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Jira vs Polarion ALM 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

Jira
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (3rd)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 23.7%, up from 23.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.4%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Dina Bindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility
It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The informatics is the most valuable feature. It captures what we need."
"Jira is quite easy to use and very simple from my point of view."
"It was very easy to learn Jira. As a scrum master, I run daily stand-ups, and they are run directly from Jira. The feature that I really love in Jira is called Issue Navigator. It allows me to customize how I want to show the user stories within Jira to my squad."
"Scaling the product wouldn't be difficult."
"The level of stability is quite good."
"The most valuable features are that it is good for tracking the issues and it provides for the usage of Confluence."
"Perfect for keeping track of large amounts of bugs, tasks queries and releases for fixes."
"Provides good output and is user-friendly."
"It offers good performance."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"The technical support is quite good."
"The solution offers good integration."
"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."
 

Cons

"Jira is raising their prices for the license, which is like a trap because many other providers offer services like Jira but for much cheaper."
"While it's very powerful, it's very complex sometimes."
"There is always a bit of a performance problem. It's a bit slow to load the whole data."
"One major issue that I, and even our business stakeholders, have noticed is related to Epic Link. When Epic Link's background color is a dark color, it effectively becomes unreadable. I wish there was a way for us to change the text color of Epic Link in the Issue Navigator view."
"Some of the customizations are definitely a little challenging."
"The part when it comes to the testing area is a bit hard to handle. The screen is too small, you can't really read what you're typing in, and it's only for the testing area. It looks like they have pressed in more than the UI system could handle to display it properly."
"It should have Behavior Driven Development (BDD). There should be an option to add macros to help with that. A lot of people are using it now, and it would be nice if there was a way in there to be able to generate the BDD of commands whenever you're creating a story."
"In Jira Cloud, integration with Excel is missing. Previously, I could import our Excel files into Jira, and I could also download a big Jira report in the Excel format, but now, it needs to be manipulated after that, which is not good. It looks like they've done that on purpose, but I don't understand the reason for it."
"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The product offers flexibility in pricing since it depends on the memory bits you have used."
"Our client handles the licensing aspect. They have not yet purchased the premium version."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."
"Its price is fine, but we would like it to be less expensive. We are paying on a yearly basis."
"The solution is expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"It is an expensive product."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
52%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system. This could greatly enhance requirement checking, improve form, content, and clarity, an...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We use Polarion ALM for software development, including requirements management, testing, change requests, and task tracking. We set up the environment by configuring items and reports based on use...
 

Also Known As

Jira Software
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.