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IBM DOORS vs IBM DOORS Next comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

IBM DOORS
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM DOORS Next
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS is 30.1%, down from 35.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 9.3%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM DOORS30.1%
IBM DOORS Next9.3%
Other60.599999999999994%
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

UweSeufert - PeerSpot reviewer
Old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements
I use IBM DOORS because my customer wants it for managing their requirements IBM DOORS is a tool from the 20th century. It is very old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements. It helps to manage requirements efficiently, which significantly improves the way requirements…
Roger Trackwell - PeerSpot reviewer
An industry-leading tool to demonstrate traceability between requirements, with valuable features for tailoring modules and managing several thousand requirements
The biggest thing is that it shows cradle to grave traceability between the initial parent requirement and the lowest level, or what we call a CID, a critical item development spec. You can establish your verification plans in DOORS, and then as you get test results, you can put them in DOORS as a link or as a pointer to where that specific test resides on a company database. Then you can also write compliance rationale and add a column for coding, like pass, fail, green, yellow, red, meets, does not meet, partially meets, or whatever scoring criteria you want to use. Like I said, the best thing about it is that it provides you that visibility of your verification, allowing you to know how close you are to your pre-production activities, prototyping, go ahead, or whatever it is.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform's traceability capabilities are invaluable. They provide a solid foundation for certification processes and manage requirement changes across project lifecycles."
"IBM Rational DOORS keeps everything organized."
"Compared to other tools that I have used over the past 20 years, DOORS is the best of the best."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Rational DOORS is the full requirements development and testing."
"I would say that the best feature of the solution is that since everything is in one place, and if you make any changes, then they are recorded or tracked."
"I really like the customization that can be done using the DOORS Extension Language (DXL)."
"I like being able to sort and categorize the requirements and the exporting functions."
"The solution is stable."
"The usability of IBM DOORS Next is very good, and the features are very good."
"The most valuable features are the versioning of requirements and the possibility to reuse them."
"There are many good features with DOORS. The solution has a concept of streams and baselines, as well as a concept of components. A component is a subproject inside a project."
"The tool's most valuable feature is displaying requirements in a tabular format. This means you can see everything laid out in columns and rows. It is more aesthetic compared to other tools. The traceability matrix helps to view things better. It comes with different linking rules."
"My company contacts the solution's technical support, and they are good and responsive."
"The solution has easy operation, is user-friendly, easily understood, and has better tracking for requirement management."
"One of the most valuable features is how you can tailor the modules."
"As far as maintaining our requirements so that we can have copies of them, it's good. I can print it out if necessary."
 

Cons

"IBM DOORS should cover all engineering functions seamlessly, not just requirement engineering."
"The interface needs an area to be able to type your query and actually be able to find them."
"It would be helpful if Microsoft provided a more user-friendly interface for updating and querying updates. Additionally, if there was a way for users to notify developers of any changes in requirements, it would allow for faster and more efficient updates to the solution's architecture. This could be in the form of a notification system that alerts developers of any changes that need to be made. Additionally, the solution is document-driven and it should be more digital."
"The software and GUI is very outdated."
"IBM should integrate some solutions they already own toenhance the utility of the product further. Specifically import and export to Office products is more difficult than it needs to be."
"The web application DOORS Web Access doesn't have the same functionality as the standard client, so it's not a real substitute. For example, web Access only provides writing requirements, but you can't do much more with it."
"I would like to see them improve in agile management the Scrum/Kanban Board to work with overseas team members."
"Complexity, performance, openness are the three areas that can be improved. The IBM architecture and specifically Jazz looks more complex. There are a lot of servers. It's quite complicated. The search capabilities lack in IBM Rational DOORS Classic for customers who have a database with a requirement of more than 25,000 records. For example, you can search easily for a module, but it's really difficult to look for keywords through the whole database because all the modules are separated into small components, which makes the search quite complex. This is something that's really annoying because when we want to make an impact analysis, we would like to analyze the product globally. It's quite difficult to manage. The fact that you can interact externally with data makes it complex. The approach is complex and doesn't work as expected. For example, when I tried to experiment with exporting some records, the tool crashed, but I couldn't find out the root cause, that is, whether it happened because of Rational Windows or lack of memory. It was just crashing. Logs weren't very clear. IBM can try to use more recent technology for different aspects and make it easy. They can also provide free integration from DOORS Classic to DOORS. Currently, all the customization in Excel is lost, which makes it very complex. It would be a feature to make new versions compatible with features in the past versions."
"As a web tool, DNG can be difficult to use if the server is loaded or your network connection to it is saturated."
"I have come to the conclusion that if you are considering migrating from DOORS to DNG, don't! Instead of spending 100's to 1000's of hours doing migrations, invest those hours in a DXL programmer to make DOORS do what it isn't doing for you now."
"When you are not working on it every day it is not very intuitive."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation has room for improvement compared to other tools like Polaris and Jama Connect. These tools offer more flexibility and options for developers, which IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation lacks. For example, you can define your link rules in Jama Connect, but you can't do that in IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
"When you are in Jira or Confluence, you have some freedom in how you type in text. That's also a weakness of Confluence, however, as it opens the doors to sloppy work. In DOS Next Generation, the text is very rigorous, but it might be difficult for people who don't have the discipline. Having a way to quickly enter requirements could help. It might already be in there, but I don't know. I don't have enough experience with the tool yet."
"The only additional feature would be if it had dynamic linking to other MBSE tool sets or industry-leading tools."
"The solution is slightly high in terms of affordability. I give eight points only because the price is a bit high, which is the only problem since I am the purchasing person, but not the technical user."
"In my opinion, IBM DOORS Next does not have any Agile support, and that is why for requirement analysis, IBM DOORS Next is correct, but for someone who is working in an Agile process, IBM DOORS Next is not the solution because it is not integrated into the Agile working process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to pay for a license. I think it's a one-time payment as my company hasn't notified me about more charges. I don't think it's expensive for large corporations, but it will be costly for an average person."
"IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive."
"It's expensive."
"IBM is a bit too expensive in terms of pricing. Customers are paying a lot for the license, and the price is quite high for this kind of environment. It is quite high as compared to what we can get today with other solutions."
"I don't personally know what the numbers are. I just know that one of the reasons we've limited it to three seats is a function of cost."
"The licensing costs for the product are quite high."
"I think it's expensive because you have to pay for the licenses to IBM and all that and maintain them."
"Licensing fees are billed annually and there is no support included with what I pay."
"The price of this solution is very high, and it increases year after year."
"Users can buy a three-year license for about 12,000 Euros."
"You are going to need a beefy server and a fat network pipe to it in order to make DNG and its companion tools work well for users."
"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."
"If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
26%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
24%
Government
9%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS?
The traceability matrix in DOORS improved our project outcomes. It helps ensure coverage of requirements at different levels, from user requirements to software requirements to test requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS?
Over the years, the first version cost something around 5800 euros.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS?
Compared to today, DOORS' competitors also excel in this discipline. Yet the price is too high. It's often not as generic as it used to be. IBM promised to find a way for a generic format that allo...
What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The tool's most valuable feature is displaying requirements in a tabular format. This means you can see everything laid out in columns and rows. It is more aesthetic compared to other tools. The tr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The solution is slightly high in terms of affordability. I give eight points only because the price is a bit high, which is the only problem since I am the purchasing person, but not the technical ...
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
We are not interested in integration with lifecycle management tools. If required, we will connect to the local India team for dashboard reporting tools or additional features. I am not an exact us...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational DOORS
Rational DOORS Next Generation, RDNG, Rational Requirements Composer and IBM RRC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infosys, Chevrolet Volt
Major health insurer
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS vs. IBM DOORS Next and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.