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Harness vs Polaris Platform 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Harness
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (7th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (16th), Cloud Cost Management (9th), Feature Management (2nd)
Polaris Platform
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (12th), Static Code Analysis (11th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Harness is designed for Build Automation and holds a mindshare of 5.3%, down 6.1% compared to last year.
Polaris Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Software Composition Analysis (SCA), holds 1.7% mindshare, down 1.8% since last year.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Harness5.3%
GitLab8.4%
GitHub Actions7.9%
Other78.4%
Build Automation
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Polaris Platform1.7%
Black Duck SCA11.7%
Snyk10.5%
Other76.1%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.
Alina-Eugenia Negulescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Procurement and Vendor Manger at twoday
Company consistently identifies security vulnerabilities with current solution but considers moving to a more developer-oriented tool due to complexity and costs
I wouldn't recommend it for small and medium customers, both in terms of the complexity and organizational processes and operational processes around it. I wouldn't go with Black Duck. It's not straightforward as it is with more developer-oriented and plug-and-play versions, so it requires a bit of knowledge and documentation to set it up. On the support part, in the past, we had some issues regarding the availability of the information on the knowledge portal. That was particularly due to the fact that when they integrated their knowledge hub or knowledge portal different kind of documentation, they have not adapted the text. There were circular references on the documentation that was misleading and confusing our people rather than helping them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Harness has positively impacted my organization as several teams have already migrated to it, and some are in the process of moving, reducing the dependency on one specific platform and making it faster with shortened build times and much faster deployments."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"We have detected security vulnerabilities, which is absolutely one big benefit."
"We have detected security vulnerabilities, which is absolutely one big benefit."
 

Cons

"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks."
"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"I wouldn't recommend it for small and medium customers, both in terms of the complexity and organizational processes and operational processes around it."
"I wouldn't recommend it for small and medium customers, both in terms of the complexity and organizational processes and operational processes around it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise9
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing. Addit...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
Harness helps us build a pipeline with containerized steps that isolates virtual machines, reduces DevOps-based drifts, and improves our process by integrating several security testing-related step...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Polaris Platform?
In my opinion, I think that it's a very good product for mature companies. It is quite expensive compared with competitors, with other providers of similar services of application security manageme...
What needs improvement with Polaris Platform?
I wouldn't recommend it for small and medium customers, both in terms of the complexity and organizational processes and operational processes around it. I wouldn't go with Black Duck. It's not str...
What is your primary use case for Polaris Platform?
The product teams use them under supervision from the security department. I'm not extremely familiar with the details on how the product teams are using it, but I think they have integrated it int...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Information Not Available
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