Compare
Collabound vs Jira Guest
Same problem — work with people outside your company — two different models. Jira Guest puts one outside person into one Jira space with an Atlassian account. Collabound treats each partner as an organization with its own portal, roles, and field templates. This page is for teams deciding which model fits.
Where the outside person works
Collabound
Outside Jira, in a secure link or the Collabound partner portal. No Atlassian account.
Jira Guest
Inside your Jira site, as a Jira user with an Atlassian account.
How many outside parties
Collabound
Unlimited partner organizations, each with as many users as they need, across all your projects. Partners and their users are free.
Jira Guest
One person at a time, each limited to one space per site. Up to five guests per paid user, on Standard plans and above.
What they can see
Collabound
Only the work items you share, and only the fields your content access template allows. Nothing else on your site is reachable.
Jira Guest
One whole space: every work item and every field in it, including custom fields and internal comments, unless you build and maintain work-item security levels (not available on team-managed spaces).
What they can do
Collabound
What you enable per template: read-only, or comment, attach files, and change status. Updates flow back to the Jira issue.
Jira Guest
Create, edit, and transition work items in that space, like any Jira user.
Who decides
Collabound
Your administrators define sharing permission and content access templates, and choose in site settings whether sharers may adjust field visibility per share. Team members share within those rules.
Jira Guest
A Jira admin adds the guest; from then on, permissions follow the space's scheme.
The partner's side
Collabound
A partner organization with its own admin, users, and roles (View, Respond, Edit, Moderate). They manage their people; your template is the ceiling.
Jira Guest
Individual Atlassian accounts that you invite, manage, and remove one by one.
Direction
Collabound
Both ways. Partners can share their work items back to you. If they run Jira too, shared items appear in each Jira under "Shared with us," and neither side adds users to the other.
Jira Guest
One way: the guest comes into your Jira.
Ending access
Collabound
Revoke a single share in one click, or let it expire on a date you set. The audit log records who shared what, with whom, and when.
Jira Guest
Remove the guest from the space or the site. Anything they created or edited stays; there is no per-item view of what they saw.
Plans and cost
Collabound
Any Jira Cloud plan, including Free. Sites with 10 users or fewer are free; larger sites are priced per Jira user tier. Partner-side portal users are included and do not need Jira seats.
Jira Guest
Standard, Premium, and Enterprise only, not Free. Up to five free guests per paid user; beyond the published limit, Atlassian's plan rules apply.
Choose Collabound when
- You work with many partner companies, or you are the vendor or agency serving many Jira customers.
- You want to share selected tickets with a client, vendor, or agency, not a whole space.
- Some fields must stay internal: estimates, internal notes, pricing, or custom fields.
- The outside party should not need an Atlassian account or any Jira training.
- You need a record of who saw what, and a clean way to end access when the engagement ends.
Choose Jira Guest when
- The person needs to create and manage work in Jira every day, not just follow specific items.
- They should see everything in a space and you are comfortable with that.
- They already have, or are happy to create, an Atlassian account.
They are not mutually exclusive
Many teams keep a few long-term contractors as Jira Guests and use Collabound for the organizations around them: clients following their tickets, vendors working a support case, agencies reviewing a deliverable. Guest access is a per-person licensing decision; Collabound is a per-organization relationship, with sharing decided per work item.
Read more: Jira Guest access — when it's enough ›
Compare with link-sharing apps › How working with partners works ›