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3SL Cradle 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

3SL Cradle
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
3
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 July 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of 3SL Cradle is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 9.2%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

Siegmar-Schuenke - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible solution that manages all your needs
I mainly use 3SL Cradle to manage the requirements from service projects 3SL Cradle's most valuable feature is its flexibility in managing all your needs immediately.  3SL Cradle could be improved with better support for SysML functionalities. In the next release, I would like 3SL Cradle to be…
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

"3SL Cradle's most valuable feature is its flexibility in managing all your needs immediately."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is easier to expand to build a backend with several servers, so you can also use it to scale up to several hundreds of users without major problems."
"It's web-based, so you don't have anything to install."
"My company contacts the solution's technical support, and they are good and responsive."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the baselines and links."
"The solution has easy operation, is user-friendly, easily understood, and has better tracking for requirement management."
"The most valuable features are the versioning of requirements and the possibility to reuse them."
 

Cons

"3SL Cradle could be improved with better support for SysML functionalities."
"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."
"The only additional feature would be if it had dynamic linking to other MBSE tool sets or industry-leading tools."
"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."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is not a very user-friendly product."
"It does have a tendency to condense the requirements. It kind of puts them in a tree format. Sometimes those trees are a little difficult."
"It offers a bad user experience and the usability is poor."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of this solution is very high, and it increases year after year."
"If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."
"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."
"Users can buy a three-year license for about 12,000 Euros."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Aerospace/Defense Firm
27%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
Manufacturing Company
22%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with 3SL Cradle?
The support is consistent globally. However, heavier support is provided in certain locations. Improvement in support is necessary. Assistance is available to acquire information and utilize userna...
What advice do you have for others considering 3SL Cradle?
If you have time to take some courses about 3SL Cradle, it will give you more time in the project to familiarize yourself with Cradle. I recommend it, but you need to do it within a very short time...
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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, In-Depth Engineering Corporation, Avibras
Major health insurer
Find out what your peers are saying about 3SL Cradle vs. IBM DOORS Next and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.