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OpenText Software Delivery Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

OpenText Software Delivery ...
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText Software Delivery Management is 5.8%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.6%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Polarion ALM4.6%
OpenText Software Delivery Management5.8%
Other89.6%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

PE
Senior Test Automation Specialist at APG
Generating audit evidence effortlessly saves time and money
OpenText ALM Octane is a new product with full development ongoing, where new ideas are launched regularly. Its ability to generate audit evidence with a single click is a significant advantage, as it saves considerable time and money compared to manual processes. This efficiency is especially valuable for audits required by financial regulators.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."
"The integration points are very good. Octane gives us a window not only into our manual testing, but also our automation testing and our performance testing. We can see all results from all three streams of testing in one place."
"The user experience is a lot better than any tool that I have used before. Overall, it is great. It has a smooth interface, which is very user-friendly. It makes it easier to work together and have more transparency and customization, which is very good."
"The most valuable feature of ALM Octane is an easy implementation of Agile projects."
"It’s easy to set up."
"The most useful feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the dashboards, they are easy to use."
"Our team is saving time on testing by using Octane."
"On the user side, what I like a lot is the reporting capabilities. There's no tool, to my knowledge, that gets anywhere close to Octane at the moment when it comes to the reporting capabilities. I can do everything with the reporting. There's nothing missing. I have all the options. I can create graphs, including graphs of several types and looks."
"Polarion ALM is powerful in easily creating your own workflows for completely different kinds of things."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"This one tool incorporates almost all engineering tasks we need to do for one project."
"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."
"The technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"The Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There's a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it's still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane."
"Security and security management, meaning the integration of the security, could be enhanced. We know about Fortify, but it would be better to have security features in the original Octane platform without the need for another solution or another application."
"Also, while there is a Requirements Module in Octane, it is very plain. It's okay to have some requirements described there, but it's not really following the whole BDD approach. I would like to have more features for requirements in there."
"Documentation is not clear."
"The reporting side of ALM Octane could do with a few areas of improvement. There is not enough flexibility in the way that we can cut up the data to report on certain things."
"There is room for improvement in OpenText ALM Octane's flexibility. While it aims to be as flexible as possible for a large enterprise application, sometimes there are limitations that may not meet specific organizational needs."
"One of the things that a lot of our project teams have complained about is the simplicity of reporting that's available in Octane, and that they have to export data out of it in order to create the types of reports that their PMO or their client wants to see."
"We've only had a few stability issues. Generally, we have issues following any deployment they do, so if they do a deployment on a Sunday, then we may have a couple of issues on a Monday or Tuesday."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The solution is not easy to use. The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"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 license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is highly priced compared to other tools."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight on a scale from one to ten, where ten is very expensive."
"Microsoft is a big challenge for Micro Focus when it comes to pricing because they are much cheaper. But it definitely depends on the complexity of the environment. If it has multiple technologies, at that point, looking at other options and Microsoft would be a feasible approach."
"Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more licenses."
"In my opinion, it's good value for the price that you pay."
"It will be as expensive as ALM.NET, if not more expensive. But here's a good tip: If you have ALM.NET, you are able to share your licenses from ALM.NET to Octane. You just have to define a dedicated number of licenses on ALM.NET and then you can share them with ALM Octane, with some configuration effort. This is something that you have to take into account, that there is a possibility of such license sharing that could decrease your costs. Compared to open-source tools, the price the ALM Octane is definitely higher, in terms of the licensing cost."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The product is neither cheap nor expensive."
"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus ALM Octane?
OpenText ALM Octane is an expensive product. However, it offsets costs by saving time and money, thus creating a balance between expenses and benefits. Our organization with over 1500 users sees sa...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
There is room for improvement in OpenText ALM Octane's flexibility. While it aims to be as flexible as possible for a large enterprise application, sometimes there are limitations that may not meet...
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Software Delivery Management vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.