incident.io vs JSM

OpsGenie is sunsetting in 2027. As teams replace paging and scale incident response, many are asking whether Jira Service Management can do the job or whether incidents need a dedicated execution layer.

Get a demoStart a free trial

We talk to hundreds of JSM customers. This is a direct window into what they tell us about their experience.

It's finally just reached a point of contention across multiple teams that JSM is probably what we don't want.
We migrated from Opsgenie to JSM and it was a complete nightmare. That's one of the reasons we decided to change.
They forced the transition before fully baking out all the functionality correctly within JSM.
It's not enterprise ready.
What's been folded into Jira feels like a bolt-on.
I'm going to be frank - I'm not sure that JSM is going to be a great tool for incident management.
We're trying to break out of the Atlassian bubble.

Incidents don't stop when a ticket is created. Neither do we.

From alert to resolution, give your team everything they need to respond quickly, reduce downtime, and keep customers in the loop.

The JSM way

The JSM way

Trusted for ticketing and ITSM, but stops short - leaving teams to coordinate across Jira, Slack, and Confluence while the incident is still happening.

The incident.io way

Run the entire incident in one place, with context, communication, and control from alert to retro.

Where the differences actually show up in practice

Both JSM and incident.io can be used during incidents. But differences compound as incident volume, team count, and service ownership grow.

Running incidents

Incidents in JSM rely on responders manually coordinating across Jira, chat, and internal docs. Execution depends on people remembering steps and keeping systems in sync.

Tracking them

Execution is orchestrated. Roles, escalation, comms, and timelines are structured automatically so responders focus on fixing the problem, not running the process.

Endless configuration

JSM's flexibility comes from custom workflows, fields, and rules that require ongoing upkeep as teams and services scale. Every change means someone maintaining the config.

Built-in automation

Automation is built into the response model. Common incident patterns are enforced by default, reducing drift without requiring constant process maintenance.

Scattered context

Context is distributed across tickets, comments, Slack threads, and Confluence pages. Understanding what happened often requires reconstruction after the fact.

Single source of truth

Each incident has a single live timeline capturing decisions, updates, actions, and ownership as they happen - a shared source of truth in real time.

Optional retros

Post-incident reviews and action items depend on manual effort and discipline. Learning quality varies by team and incident severity - and often doesn't happen at all.

Repeatable learning

Follow-ups, action items, and retros are generated from structured incident data, making learning repeatable instead of optional.

How does incident.io compare with JSM?

JSM
incident.io

Alerting

Native alert integrations

Datadog, Grafana, Alertmanager, Honeycomb, etc.

Alert grouping and deduplication

Group related alerts to reduce noise

AI grouping on Premium/Enterprise only

Alert routing by service ownership

Route based on catalog / team ownership

Rules-based routing only, no service catalog

On-call

On-call scheduling

Create and manage rotation schedules

Schedule overrides

Individuals can override shifts e.g. to cover vacation

Cover requests

On-callers can proactively request cover and have the system find someone

On-call pay calculator

Calculate on-call compensation automatically

Mobile app (iOS & Android)

Native mobile app for paging and response

Jira Cloud app — not a dedicated on-call/incident app

Incident response

Slack-native incident management

Run incidents end-to-end without leaving Slack

Slack ChatOps exists but JSM requires constant context-switching

Automatic role assignment

Assign IC, comms lead etc. based on service ownership

Real-time incident timeline

Capture decisions, updates and ownership as they happen

AI timeline from Slack on Premium/Enterprise only

Automated stakeholder updates

Structured comms sent automatically during incidents

"Notify stakeholders" button exists but manual, not automated

Status page integration

Customer-facing status updates tied to the incident

Enterprise plan only - not available on lower tiers, 10k subscriber limit

Post-incident

AI-generated post-incident review

Auto-generate PIR/retro from incident data

AI PIR generation on Premium/Enterprise only

Follow-up tracking

Structured action items created and tracked from incidents

Jira tickets can be linked manually but not auto-generated from incidents

Insights and analytics

Incident trends, MTTD/MTTR, workload reports

Basic reporting only; advanced analytics on Premium/Enterprise

Running incidents in Jira today?

See how teams move beyond ticket-based incident handling to a complete incident management platform - from alert to retro, in one place.

Book a short walkthrough