Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

Atlassian and Siemens are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. Atlassian is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. Atlassian holds a 21.4% mindshare in ALM, compared to Siemens’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Atlassian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

Jira

Read 274 Jira reviews

15,002 Views
10,262 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 21 Polarion ALM reviews

4,114 Views
2,819 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Jira

Polarion ALM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Jira and Polarion ALM compete in the project management and application lifecycle management sectors. Jira appears to have an edge due to its affordability and deployment flexibility.

Features: Jira offers flexibility and extensive integration options, supporting a wide range of tasks beyond issue tracking. It features customization capabilities and numerous plugins that enhance project management and agile processes. Polarion ALM is noted for its traceability and document control, crucial for requirements engineering and compliance in regulated industries. It consolidates requirements management, testing, and release management into one platform, appreciated for complex project needs.

Room for Improvement: Jira suffers from complexity in configuration and relies heavily on third-party plugins, which can be overwhelming for new users. Its search functionality and performance metrics warrant enhancements, along with the need for a more intuitive UI. Polarion ALM faces challenges in integrating with some third-party tools, and its higher costs can be prohibitive for smaller enterprises. Its UI and user experience could be more streamlined, and configuration requires technical expertise.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jira provides deployment flexibility across public, private, and hybrid clouds, which is appealing to businesses with diverse infrastructure needs. Many users rely on Jira’s community forums for support, although direct customer service is limited. Polarion ALM mainly offers on-premises deployment, with some cloud presence, requiring more technical setup. Its customer service is adequate, but lacks the comprehensive support presence of Jira’s community.

Pricing and ROI: Jira is generally seen as affordable for small to medium businesses, especially with its free version for small teams. However, the cost can increase with added plugins and premium plans. Polarion ALM is positioned at a higher price point, justified by its features for large enterprises requiring rigorous compliance and traceability. Despite its cost, ROI is recognized in industries with critical project demands.

To learn more, read our detailed Jira vs. Polarion ALM Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Jira vs. Polarion ALM

April 2025

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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

Jira

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

274

Ranking in other categories

Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (2nd)

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 21.4%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

Saroj Ekka

Technical Delivery Lead at Applied Materials

Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up

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 can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

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Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows you to do a lot of stuff, and the functionality is pretty rich. It integrates well with other products, like GitLab, that we are currently intensely using at the company."

"The most valuable features of Jira are the dashboards and user interface. The processes within Jira to monitor, maintain and release are beneficial. It is a continuous development solution."

"I can use Jira Query Language (JQL) to write queries to see the stories that are there for the current sprint. I can also sort them by assignment. I also use Jira is for burndown charts, which give an indication of how efficiently the squad is performing. I also use the Active Sprints function and a feature called Planning Poker."

"The timeline management is great."

"For QA, the most interesting for me are boards, backlog, and filters."

"You no longer need to email people. You can mention them right in Jira and have conversations there."

"Jira is user-friendly and offers many features."

"A very comprehensive product; easy to set up and is very user-friendly."

More Jira pros

"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."

"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."

"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The solution offers good integration."

"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."

"The software is stable."

"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"Sometimes, we create the same bug with two or three different Jira tickets in my company, which leads to duplication, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Test case management could be more user-friendly. When we add or update test cases, there should be a better way to organize them within the dashboard."

"The stability could be improved."

"Users can be confused about how to use this tool as it's very complex."

"I'm mostly focusing on the requirements traceability with my thesis, the integration could improve for other tools. The companies are not only using Jira. For example, for the test cases or for the documents templates, we are using Polarion and we have been having some integration issues."

"Jira required a significant amount of system resources, particularly for larger organizations with extensive workflows and numerous projects."

"It is not intuitive."

"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."

More Jira cons

"The user interface is not yet optimized."

"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"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 tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."

"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."

"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."

"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a company, we get a subsidized price, and it's lower than what's quoted on their website."

"I don't feel that price is an issue."

"The price of Jira could be lower."

"I am not sure if the client is using a commercial version. I think it is on a per-user basis, and it is around 15 Canadian dollars for a user, but I'm not sure. It also has a free version."

"It is an affordable tool."

"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."

"We are on an annual license to use Jira."

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It's paid yearly."

More Jira pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

50%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Jira

Compared 15% of the time

IBM DOORS vs Jira

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText ALM Octane vs Jira

Compared 8% of the time

Rally Software vs Jira

Compared 6% of the time

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Jira

Compared 4% of the time

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Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 29% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 15% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 8% of the time

PTC Integrity vs Polarion ALM

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Polarion ALM

Compared 4% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Jira

April 2025

Download Jira product report

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

April 2025

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

Jira Software

No data available

Overview

Jira is a powerful cloud- and subscription-based application lifecycle and issue management solution. It is designed to aid users both in project management and in resolving any issues that arise at any point in the software development process. It is especially concerned with easing the ability of developers to collaborate.

Jira Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Jira include:

DevOps lifecycle visibility and planning. Jira provides application developers with tools that enable them to track and visualize where they are in the development process. This means that a DevOps team can measure their progress at all times. Jira’s roadmapping feature also enables a DevOps team to work more efficiently by setting goals for their projects, keeping them on track. Additionally, they are able to track whether they are meeting the goals that they set for their projects.

Regular product updates. Atlassian is constantly updating Jira so that it is continuously evolving into an ever more powerful and user-friendly solution. Users can be sure that the product that they are using is always being tweaked so as to provide them with the best possible project management solution.

Flexibility. Jira enables users to customize their workflows and dashboard so that the solution is operating in a way that best matches their needs. Jira can also integrate with more than 3,000 other applications and integrations. Organizations can use it to expand their project management and DevOps capabilities in many different ways.

Jira Features

Security capabilities. Jira is equipped with a number of useful security features. It gives administrators the ability to restrict access to certain tools so that only users who are authorized to complete certain tasks have access to the tools related to the completion of that task. Users can also set default permissions so that only particular users can work on new projects or particular projects.

Real-time notification feature. Users can set Jira so that it offers them notifications that contain critical information in real time. It can send users email notifications when pressing issues have been updated. They can also set it to notify them about tasks that may be due, or other similar events.
Activity log. Jira has the ability to track any and all changes that are taking place within the software framework. Users can keep a close eye on everything that is going on. This promotes a high level of visibility and can be leveraged to aid developers in their collaboration efforts.

Reviews from Real Users

Jira is a powerful solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its workflow engine and its highly customizable dashboard.

Bharath R., the tool implementation and project management lead at a financial services firm, writes, “I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It empowers us to automate our workflows within our organization. It's the one characteristic of Jira which I think can help any organization, be it in any domain.”

Uday J., a staff engineer at a computer company, says, “Another thing that I like a lot about Jira is that in the dashboard, you can plug the modules that you want. You can enable certain sections. For example, you can show trend history, open Jira tickets, etc. Some of the managers have created a dashboard for each engineer.”

Atlassian

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

Buyer's Guide

Jira vs. Polarion ALM

April 2025

Free Report: Jira vs. Polarion ALM

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