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IBM DOORS vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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

IBM DOORS
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jira
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS is 30.6%, down from 34.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 13.7%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira13.7%
IBM DOORS30.6%
Other55.7%
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

UweSeufert - PeerSpot reviewer
Old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements
I use IBM DOORS because my customer wants it for managing their requirements IBM DOORS is a tool from the 20th century. It is very old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements. It helps to manage requirements efficiently, which significantly improves the way requirements…
AmitUbale - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient project management that's comprehensive and and helps with time efficiency
We use Jira primarily for project management within the organization. It helps us manage tasks, bug management, and tracking tickets effectively. We assign tickets to individual team members and track them easily For project management, Jira has helped facilitate efficient task segregation and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has the features of: traceability, configuration management, and user access."
"It is very customizable and easy to scale."
"The solution is stable."
"It is a stable solution."
"Makes good work of prioritizing and planning product delivery."
"IBM Rational DOORS keeps everything organized."
"I like the user interface with regard to creating links between requirements and tracing links to requirements."
"Starting to use the solution is pretty straightforward. There isn't too much of a learning curve."
"The ordinary user has an interface that is very clear."
"Jira provides substantial analytical aspects, especially in defect categorization and routing."
"The JIRA user interface looks great. It's an overall good experience. It's very intuitive in the sense that you understand how it's going to work. It's very self-explanatory, and it's beneficial overall."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is the reporting feature, which allows us to track our team's tasks."
"We've found the scalability to be good."
"The UI is good. It's simple and not very complicated. It's very good for tracking."
"The adaptability of the Scrum and Kanban boards for other uses, with careful use of the customization features."
"Jira is flexible and accessible for the end-user. It lets users track their requests. The look and feel are good for our purposes."
 

Cons

"Rational DOORS' most valuable feature is that you can write any kind of requirement you want."
"The performance could be improved. It doesn't run as smoothly as it could."
"IBM should integrate some solutions they already own toenhance the utility of the product further. Specifically import and export to Office products is more difficult than it needs to be."
"There are problems with communicating between DOORS and Microsoft Office."
"The customer must also have the tool to import the changes and accept them as a part of the review."
"The low performance of the solution is probably because it is quite an old tool."
"I would like to see them improve in agile management the Scrum/Kanban Board to work with overseas team members."
"The kind of dashboard is not very convenient."
"Users can be confused about how to use this tool as it's very complex."
"Its UI can be improved a little bit. I know this a business tool and not a commercial tool, but it could be a little bit more interactive like the HP ALM/Quality Center, which provides you the results of graphs and gives you a lot of visual representations. I feel Jira lacks a little bit in this aspect."
"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."
"It would be good if we can grant access based on the roles. This is something that Jira can look into. Currently, anyone with Jira access can access everything. Being able to define access based on the roles will give us more flexibility in managing Jira. I would like to have more reports in Jira. Currently, eight or nine reports are there. You can use Screen Test to get more reports or data from Jira, but you will have to get more add-ons, plug-ins, and stuff like that. It would be good if they can increase the number of reports."
"The filtration could be better."
"There needs to be an easier way to capture a few metrics. I wish there was an easy way for Jira to explain to me what has been added after the sprint has been done. Currently, it is a bit difficult for me to tell. In addition, when rolling over stories from one sprint to another, it is kind of difficult for me to find out how many story points were actually rolled over without going into Jira and doing an analysis. I wish Jira would somehow aggregate that information for me so I can easily report about it."
"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."
"There should be a way to integrate the mobile application or in some way, make it more clear because at first instance, I didn't understand how to use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it's expensive because you have to pay for the licenses to IBM and all that and maintain them."
"The licensing costs for the product are quite high."
"Pricing can vary depending on the size of the organization and how contracts are negotiated."
"IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive."
"I don't personally know what the numbers are. I just know that one of the reasons we've limited it to three seats is a function of cost."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being very affordable and ten being quite expensive."
"It's expensive."
"We have to pay for a license. I think it's a one-time payment as my company hasn't notified me about more charges. I don't think it's expensive for large corporations, but it will be costly for an average person."
"The price at the moment for Jira is okay. I'm absolutely not amused with the plans to try to drive us to the cloud or to other licensing models. For the very simple reason that we are a company in the defense sector where cloud is problematic in a number of the domains. We are now approximately 60 users and the new policy will actually confront us with an upscale to approximately 500 users. I find it unacceptable, and may potentially lead us to look for another solution."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It's paid yearly."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"It is an affordable tool."
"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
26%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business103
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise149
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS?
The traceability matrix in DOORS improved our project outcomes. It helps ensure coverage of requirements at different levels, from user requirements to software requirements to test requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS?
Over the years, the first version cost something around 5800 euros.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS?
Compared to today, DOORS' competitors also excel in this discipline. Yet the price is too high. It's often not as generic as it used to be. IBM promised to find a way for a generic format that allo...
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...
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...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational DOORS
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infosys, Chevrolet Volt
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.