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Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 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

Microsoft Azure DevOps
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
2nd
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
136
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
5th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 10.8%, down from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 6.9%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.8%
Polarion ALM6.9%
Other82.3%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at ENTERPRISE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS LIMITED
Have built reliable end-to-end pipelines and streamlined cloud provisioning through consistent collaboration practices
I am currently working with open-source tools such as Jenkins for my main CI/CD pipeline, and for enterprise clients, I am using Microsoft Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline. For other clients, I have also implemented CI/CD YAML pipelines through GitLab CI/CD workflow and GitHub Actions. I am creating the end-to-end CI/CD pipeline from development to deployment and monitoring all of this. Azure Boards is easier than Jira for my understanding because there are very easy points to manage the Agile methodology which we work on. Because it is a GUI, sometimes the process may take a few minutes more than the CLI process since the backend is running the exact CLI, but we are commanding through the GUI. There is definitely a time lag, but it is more secure. Microsoft Azure DevOps pipelines work very seamlessly rather than other CI/CD pipelines, as of my understanding. The downside is that the process may take more time when deploying some clusters, Kubernetes, Azure AKS service, or some vast microservice architecture deployments. There may be a little bit of lag I feel, though I cannot tell very strictly that this is a disadvantage, but sometimes it takes a little more time than other cloud infrastructures. All the major things are done by GUI, which is somewhat a little slow. However, if considering automations, process, monitoring, and provisioning, then it is the best cloud service across all the other service providers. Our implementation is a hybrid cloud. Microsoft Azure DevOps is definitely easily scalable. I have worked on many Kubernetes infrastructures and microservice deployments, and I have seen that replication is very good because it is very easy. The replication process is very straightforward. I definitely advocate for using less code because it is very time-consuming. If using GCP or Amazon Web Service, there is more interaction related to work over the CLI process. In terms of Microsoft Azure DevOps, there are many things done by the GUI, which is the best part.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure DevOps is effective for repository management and code collaboration. We can create branches, differentiate between code versions, save and review code later, get PR approvals, and more. All these features are valuable."
"If considering automations, process, monitoring, and provisioning, then it is the best cloud service across all the other service providers."
"We can track everything from the requirements stage to the production stage."
"It is good for monitoring purposes. We are using the build pipelines of Microsoft Azure. They are also valuable."
"The solution is good for everything, including end-to-end planning and its deployment and testing."
"It's graphical representation and tools are easy to use."
"It is good for the purpose it is designed for. It is good for maintaining a repository of application code, creating pipelines for deploying the code, building the code, and deploying the code. It can be easily used by developers. There are no issues."
"What I like the most is the DevOps Boards. It's easy to create a hierarchical project structure, assign tasks to people, and to track their tasks."
"Polarion ALM is powerful in easily creating your own workflows for completely different kinds of things."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."
"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."
"It offers good performance."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
 

Cons

"Its price can also be reduced. It would be great if they are a little bit more competitive in terms of pricing because many open-source products are currently available in the market."
"There are certain areas in Azure DevOps that are better in other products."
"The administrative capabilities of the tool need a huge improvement. Its Wiki and reporting also need a lot of improvement. Their support can also be better."
"The test management section needs to be improved."
"The solution could work to improve their reporting."
"There is only one key area of improvement for me. The new imaging thing is that there is DevOps, where security is important because it is always lasting. So, to integrate security in our DevOps, that would be nice."
"Non-functional testing such as security testing, log testing, and performance testing can be improved with a better visualization."
"Right now, they tend to have a limit of 1,000 tasks per sprint, and some of their web-based boards, such as the Kanban boards, no longer display tasks. Once you hit over a certain number of task limits, you need to increase those limits."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"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 user interface is not yet optimized."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For Microsoft, it can get expensive when you need heavy-duty machines."
"The majority of the components are reasonably priced."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps is an expensive solution."
"Its pricing is reasonable for the number of features that you get and the functionality that you can utilize for the agile delivery, which is what we are using it for. I found it extremely cost-effective."
"I don't know the pricing of DevOps. It would be much cheaper than ALM because ALM came out as a software product initially. Now they are moving into a cloud and subscription model. In that case, Microsoft is coming from Azure and the cloud and DevOps and software as a service, so it would be much cheaper, but the catch would be that they are trying to get money on all the sides, like an operating system, Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"There are additional costs for some functionality, such as increased scalability."
"The main agile features are very expensive."
"There are other solutions available that are open source and free, such as GitLab."
"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."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"The solution is expensive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"It is an expensive product."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
 

Also Known As

Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.