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IBM DOORS vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jira
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS is 33.2%, down from 34.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 15.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
Grigoriy Kneller - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for agile management and project tracking
Setting up on Windows is very easy, while on Linux, it's a bit more complicated. I would rate it around a seven out of ten. It is possible to deploy it both on the cloud and on-premises. The deployment duration varied based on whether it was on the cloud or a server. If it was on the cloud, it took slightly less time, while installing it on a server took anywhere from ten minutes to an hour.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Rational DOORS keeps everything organized."
"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."
"It has the features of: traceability, configuration management, and user access."
"The most valuable feature for me is the ability to enter data into one table, or context, and link it across modules."
"Starting to use the solution is pretty straightforward. There isn't too much of a learning curve."
"Very customizable and can be as powerful as you want it to be."
"What I like about DOORS is baselines, it's easy and I use the capability of multiple users. The traceability or links between different levels are very nice. Additionally, it is used by all of our suppliers, which brings us commonality."
"I like the way we can simply link requirements with one another and with test descriptions and then automatically produce reports that are required to show compliance to our customers. It is a combination of requirements management and reporting that I like, but I really have very little to do with the reporting part of it. I don't know how easy or hard it is to create those reports."
"The scrum dashboard is the product's most important feature. It provides an overview of tasks, who is working on what, and the status of each task."
"Transparency of development projects, as well as approval processes for some business projects, has improved massively."
"We like team collaboration and cross-functional collaboration."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
"The monitoring, flexibility and tracking are really good in Jira."
"In our organization, we use Jira for project management and usually use the Scrum project type. We might adjust the workflows and stages to better suit our needs, but we mostly use the default functionalities it offers to manage our projects."
"I have experience with Jira's bulk tracking and issue management. We use it to add new features to our product, fix bugs, and address customer feedback."
"The most valuable features in Jira are the dashboard, reports, and boards that help us to control the advancement of the project."
 

Cons

"The images are not clear. We have to use them as OLE objects. And in the testing part, I'm not sure how to link it with it. This is my main concern."
"Enhancing security measures, particularly when handling multiple projects simultaneously, would be beneficial to prevent data loss within DOORS."
"The interface is not very user-friendly and has not evolved in a long time."
"It's difficult to set the code on the solution."
"The user interface for the Change Proposal System could be improved."
"The solution should be more compatible with thin clients"
"Rational DOORS' most valuable feature is that you can write any kind of requirement you want."
"One of the things that many people complain about is it's hard to manage attributes. For example, tables or figures. This is something that can be improved."
"Jira's collaboration and integration with other apps and tools could be improved."
"Jira has recently updated their UI, but more can be done to make it even better."
"There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there."
"We're doing PI planning, Program Increment planning, and that kind of stuff, and it's not always a good facilitator for that. We tend to pull it out and put it into other tools to manage that, and then we get it back into Jira as that's our system of record for where all the stories are kept. That's probably the biggest headache with it."
"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."
"The performance is not so good sometimes. I know that fully depends on the implementation and the IT environment of Jira or the version of Jira installed. The performance is sometimes not so good. I would like to have a better response time from the Jira server. And it fully depends on the administration side of the Jira."
"There are a limited number of gadgets accessible in Jira; thus, additional ones should be supported."
"It should have its own repository for test case creation, so that one does not have to resort to third-party tools and plugins."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is too high."
"I am not sure why it is so expensive, but one license will cost approximately $15,000 in US dollars."
"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."
"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."
"It's expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being very affordable and ten being quite expensive."
"The licensing costs for the product are quite high."
"It is expensive to onboard additional users."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."
"The standard package of Jira is for 100 users. They should offer more packages for other increments, such as 500 or 2,000. In my previous company, there was a free package that provided a minimal number of users."
"It does not cost that much."
"We had a perpetual license but have changed to a subscription."
"We currently have ten users, and it is free for ten users."
"The price of Jira could be lower."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
9%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
49%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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 data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...
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 and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
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 license.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational DOORS
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infosys, Chevrolet Volt
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.