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Polarion ALM vs TFS 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

Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.1%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 4.4%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Pmurki@Micron.Com Praveen - PeerSpot reviewer
Version control is excellent and good for code review, branching, merging strategies and more
I've worked with TFS for source control and Agile project management. We also used TFS for seamless team collaboration and tracking.  I used TFS for a couple of years. Now, we use Azure DevOps. It's a wonderful tool for source control and CI/CD pipelines It's a really valuable tool for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"The technical support is quite good."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"The solution offers good integration."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"From the project management perspective, the tool is efficiently managing teams by giving management information, such as reports, graphs, velocity, capacity, etc."
"Microsoft's technical team is supportive."
"The most valuable feature is the backlog."
"Stability is okay."
"It's user friendly. We haven't had any issues so far. It's flexible. If we need something, we can always contact the owner in our headquarters to make a configuration."
"TFS is very user-friendly."
"As far as queries are concerned, creating, grading, or customizing the queries as a primary requirement is very easy to do."
"I like the Kanban board. It is very useful in terms of seeing who is working on what and what the current status of work is."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs some improvement."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"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 most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"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."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"The solution's server for deployment needs to be improved."
"I'm looking for specific options that aren't currently available, such as active status, new status, or what's currently in progress."
"The reporting functionality is something that they should work on."
"TFS should have capabilities similar to Git, like storing all types of artifacts in the repository."
"TFS isn't a great tool if you're on the cloud."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
"They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers."
"It has been really dated. When you start to work more in an agile environment, it is not really that flexible. They tried to replicate the look and feel of Jira, but it is not quite there. It was nice to use in the past, but it is not as flexible now with the changing development environments and methodologies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The solution is expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"It is an expensive product."
"Software for medical devices is always 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."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"You will need to obtain server and account licenses."
"TFS is not cheap."
"TFS is expensive, and the licensing costs are yearly. I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing is reasonable at this time."
"We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis. I don't know the current costs of them. We outsource all that to a third party. Each of the developers gets a Microsoft Visual Studio Azure DevOps license, which gives them access to the TFS server as well. We probably pay on average about 1,800 Canadian Dollars a year for every developer, but that covers a lot more than just TFS."
"We pay for the license yearly."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Educational Organization
68%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM ( /categories/application-lifecycle-management-alm-suites ) could see improvements in performance and scalability. The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing f...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) is a tool that delivers both document views and table views simultaneously. It organizes configurations according to norms and standards, making it s...
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 TFS?
Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
While I do not know the exact pricing, TFS is likely more expensive than GitLab.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Polarion ALM vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.