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Planview AgilePlace 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

Planview AgilePlace
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
18th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
5th
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 June 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Planview AgilePlace is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.6%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Polarion ALM4.6%
Planview AgilePlace1.9%
Other93.5%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1684173 - PeerSpot reviewer
PM Systems Analyst at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Simple and intuitive, useful for agile management, and helpful for planning based on our capacity and meeting our deadlines
Every feature is valuable. LeanKit is a Kanban-based tool where you have a visual interface that you can use to create various cards and to create boards to house those cards. You can create a board for managing project work. You can create a board to do PI planning. It is pretty close to the agile way of doing business. The Board Layout Editor is excellent in terms of flexibility. They have been improving its usability. Their development is very much agile, so for any feedback that we give them, they let us know if and when they would act on our request for enhancements or change, and then they make those changes. They are responsive.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO 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

"LeanKit is amazing when it comes to getting answers about a given card's status. That's one of the biggest takeaways that we've had. The status is right there on the board. Everybody can see it. You just click on it and it gives you everything that you need to know, especially the comments feature because it gives us a timeline of updates. We use that a lot where we write a comment on the card and then we can see and track progress as we move it across the board."
"We use the board and card hierarchies in terms of sprints so that we can see if we have cross-functional teams that are working on the same projects together, especially when projects have dependencies. The parent-child relationship within cards is really nice so that we can see what kind of dependencies there are when we're trying to get projects finished."
"My team specifically uses our board for all of our Remedy tickets that come in. We had a card for every ticket that we get, and we're able to add the link to that specific ticket there.If I'm out of office, for example, and someone else needs to work a ticket or someone is being contacted to work on a ticket, I don't have to sign on it. Someone else can easily access that ticket because I put the link in there. It's nice. It has a lot of great functionality in there."
"People found the ability to set up different lanes and the ability to see where they're within the progress most valuable. They can use different colored cards or sticky notes, and then they can separate out which cards belong to a department or the initiative they're working on. They can filter who's working on it, and I've got good feedback about that."
"Our cycle times have reduced by 50%; they are now half as long as they used to be."
"The transparency that it brings is valuable. I like to look at things from all angles, and sometimes, flip chart paper on a wall and sticky notes are better than something on a screen, but the way they've made it accessible from all points for anyone within an organization is great. As a project management guy, sometimes, you have to force people into new environments where they have to see what you're talking about. Any screen is a barrier, and people got to get into the screen. How do you know they do? You don't necessarily know, but you are getting around that barrier with a countermeasure of making it accessible to as many as possible. So, everyone can jump in there and see everything. It is fully transparent, and I like that. This is one thing that helps."
"Leankit has made it much easier for us to visualize our progress across our entire portfolio, which consists of 22 Scrum Teams, and it is now our single source of truth, given the integration with JIRA and near real-time updates."
"I would say it's highly scalable. LeanKit can scale across the enterprise easily. Every business could probably find a use case for leveraging LeanKit."
"The software is stable."
"Even though Polarion is quite expensive, it's quite a good solution for medical device development in general, especially for software development."
"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."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."
"The technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"I do not know what it can do in the area of scrum."
"The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access. One of our team members has brought up actual-time tracking on a card as a potential improvement. They had an interest in knowing how long a specific card had been worked on by a specific user or somebody that was assigned to that card. But there's not really a way for them to start and stop a time that they were actually working on it, except for if we created a different lane and they dragged it into the lane and then stopped using it in the lane."
"They have a feature called Instant Coffee. It was in the beta phase. They released it from beta, and now, it is a legit thing. We were in the pilot here. I liked the idea of Instant Coffee, and I like how it is integrated, to some degree, with LeanKit, but I have two big rocks to throw at them on this. The first one is that Instant Coffee does not save your work very well in terms of saving it in formats that you can then go back and edit as Visio would. It leads to the next point, which is, we're not really clear on what they're trying to do with Instant Coffee. I feel that they're trying not to reinvent Visio, Miro, and other software programs out there that do mapping, visual diagrams, etc. Miro is fantastic in that regard. I gather they're not trying to reinvent Miro, but it sure would be nice if it had more aspects of Miro in it, such as being able to draw arrows and write on them on the top."
"Within the current features, if they can give some ability to show more icons on the card, it would be helpful. It would help us in showing more data on the cards."
"Sometimes, we use it for project management lessons learned, and it would be helpful if there was a template set up for something like that because we code different cards based on the category."
"The ability to report on customizable fields and third-party extensions needs improvement."
"The integration with the Enterprise One product is probably an area for improvement."
"The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access."
"I don't think that this solution scales well. It means that we have to split our project and use something with fewer objects in it."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"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 of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"Integration requires a lot of effort. You typically need to work with an implementation partner to get it done. Most connectors available for Polarion ALM are paid. Unlike other vendors offering several standard connectors for free, integrating third-party software with Polarion ALM involves discussing and coordinating with the third-party software providers, which requires effort."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I understand, it is not an expensive application."
"I don't know what it would be on its own. It was basically included with what we were already paying or using. So, it was a no-brainer. It wasn't like we had to sell the company on making a purchase or anything like that. There weren't any costs that came in after implementing it."
"In general, Planview's cost structure is reasonable. You get quite a lot of functionality for the license cost that you get."
"I don't believe there are any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

Also Known As

Planview LeanKit, LeanKit
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

REA Group, Thompson Reuters
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Planview AgilePlace vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.