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JIRA Portfolio vs Jira Align comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Jira Align
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (9th), Value Stream Management Software (1st)
JIRA Portfolio
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of Jira Align is 4.9%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Portfolio is 1.1%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ShyiamaKishun - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a straightforward setup process and efficient project management features .
Jira Align supports program increment planning by facilitating the planning aspect, including team setup, dependency management, and defining the layout for each step or stage in a project. The platform aids in breaking down targets into parts, aligning with Agile principles, and ensuring a structured layout. The most impactful feature of Jira Align for project management lies in its capabilities related to planning and setting up projects. The platform visually understands targets, offering a clear and detailed layout. We can determine when to speed up the process or access the project. We can address the issues related to planning and development efficiently. It is a great product to use, aiding in project planning and alignment. I recommend it to others and rate it a ten out of ten.
Gary Craven - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful, flexible solution with a bit of a learning curve
The weakness of the solution is that the interface is a little nonstandard, meaning it's very flexible. It's got a lot of power and gives the user the ability to combine different projects into the portfolio and move user stories between projects and link them. What I have found in a couple of organizations that I've used it with, is that the uptake tends to be a little slow because it's got a bit of a learning curve. It can dump data out to Excel and those programs, but it also has a big ecosystem of plugins and add-ons that you can get. I guess it has some strength in that regard, but if you're going to run it on-prem, you have to have people that are pretty well-versed in the program and have the time and capabilities to handle integration and make sure they're adding those modules correctly. Their interface is a little unique and I think that's partly because the core of the product has morphed into several sub-products, but the underlying architecture has stayed the same on all of them in that it was originally a help desk ticketing system. Now they are moving into these new use cases, including systems development, business projects, business processes, and redevelopment projects, but there is a problem with the nomenclature that they use, and some of the documentation is a little techy for moving it into those more business-focused use cases. It's a very tech-focused product and that's fair given its origins, but if they really want to expand their community of users, then they're going to have to move beyond that a little bit and polish it up.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement."
"The product's most valuable feature is CMDB for services desk management and backlog projects."
"The tool helps us with better tracking across various departments. Jira Align is highly valuable for organizations due to its flexibility. With my experience as an administrator, I can attest that it can be tailored to meet the diverse needs of any organization. It helps to eliminate the mess created by Excel spreadsheets."
"The OKR experience is great."
"Jira Align is an easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"The technical support team responds quickly and resolves issues effectively."
"The biggest advantage of Jira Align, in my opinion, is its user-friendly interface, making it simple and easy for end users to navigate and utilize. The most valuable feature of Jira Align for me is its automation capabilities, allowing us to create automation rules based on logical conditions for our projects. In terms of cross-team collaboration, Jira Align's integration with our project squads has been highly effective. It enables seamless creation of stories linked to incidents and changes, facilitating better visibility and understanding of the relationships between them. Regarding road mapping and dependency tracking, Jira Align enhances our project planning by aligning with our best practices and providing robust capabilities for mapping out dependencies and tracking progress."
"I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and propose solutions to increase production capacity. Upon observing the process in Jira Align, I realized we didn't need to invest heavily in expanding capacity."
"Portfolio's most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and customer-centric."
"The most valuable features of Jira are the dashboards where we see all the features lined up with the release dates in the portfolio view, it is very good."
"The product's centralized database creates a single source of data for working groups so no data needs to be reconciled."
"The customized workflows we can define are very valuable. JIRA's private projects is very useful as well. There are also a lot of plugins that they provide."
"Has good analysis integration capabilities."
"The stability of JIRA Portfolio is very good."
"The solution's tracking capabilities helped ensure we had full visibility into planned work and scheduled work."
"The integration is very good. We've more or less integrated with everything including reporting and registering."
 

Cons

"There are fewer customization options in Jira Align due to how it was designed."
"The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration."
"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes. Users must do their own research and see if it fits their purpose."
"Jira Align can improve the visibility of executive teams."
"One of the biggest issues I found in the new version was once we clicked on one of the tasks that were specifically for our group and went to look at the other portfolios in other areas we had to browse all the way back to the beginning. If you click the back button, it would not work, it stayed the same place. Additionally, if you click on page B, but then you wanted to go back to page A it would not go back to page A. You would have to browse back to the portfolio and then find your group again and open it. This was the only issue that I had with it and I am not sure if it is a Jira issue or it was because of the way the site was laid out."
"Jira Align fails to provide its users with a complete package in terms of portfolio management."
"The product should improve its communication. My English proficiency is not high, but writing in English is another skill that you need. Maybe AI can help here. Because I can see in some other applications, they have AI helpers. So when you write something and you want to do something, it can help. For example, Google Cloud Platform has it. They have a helpdesk for it. When you want to create a cluster, it can help you."
"One area where Jira Align could be improved is mobile accessibility."
"We had to use assistance for the initial setup."
"I think their view needs to be more user friendly. The UI makes it difficult to find things. Secondly, the configuration is very complex. JIRA should help people find out what configuration they are using."
"The integration needs to be done with different tools."
"There is room for improvement in terms of scalability."
"The solution should provide a monitoring interface for the customers to have more information about the issues."
"The solution's look and feel could be a bit more intuitive and user friendly."
"As there are no perfect solutions and considering that I rate JIRA Portfolio's stability an eight out of ten, I feel it is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"It would be really nice if the solution provided a heads-up every time they enhance something or add new features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Jira Align's pricing is reasonable."
"The software is very good, but the price is expensive. Our licensing costs are on a monthly basis, but there are no additional costs to the standard license fees."
"Our customers buy licenses. We are not involved in its purchase."
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"Jira Align was reasonably priced then, especially for a bundle license that accommodated around 50 monthly users."
"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes."
"At our company, we were concerned about the cost of Jira Align, which is expensive"
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a six."
"We only have nine people using it so we have a standard cost of $150 dollar per year. There are only additional costs if you exceed the limit of users, then you start paying by user. The cost is significantly higher."
"I rate JIRA Portfolio a five out of ten for its pricing."
"The price is reasonable"
"There are free plugins available, but most of them are at an additional cost. Additionally, other services are an extra cost."
"We have a license to use JIRA Portfolio, we are not using the free version."
"The price could be improved."
"When we first got the tool, it cost 3,000 euros a year for unlimited users, which was a great deal. But the prices kept going up over the years. I'm not involved with pricing anymore, but I heard they increased a lot, so we decided to stop using it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Jira Align?
I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and...
What needs improvement with Jira Align?
The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration.
What is your primary use case for Jira Align?
We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.
What do you like most about JIRA Portfolio?
The solution's tracking capabilities helped ensure we had full visibility into planned work and scheduled work.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JIRA Portfolio?
I am part of the delivery team and am not exposed to the commercial information. However, from what I understand, JIRA is competitively priced. It is not considered expensive in the market.
What needs improvement with JIRA Portfolio?
User experience should be more intuitive. Currently, it's not that intuitive. Additionally, a lot of querying and customization is needed for reporting. If there could be some templates out of the ...
 

Also Known As

AgileCraft
Portfolio for JIRA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Anthem, nielsen, Homeland Security, NCR, dimension data
Rosetta Stone, Sprint, UBS, Workday, Expedia, J.P. Morgan
Find out what your peers are saying about JIRA Portfolio vs. Jira Align and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.