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IBM DOORS vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DOORS
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jira
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS is 34.0%, down from 35.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 15.7%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

UweSeufert - PeerSpot reviewer
Old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements
I use IBM DOORS because my customer wants it for managing their requirements IBM DOORS is a tool from the 20th century. It is very old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements. It helps to manage requirements efficiently, which significantly improves the way requirements…
Saroj Ekka - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up
There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's a very interesting tool. I like that it's simple. You have to create your document, add your templates, and have your headings and definitions, and it's done. You must attribute the discipline and fill out the comment field for requirements. It also provides you with unique IDs for each requirement. I like that it never duplicates IDs."
"Compared to other tools that I have used over the past 20 years, DOORS is the best of the best."
"Starting to use the solution is pretty straightforward. There isn't too much of a learning curve."
"It helps to manage requirements efficiently, which significantly improves the way requirements are managed."
"I like the user interface with regard to creating links between requirements and tracing links to requirements."
"Very customizable and can be as powerful as you want it to be."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is traceability. We can track every requirement, including what the stakeholder must do and component-level requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the management verification and login."
"Offers great multiple reporting charts."
"It is very flexible, so we can do pretty much what we want with it."
"The solution is very scalable and flexible."
"I liked the flexibility of the application. It was pretty user-friendly."
"It is a good defect tracking tool. It has a lot of capabilities and functionalities. There are a lot of graphs and a lot of tracking. It can be sprint-driven if you want."
"It allows you to do a lot of stuff, and the functionality is pretty rich. It integrates well with other products, like GitLab, that we are currently intensely using at the company."
"The solution offers up great transparency that makes it possible for everyone inside the departmental organization to see what's happening."
"It's a Scrum tool, so it's very easy to use."
 

Cons

"It would have been ok ten years ago, but we are used to having better tools now."
"It is complicated sometimes, such as the logic about updating, moving from one server version to another, and the communication between restricted and non-restricted servers."
"Overall, the user experience should be enhanced."
"The low performance of the solution is probably because it is quite an old tool."
"It would be nice if it could be scaled-down so that it could be installed and implemented without much learning or training."
"There needs to be quicker access to tech support. When I have a two minute question that takes two minutes to answer, it shouldn't take me 45 minutes and/or a few days of callbacks to get to the right technical support person. It's unnecessary and frustrating for the user."
"The interface needs an area to be able to type your query and actually be able to find them."
"Both the performance and the price could be improved."
"It would be ideal if Jira had future functionalities to integrate more easily with various aspects of code reviews."
"Nowadays, many organizations are moving toward the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework, and this is something that Jira should be able to accommodate."
"It is not user-friendly."
"Sometimes, it is slow and hangs. We faced some stability issues where JIRA was down for a day. Also, we have lost some of our comments made in the JIRA because of downtime."
"I'm really new to Jira and I haven't used all of the features. However, it is quite difficult to use and manipulate. It was a little complicated for me and I don't know if it's difficult globally for others, but I had a difficult time understanding it at first. I used it for issues, epics, stories, tasks, and sub-tasks. For first-time users, Jira could be made better to help them understand."
"It should have its own repository for test case creation, so that one does not have to resort to third-party tools and plugins."
"Although it covers the overall requirements and measurements, it'll help if they had their own test execution feature."
"Could offer an improved user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive."
"Licensing fees are billed annually and there is no support included with what I pay."
"We have to pay for a license. I think it's a one-time payment as my company hasn't notified me about more charges. I don't think it's expensive for large corporations, but it will be costly for an average person."
"I don't personally know what the numbers are. I just know that one of the reasons we've limited it to three seats is a function of cost."
"IBM is a bit too expensive in terms of pricing. Customers are paying a lot for the license, and the price is quite high for this kind of environment. It is quite high as compared to what we can get today with other solutions."
"It's expensive."
"The licensing cost is too high."
"I think it's expensive because you have to pay for the licenses to IBM and all that and maintain them."
"Its price is fine, but we would like it to be less expensive. We are paying on a yearly basis."
"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"Its price is good and similar to other products. It is about five or six dollars per user."
"Jira is expensive and a lot of people are choosing DevOps because they are cheaper, open-source, easy to use, and have basic licenses. Jira should decrease its price to be more competitive."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"The cost is about $10 per user, per month."
"The standard package of Jira is for 100 users. They should offer more packages for other increments, such as 500 or 2,000. In my previous company, there was a free package that provided a minimal number of users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
53%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS?
The traceability matrix in DOORS improved our project outcomes. It helps ensure coverage of requirements at different levels, from user requirements to software requirements to test requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS?
Over the years, the first version cost something around 5800 euros.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS?
Compared to today, DOORS' competitors also excel in this discipline. Yet the price is too high. It's often not as generic as it used to be. IBM promised to find a way for a generic format that allo...
Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?
We operate under a nonlimited license with Jira, allowing a number of users to access it with a single enterprise license.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational DOORS
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infosys, Chevrolet Volt
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.