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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
16th
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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rally Software is 5.0%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Rally Software5.0%
Atlassian ALM2.4%
Other92.6%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

BRIANJOHNSON2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independant Consultant at B&H Designs Ltd
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.
Amit Anand - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Technical Architect at HCLSoftware
Drilling into change lifecycles has given me clear end to end traceability for every item
Reporting is my main area of concern. Additionally, the migration activity and portability are important areas for improvement. If I needed to move from Jira to Rally Software, having built-in portability or migration utilities would be beneficial. At the time of my use, there was not an inbuilt capability to migrate applications from other third-party solutions to Rally Software. Currently, I am not using Rally Software.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite, and we have good integration with work management and software build automation (Bamboo), which is the major strength from this provider."
"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 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."
"In Bitbucket, the reviews are pretty good."
"The Atlassian ALM suite consists at least of JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket and HipChat - just the tools you need for organizing your teams in a very efficient way."
"As a general purpose tool, JIRA and Confluence are still ahead of the competition."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"Right now, it is the idea of having everything in place for both information and my project in a single network."
"Using CA Agile Central, my organization was able to develop, test, and deploy software much quicker than we used to under the waterfall methodology."
"Easy drill down and drill up, creating a very user-friendly menu."
"Get the system customized because that's one of the strong aspects of CA Agile Central."
"This product had helped my organization so much because it helped us keep everything tracked."
"We now have a more holistic view of how development teams are executing against the enterprise’s strategic roadmap."
"Real-time status tracking Capacity planning Ease of configuration of reports and dashboards Iteration and release planning Ability to personalize views Ability to see vital information in one screen as opposed to having to navigate to multiple pages"
"The product has excellent customizable reports."
 

Cons

"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."
"The reports are not really customizable, which is something that they should improve on."
"Frankly it's a really daunting exercise - challenging, problematic and very flaky."
"For project management, the scheduling of the project tasks should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid using the Atlassian Portfolio."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"The solution is stable but at times, the performance is poor. It takes time to load and the response time is not up to the mark."
"Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive."
"All Atlassian products are based on JAVA which makes it a bit difficult to trace problems if you don't have much JAVA skilled staff around."
"I would like to see it more well connected with the PPM tool. We have Planview."
"I did experience stability issues. Sometimes, it has short hanging periods during a planning session, i.e., when you discuss the user story, without the screen displaying the acceptance criteria, mockups and so on."
"I wish there was a view, like the Kanban view, where you could see the parent, and see all the children visually, so you could drag and drop where you want it to go. Something like that might help."
"The other big one that we've been requesting for years is the ability to move people between workspaces."
"Sometimes the app freezes when creating either user stories or defects in Safari. The performance, in terms of response time when creating elements, is not as expected."
"I think the interface could be a little bit more visual and less wordy. Right now, it seems like it's just a lot of text on the page. In other ticketing systems where it's more visual, you can see more of a flow. But in this one it's more just a list of tasks. I would like to see that a little bit better, especially considering it has so many great organizational features, like child tasks, different artifacts. It would be great to see it presented more appropriately."
"Customization features may not be exposed or unavailable, so people may be looking for them. So, customization is an area people have told me is more desirable."
"The weakest part of this solution is its primitive report generator."
 

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."
"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."
"Rally Software costs $50 a month, and for a base account, that price is acceptable."
"Frankly, pricing is expensive and needs to be carefully planned for when budgeting."
"From a price point, it's a cost effective solution for our needs."
"The license costs are fairly high as compared to some of the other solutions out there."
"It is expensive and may not be worthwhile for a small company."
"We are always looking for a discount, if the solution was less expensive it would be a benefit."
"I understand it's a little more expensive. That is why many people prefer Jira."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise113
 

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?
The setup cost is expensive. I was not responsible for the license part, but it was on a yearly basis.
What needs improvement with Rally Software?
Reporting is my main area of concern. Additionally, the migration activity and portability are important areas for improvement. If I needed to move from Jira to Rally Software, having built-in port...
 

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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.