We own the mess. We cut the bill.
We fix what’s broken in your Atlassian setup — and keep it fixed at a cost you can predict. Certified admins on retainer, from $2,000 + GST a month. Your support portal and Confluence knowledge base come with it. Growth and Scale add a Rovo agent.
Unmanaged, Jira only gets messier and pricier. On retainer, it’s a fixed monthly cost.
found for one client by auditing licences and locking down SSO — one finding from a first-month audit.
/What we do
Atlassian, end to end.
Certified administration across the full Atlassian stack. You get the right advice, properly configured foundations, and someone to fix things when they break, without hiring a dedicated admin. We know which features are worth your team’s time and which can wait.
Workflows that fit how you deliver
Issue types, screens, fields, statuses and transitions designed around your delivery model. Tech teams, business teams, or both at once.
Access, SSO and governance
Permission schemes, project roles, group membership, SSO and SCIM provisioning. Audit and onboarding stop being a problem.
Automation, AI agents and a virtual service desk
Global and project automation, custom Rovo agents, and a Rovo customer service agent — RAG-based, secure, and learning your business from your own Confluence and Jira data.
Your own support portal and knowledge base
We set you up with a private Jira Service Management portal and a dedicated Confluence knowledge base. Every ticket we resolve becomes a self-service article your people can find next time.
/Cost of inaction
Jira is costing you more than you think.
We don’t sell Atlassian licences — we cut them. A poorly configured Atlassian suite is rarely framed as a budget line. It should be, because your delivery depends on it. Here’s what we often find on the first audit.
Shared by every project, tangling them all
Atlassian admin usually falls to someone “good at Jira” without the training, exposure to multiple instances, or the time to do it properly. Schemes get reused across projects, transition conditions nobody documents creep in, statuses mean different things in different teams. Devs end up unable to move tickets. Delivery transparency disappears. Once it’s tangled, untangling it is its own project.
Found for one client by auditing licences and locking SSO to Entra
First, we audited usage and revoked inactive Atlassian seats. Then we tied app-level access and licensing to Microsoft Entra group membership via SSO, so HR offboarding removes access and frees the licence automatically. The saving doesn’t drift back.
Before departed staff finally lose access
Without managed offboarding, ex-employees retain Jira and Confluence access for months after they leave. Most security frameworks — ISO 27001, SOC 2, the Essential Eight — require timely revocation. SSO tied to Entra group membership closes the gap automatically.
Of custom fields, with only a handful in use
We routinely audit Jira instances with hundreds of custom fields where only a handful drive any reporting. JQL becomes guesswork. Automations break silently. Dashboards get rebuilt from scratch because no one trusts the existing ones.
Of cycle time, zero board trust
When three leaders calculate the same metric three different ways, the board stops believing any of them. Configuration drift is a governance problem before it’s a reporting one.
Away from finding out your Confluence is leaking
Most permission schemes drift into “everyone can see everything”. Read-only customer roles end up with access to internal commercial docs. You usually find out when a customer mentions it.
Unsure where to start? Book a 30-minute call. We’ll scope what’s broken and recommend the tier that fits.
/Retainers
Plans.
Certified admin hours plus your own customer service portal and a private Confluence knowledge base. Growth and Scale add a Rovo customer service agent that learns your business. Every plan starts with a 60-minute onboarding call to get you live on your support portal and knowledge base.
Pricing and Services subject to our Atlassian Administration Terms and Conditions.
/FAQ
Common questions.
Straight answers on how the Atlassian administration retainer works. Can’t find yours? Book a 30-minute call and we’ll cover it.
How do you stay current with new Atlassian features?
We track every Atlassian release across Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management, Bitbucket, and Rovo. Because we work in many client instances, we see new features land (and find their bugs) before most teams have noticed they exist. We know which features are ready for production, which are still rough, and which are worth waiting on, so you don’t have to do that research yourself.
Our Atlassian instance is a mess. Where do you start?
With an audit during the onboarding call. We review workflows, permissions, fields, and automations to understand the current state, then agree priorities with you based on what’s hurting your team most. You’ll see the first fixes land in the first month, with deeper restructuring over the following quarter. We fix what matters and leave what works.
How is this different from hiring a consultant or contractor?
A retainer keeps the same team in your instance month after month; a contractor ramps up, delivers a project, and leaves with the context. Our team builds a knowledge base alongside the work, and that KB is your asset: even if you cancel, the documentation and configurations remain.
What kinds of problems do you typically solve?
Mostly the everyday problems that slow delivery: workflows that don’t match how delivery actually happens, permission schemes nobody fully understands, automations that broke silently, SSO and group provisioning held together with duct tape, reporting the board doesn’t trust because the underlying configuration is wrong, and AI or automation opportunities nobody has had time to evaluate. We also handle instance consolidations and migrations between Cloud, Server, and Data Center.
We pay a full-time Atlassian admin. Why would we switch to a retainer?
Because a well-configured instance rarely needs a full-time admin. For most organisations the admin load doesn’t fill a full-time week, and a salaried admin’s time tends to expand to fill the role. With a retainer, you pay for output, not occupancy. You also get a team’s collective experience to cover one person’s blind spots, and you stop paying for sick leave, annual leave, training, certification renewals, and recruitment when they leave.
Most teams have a tech lead or agile coach run Jira on the side. Why isn't that enough?
Because spare-time admin fixes what’s loudest, and everything else waits. Workflows ossify around old processes, permission schemes drift, and new Atlassian features go unused because no one has time to learn them. The cost is harder to see: your senior engineers spend hours on screen layouts and field configurations when they could be building product. We work across many Atlassian instances every day, so we bring patterns, fixes, and roadmap knowledge a part-time internal owner can’t realistically keep up with.
What's the difference between the discovery call and the onboarding call?
The discovery call (30 minutes) happens before you commit — we use it to understand your situation and confirm we're the right fit. No obligation. The onboarding call (60 minutes) happens after you've purchased — we use it to provision your customer service portal, walk through your priorities, and get you live.
Do you work with Jira Cloud, Server, or Data Center?
All three. Our certified administrators have experience across Atlassian Cloud, Server, and Data Center deployments. We can also help with migration planning between deployment types, though larger migrations may need additional scope beyond the retainer hours.
Who owns the work and configurations you deliver?
You own your data — including the configurations, workflows, and knowledge base content created inside your Atlassian instance. We retain ownership of our own intellectual property (our methods, templates, and tooling). When you cancel, your Atlassian instance and everything in it remains entirely yours.
Do you use my data to train AI?
We use aggregated and de-identified versions of your data to improve the AI systems we use internally. We never use identifiable data, and we don't share your data or knowledge base content with other clients' agents. If your plan includes a Rovo customer service agent, it draws only from your own Confluence and Jira. Full details in clause 2.11 of our Terms and Conditions.
Are your administrators Atlassian-certified?
Yes. Every administrator on our team holds current Atlassian certifications, and we keep them current. You get people trained in how Atlassian intends the platform to be run.
Do you work with international customers?
Yes. The same AUD pricing applies to international clients. Australian GST is not added to international invoices because exports of services are GST-free in Australia. You’re responsible for any tax obligations in your own jurisdiction. Our contract is governed by Queensland law.
Is there a discount for paying annually?
Yes — annual prepay saves you 10%. Foundation is $1,800/month billed annually ($21,600/year ex-GST), Growth is $2,250/month ($27,000/year), Scale is $4,140/month ($49,680/year). You can switch between monthly and annual billing at any time; changes take effect at the next billing cycle.
What does the onboarding call cover?
Every plan starts with a 60-minute onboarding call. We provision your branded customer service portal, seed your Confluence knowledge base, walk through governance and access setup, and agree first-month priorities. The call also covers what we need from you — Atlassian instance access, primary contact, current pain points.
How do you handle support requests?
You log support requests through your branded customer service portal (on our Atlassian instance), or by emailing help@softwired.com.au. We respond in line with the SLA tied to your tier, with urgency-based prioritisation. Routine requests are typically handled within one business day.
What is the customer service agent and how does it learn my business?
The customer service agent is Rovo — Atlassian's secure, RAG-based AI. It draws from your own Confluence knowledge base and Jira data to answer your team's questions, route tickets, and surface relevant context. It gets more accurate over time as your knowledge base grows, because every ticket we resolve becomes a new self-service article your people can find next time.
How are the Foundation, Growth, and Scale tiers different?
Foundation ($2,000/month, 16 hours) suits stable instances needing steady-state administration. Growth ($2,500/month, 20 hours) adds the Rovo customer service agent for teams scaling their Atlassian use. Scale ($4,600/month, 40 hours) adds custom Rovo agents for your team and a quarterly governance review for organisations standardising delivery across multiple teams. All prices ex-GST.
What's included in a Softwired Atlassian administration retainer?
Every plan includes certified Atlassian administration hours, a branded customer service portal for your team, a dedicated Confluence knowledge base that grows with you, SLA-managed email and portal support, and a 60-minute onboarding call. Foundation includes 16 hours per month, Growth 20 hours, Scale 40 hours. Growth adds a Rovo customer service agent that learns from your data, and Scale adds custom Rovo agents and a quarterly governance review.
Is this a managed service or a project engagement?
It’s a managed service, and we can spin up a project alongside it when you need one. Our default is upskill-and-exit: we run it for you while we build the capability in-house, then hand it back. If you’d rather we keep running it long-term, we can do that too, with no lock-in either way. See https://softwired.com.au/services for our other services, including project management and delivery.
Are you Atlassian-certified?
Yes. Our admins are Atlassian-certified, and we’ve worked across enterprise Atlassian estates (Jira, Confluence, JSM, the lot) for years. Certification is the floor. What matters is whether we’ve seen the problem you’ve got, and we usually have.
Stop fighting Jira. Start delivering
A 30-minute call tells you which tier fits, and whether we’re the right team. No obligation.
