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Atlassian ALM vs Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 20.5%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

ZX
Scrum board feature is highly valuable and handles different user volumes
We have both small-sized and big-sized customers. The small ones generally have around 50 to 200 users. The larger ones, for example, in China, have around 15,000 platform users. So, the number of small companies is high, but the total business value comes from the big companies. Atlassian ALM can handle different user volumes. For customers with more than 500 users, we recommend deploying a high availability (HA) architecture. The solution supports both single-node and HA modes. I would rate the scalability a five out of ten. It could be better in terms of scalability with more users. It could be improved to better handle larger numbers of users. We have clients using Atlassian ALM both in China and globally. We have around 20 clients using this solution.
AmitUbale - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient project management that's comprehensive and and helps with time efficiency
We use Jira primarily for project management within the organization. It helps us manage tasks, bug management, and tracking tickets effectively. We assign tickets to individual team members and track them easily For project management, Jira has helped facilitate efficient task segregation and…
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 most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite. We have good integration with work management with Java. This is the major strength from this provider."
"This solution focuses on lean methodology which we have found useful and it can also be used on any device."
"The informatics is the most valuable feature. It captures what we need."
"It's easy to escalate the issues to the product development team."
"It has enabled us to keep track of features or projects. Previously, we used to manually keep track in Office. We now have a centralized repository for all the information."
"We use Jira for project management and tracking."
"Jira is designed for issue tracking, making the process much easier than traditional methods like paper-based tracking. It is number one for agile management."
"What I find valuable about Jira is that it's an ecosystem. Sometimes, it does not provide the best in class solutions, but it's so well integrated. You will not have many problems with integration."
"Issue linking has enabled teams to trace issues."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"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 is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"The technical support is quite good."
"It offers good performance."
"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."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
 

Cons

"The reports are not really customizable, which is something that they should improve on."
"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"Jira could be easier to use, especially for administrative tasks. It's quite complex, so it's important to understand it well. While the reporting and dashboards are good, there's room for improvement in some areas where extra features would be helpful."
"There's been the odd amount of JIRA downtime (not self hosted) and sometimes tickets that can't be accessed."
"Sometimes the screens can be a bit too busy. There's often a lot of information on the screen. I think paring things down and applying some UX improvements might enhance the look and feel of the interface."
"There's a really steep learning curve for configuration."
"Performance is something that can always be improved upon in a feature release. Additionally, it would be a benefit to add Markdown in Jira because sometimes it might be better to describe everything in Markdown because it is a common language structure."
"So at one point in time, they did a huge UI upgrade. At that time, I felt like they had changed something, so it was hard to figure out. Now that we are habituated, it's not an issue now."
"The tool lacks support for testing aspects, which means we often rely on integrations with other tools for testing purposes. If Jira could incorporate testing modules within its platform, it would eliminate the need for external integrations."
"Jira lacks easy capacity calculation compared to TFS, making it harder to know how much work to allocate to each specialist."
"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."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"It is certainly a long-term solution for our company and for previous companies that I have worked for. They have these long-term term licenses, but I'm not sure if they really pay on a yearly basis. They are certainly using it for a really long period and for a lot of users."
"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."
"The price at the moment for Jira is okay. I'm absolutely not amused with the plans to try to drive us to the cloud or to other licensing models. For the very simple reason that we are a company in the defense sector where cloud is problematic in a number of the domains. We are now approximately 60 users and the new policy will actually confront us with an upscale to approximately 500 users. I find it unacceptable, and may potentially lead us to look for another solution."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"The tool's pricing is expensive. The new pricing is indeed quite expensive compared to what it was a few years ago. Last year, when we intended to renew our subscription, we found the pricing considerably higher."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"We had a perpetual license but have changed to a subscription."
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Educational Organization
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Atlassian ALM?
The most valuable feature is the Scrum board.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
The pricing is on the higher side. I would give it an eight out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
There is room for improvement in the high-level project management. In future releases, I would like to have a planni...
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 d...
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 a...
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 lic...
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially ...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These bui...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Jira Software
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
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 Atlassian, Microsoft, Nutanix and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites. Updated: May 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.