call tool that opens and updates the Jira issues.
Is there a free JSM plan for on-call?
Yes, but it covers only 3 agents. JSM Free includes email alerts and 200 SMS a month, with no voice calls. A rotation of 10 people needs Standard or Premium.
Is PagerDuty a good JSM alternative for on-call?
It can be, if the budget fits. PagerDuty Professional syncs status with Jira both ways and costs $250 a month for 10 people on monthly billing. Its Free plan doesn’t create Jira tickets, and features like AI noise reduction are add-ons. Our OpsGenie vs PagerDuty comparison goes deeper.
Which JSM alternatives sync with Jira both ways?
Spike, PagerDuty, SolarWinds Incident Response and Xurrent IMR sync status both ways. Spike needs Business, PagerDuty needs Professional and SolarWinds needs Pro. Xurrent includes it on every plan.
What’s the most affordable JSM alternative with two-way Jira sync for 10 people?
Spike Business is the most affordable at $140 a month billed monthly or $1,540 a year. Xurrent IMR Growth is $160 a month. SolarWinds Incident Response Pro is $1,800 a year.
Do these tools work with self-hosted Jira?
Most of them do. PagerDuty and incident.io connect to Jira Server and Data Center. xMatters has an integration certified for Data Center. SolarWinds Incident Response supports Jira Server, except in its EU data centre. Xurrent IMR documents two-way sync with Jira Server. Rootly’s docs cover Jira Cloud only. Spike creates tickets on self-hosted Jira.
Can I move off OpsGenie without moving to JSM?
Yes. You can move straight to another on-call tool and keep Jira for tickets. Our list of OpsGenie alternatives for startups compares the options for small teams.
Wrapping up
Keeping Jira and leaving JSM are two separate choices. If your company runs a JSM service desk, staying is the simpler path. If Jira is where your engineers track work and OpsGenie only handled alerts, a standalone tool with two-way Jira sync gives you both at a more affordable price.
