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Jira vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

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Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
284
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
SAP Portfolio and Project M...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Centralized sprint boards have transformed our planning and now improve cross‑team visibility
While Jira is very powerful, there are definitely areas it could be improved, especially for usability and simplicity. One common challenge is that Jira can feel overwhelming for new users. The number of features, configurations, workflows, and settings is huge. Onboarding non-technical teams or new employees sometimes takes longer than expected. A simple default experience for a beginner would help a lot. Another issue is performance. In large organizations with heavy customizations, large backlogs, or complex dashboards, Jira can occasionally feel slow, especially when loading filters, reports, or larger boards. Pricing can also become expensive as an organization scales and multiple Atlassian products and plugins are added. Some smaller teams sometimes feel the ecosystem becomes costly over time. The mobile experience would be smoother for project managers or leadership users who mainly want quick update approvals or dashboard views on the go. Overall, Jira's biggest strength is flexibility, but that flexibility can also create complexity if not managed carefully. Improving simplicity, performance, and ease of adoption would make the platform even stronger. An additional improvement I would mention for Jira is around balancing flexibility with simplicity. Jira gives organizations a huge amount of customization power, which is great. But over time, many teams end up creating overly complicated processes. After a few years, some Jira environments become difficult to maintain because there are many workflows, custom fields, permissions, and automations layered on top of each other. It would help if Jira would provide a strong built-in recommendation or health check for keeping a project clean or efficient. For example, identifying unused custom fields, suggesting workflow simplicity improvements, flagging redundant automations, or recommending dashboard optimization.
Nalin Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Quality Assurance Group Lead at Samsung
End-to-end project management capabilities and offers seamless vendor and client contract alignment
The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously. This creates problems that I have personally experienced. Therefore, these aspects need to be much more free-flowing and seamless. If something gets stuck, it takes time to resolve, and during the contract phase, we have Service Level Agreements (SLAs). If those SLAs are breached, it becomes problematic. Given that there are approximately 3000 projects running concurrently worldwide, utilizing the system with a vast database and numerous activities taking place. It could benefit from decentralization. Currently, it operates as a central system, but if it could be centralized for specific subsidiaries, it would be easier for us to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Jira has impacted my organization in a very good way, arranging our works in a way that everybody is aligned and has a track of what is going on."
"It is a user-friendly solution that is simple to use."
"We have around 2000 plus users, so scale wise, there are no issues, and we can easily scale up with multiple users."
"Integration is good."
"The most valuable feature is the feature of assigning. Whenever I have an issue, Jira doesn't stop at just letting me describe the issue. I can also assign the issue to a developer, and the developer gets notified about it. After he is able to work on it, he can update the status and revert back to me through the same platform. It really avoids a lot of communication over email and phone. This the feature that I really like about Jira. I always use Jira with my team."
"The layout, workflow, automation, and metrics are helpful in Jira."
"JIRA comes with a workflow designer which allows to design and keep track of execution of pretty much any process (similar to what a BPM solution would do but cheaper)."
"The user interface is simple."
"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think the automation feature needs to be more user-friendly because not everybody knows about coding."
"We're doing PI planning, Program Increment planning, and that kind of stuff, and it's not always a good facilitator for that. We tend to pull it out and put it into other tools to manage that, and then we get it back into Jira as that's our system of record for where all the stories are kept. That's probably the biggest headache with it."
"There's a really steep learning curve for configuration."
"The integration and management features need to be improved."
"Based on the feedback from my admin, it is sometimes difficult to find some of the features. It is not a big deal, but its configuration interface can be improved to make it easy to find things."
"They can maybe dumb down the directions for building the automation a little bit because to be able to build out the automation, I had to play around with it and learn what all the fields meant and what they were referencing. I don't have an IT background originally. My background is in biology, and I got into project management by chance. I am good at it, but I haven't really worked with coding languages. In terms of writing automation, it is easier for devs because they intuitively know what they're being asked, but as a PM who originally didn't have IT experience, it was a little bit daunting at first. It could also have an extra hierarchy to be able to allow tasks under stories. It could be the way it is set up at our organization, but currently, under stories, you can have sub-tasks, but you can't create a task. Being able to customize your hierarchy a little bit more would be beneficial because sometimes, the devs would say, "Well, here's a story, and now we need sub-tasks," but as we were building out the sub-tasks, sometimes we had to go a step lower to dig in a little bit more, and we couldn't do that."
"JIRA still has their own backtracking tools. It should have a better visibility into HPE UFT. Most people use functional testing tools, like QTP. They need to improve their integration to make it seamless."
"The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"For very small companies, if you have less than 10 individuals, it is $10 a year for each of the products. When we were a part of the enterprise and had more than 10 people using it, or before they came up with this solution for small companies, it was $2,500 a year for the license for Jira and Confluence, and I believe something like $600 a year to perpetuate the license. I can't remember if it was $600 or $2,500 annually. It was for up to 25 people at the time, and this was in the early 2000s and mid 2000s."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is much higher than other similar solutions available in the market, and as such, the vendor should think about a price reduction to make this product more affordable."
"The licensing cost for Jira is typically around seven dollars per user, though it may vary depending on regional variations. This cost is for a subscription-based model rather than a one-time purchase. I rate its pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"The product pricing varies based on whether the client is new or existing and the complexity of their business processes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise154
No data available
 

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?
Jira operates on a subscription model, typically priced per user. It is quite affordable, and the setup cost is low. Licensing is simple and easy to get started with.
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Also Known As

Jira Software
Portfolio and Project Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Joy Global Inc., Citrix, EMC Corporation, Concho Resources, Concho Resources, RZD Russian Railways, Family Dollar Stores Inc., Lenovo
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. SAP Portfolio and Project Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.