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Atlassian ALM vs Rally Software comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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

Atlassian ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
15th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rally Software
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 2.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rally Software is 5.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Rally Software5.5%
Atlassian ALM2.4%
Other92.1%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

BRIANJOHNSON2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independant Consultant at Reckitt
Long-term testing workflows have improved integration of test planning and defect tracking
The deployment depends on whether you are deploying it on your computer or across the program. Cloud-based system deployment takes some time, as it depends on your rights to your computer. I would rate the deployment as a seven on a scale of one to ten. It took a couple of hours to get it right. The IT department deploys it.
Rakhee Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
Real-time dashboards provide clear insights into project progress and team velocity
Rally Software is easy to use for Agile project methodology because it follows Scrum and Kanban, helping with sprint planning and backlog management. Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks. Backlog management is present in the product, allowing prioritization of tasks. The dashboards provide all types of insights through analytics. Capacity planning helps optimize resource allocation, ensuring balanced workload and realistic sprint commitments for our projects. The solution integrates with GitHub, and we can also integrate with Excel and CI/CD pipelines.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface between the repository and test plan stands out as valuable, and I appreciate building the tests and scenarios in Test Lab and the ability to link defects throughout the system, which Atlassian ALM does better than any other testing products."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"If you can spend the little effort to configure Jira to support your more complex requirements management, then you can concentrate everything in one tool."
"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite. We have good integration with work management with Java. This is the major strength from this provider."
"It has allowed the quality assurance team to keep all information in sync with the application requirements and user stories for our general development."
"It's designed around Agile, so it has all of the pieces that match up with the process."
"If teams are tracking correctly and entering their information correctly, it's really easy to see where you're at, within your release, and whether you're on track or not."
"We use the roadmap features, and we're getting better at using dates to use the roadmap so that we can see if we're on target for work."
"The effect of these kind of tools drives the way you organize things. It helps you shape the way you flow."
"The Defect feature. In one view you can see all your defects and you can push them into the different releases."
"When we went into Scaled Agile Framework, we could not have done it without the use of Agile Central. It allows us to scale our Scrum teams, and it also enables us when we do our remote big room plannings."
"We have teams come and go all the time. We have teams in India, America, Ireland, Poland, Italy, England... we are spread out everywhere! Rally is our key tool for scrum planning and our single source of truth, and it handles it all flawlessly."
 

Cons

"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"However, it is not really scalable, so if you want to use it for anything larger or plan to use it for product portfolios, then it starts to be problematic."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive."
"The reports are not really customizable, which is something that they should improve on."
"The product itself seems to have a lot of bugs. One issue is that it sometimes allows people to modify data inappropriately. For example, team members can change numbers at will. While we have a mechanism to track changes, people can still alter numbers, create or delete tasks, and create or delete high-level activities without proper controls."
"I'd like the ability to customize reports without having to incur Professional Services, or having to write my own code GitHub and then implement that as a custom report. That's untenable. It's not sustainable."
"More importantly, we are seeing internal challenges from Atlassian because of their highly integrated suite that enables further automation and centralization of activities that are also highly necessary – messaging notifications cued off builds, collaboration on Solution Architecture Documentation, etc."
"I think there needs to be some simplification. The team-level side can be challenging and complicated."
"It's a bit cumbersome to manage the Project Picker. As we sunset teams or projects close out - but we still have test cases tied to those teams or projects that are being used in other spaces - we have this monstrous list in the Project Picker that becomes really difficult to manage and find, and we can't clean that up ourselves. It would be nice if it was easier to do that and not lose your history."
"We'd like better dashboards to make visibility better."
"It is hard to track the changes. For example, we're in sprint 25, and then we have 26, 27, 28, and 29. Throughout that whole time, we're developing pipelines in Azure, moving to GitHub, creating pipelines, and working with teams. But sometimes, we need to revisit specific decisions made in previous sprints, like pipeline details. Maybe it's in our Azure Wiki, GitHub, or Teams, but it's not always consistent. I wish I could search for all tasks or stories related to that particular effort without needing to know everyone's individual stories or features."
"The product needs to have more integration capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"From a price point, it's a cost effective solution for our needs."
"Frankly, pricing is expensive and needs to be carefully planned for when budgeting."
"It is expensive and may not be worthwhile for a small company."
"I don't know the exact pricing, but I think the tool is priced high. They provide quality workmanship, good software, regular upgrades, and they're always attentive and listen to users. Everything comes with a price. I think it's an expensive solution compared to Jira or other competitors, but it's a complete package."
"The license costs are fairly high as compared to some of the other solutions out there."
"I understand it's a little more expensive. That is why many people prefer Jira."
"We are always looking for a discount, if the solution was less expensive it would be a benefit."
"Rally Software costs $50 a month, and for a base account, that price is acceptable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Educational Organization
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise110
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
I am still not satisfied with the requirements area of Atlassian ALM. Atlassian ALM has four parts: test plan, Test Lab, requirements, and reporting. The requirements portion continues to be an are...
What is your primary use case for Atlassian ALM?
I have been using Atlassian ALM for twenty-five years. It used to be called Quality Center, and I first used it in 2000 and 2001. The company changed, but the product remained. Atlassian ALM has no...
What do you like most about Rally Software?
Rally offers many features that help the management of activities, coordination, alignment and reports, which applies agility across the organization. If I were to highlight a particular feature, i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rally Software?
Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it, and I have never heard concerns about pricing preventing us from using this tool.
What needs improvement with Rally Software?
While I'm not heavily involved in project management tools, I am familiar with these tools. One area for improvement might be the rigidity in role and access configurations, which require many proc...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Agile Central, Rally Enterprise, CA Agile Training, CA Agile Coaching, CA Agile Academy, CA Agile Management , CA ALM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
Physicians Mutual, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Editora Abril, Tata Communications, Level 3 Communications, Seagate, TomTom, Philips, Hiscox, Physicians Mutual, MYOB
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian ALM vs. Rally Software and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.