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Jira vs Jira Align 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

Jira
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (2nd)
Jira Align
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (3rd), Value Stream Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 21.4%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira Align is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 02, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Saroj Ekka - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up
There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.
Tonia Spight-Sokoya - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly with good documentation and the ability to integrate with other third arty vendors
I am really focused on identity access management and getting access to the vendors. Right now, I'm setting up vendor access through Azure. You can do that or with the IAM. Sometimes we have to create several different types of access because we have vaulted databases. We have the Unix databases, I have MySQL, and we have Mongo, where I get access to those user classes or to the databases in the host group. Those are all different access scenario forms that I submit after I do the configuration in the form with the security team. I need clarity on the IAM. I'm not clear on PAM eighter. Is there a form that they have to submit to get access to the internal cyber-risk teams to get their access for people to be able to use the tool on the Confluence side? Do they have to send some kind of form to the operation's security or enterprise security? To be able to get the access for privileged access, do they need to be working on projects that have vaulted databases? I still need to figure out how that works. Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally. They only do access through the cloud and through third-party, two-factor identification. That's something I was wondering if that was already implemented in the packages, the package for Confluence. It would be nice to have that right in the solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers a lot of plugins."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is the project package for development."
"The solution is very scalable and flexible."
"The traceability mapping feature is something that became very useful, especially during releases and bug fixes."
"Reports, analytics, and a ton of widgets, they are great and intuitive. Perfect for an agile team."
"Integration is good."
"I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It helps us automate our workflows within our organization. It's the one characteristic of Jira which I think can help any organization, be it in any domain."
"It handles all of the issues that we need it to do."
"The biggest advantage of Jira Align, in my opinion, is its user-friendly interface, making it simple and easy for end users to navigate and utilize. The most valuable feature of Jira Align for me is its automation capabilities, allowing us to create automation rules based on logical conditions for our projects. In terms of cross-team collaboration, Jira Align's integration with our project squads has been highly effective. It enables seamless creation of stories linked to incidents and changes, facilitating better visibility and understanding of the relationships between them. Regarding road mapping and dependency tracking, Jira Align enhances our project planning by aligning with our best practices and providing robust capabilities for mapping out dependencies and tracking progress."
"I've had no issues with Align's stability."
"The product has good visualization capabilities and helps to see the different dimensions of a plan."
"The reporting structure is great."
"I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and propose solutions to increase production capacity. Upon observing the process in Jira Align, I realized we didn't need to invest heavily in expanding capacity."
"Jira Align's most valuable features are the roadmap, the program board, and the reports."
"The product's most valuable feature is CMDB for services desk management and backlog projects."
"Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement."
 

Cons

"The documentation on how to create dashboards and take advantage of other features in the tool are areas where the tool has certain shortcomings."
"I have had problems with performance and unresponsiveness. All of a sudden, the performance slowed down, and I had a number of users that could not use the tool."
"Grid: It is really strange that there is no possibility to edit an item in the grid. You need to go inside, and even then, not all items are editable, so you need to switch to edit mode. That's too many clicks and switches."
"It lacks features to cover all testing aspects, so we often integrate it with other plugins or tools like X-ray."
"Scripts should be more readily available for implementing projects."
"Pretty much 70% - 80% of the Next-Gen Projects features are still to be developed."
"In terms of improvement, I think Jira (Jira Agile, specifically) can be made more user-friendly. Most of the time, when people are somewhat used to the process, they find it easy to work with. But the thing is, if I want to create a sprint, I'd like the ability for it to come out like a kind of board or something like that. For example, they could offer something like a wizard for users who want to quickly create a sprint on the spot with a few clicks. I think that could be useful."
"Tracking is important but the built-in features don't meet our needs."
"Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, they are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally."
"The workflows are scalable from portfolio to individual level but can sometimes be complex to navigate."
"Jira Align fails to provide its users with a complete package in terms of portfolio management."
"In my company, we found the solution to have many issues regarding its ability to handle claims and other processes since the solution is not available on a single window."
"One of the biggest issues I found in the new version was once we clicked on one of the tasks that were specifically for our group and went to look at the other portfolios in other areas we had to browse all the way back to the beginning. If you click the back button, it would not work, it stayed the same place. Additionally, if you click on page B, but then you wanted to go back to page A it would not go back to page A. You would have to browse back to the portfolio and then find your group again and open it. This was the only issue that I had with it and I am not sure if it is a Jira issue or it was because of the way the site was laid out."
"The initial setup was a little bit complex."
"One area for improvement is that Jira Align's double menu and multiple menus can be difficult for new users."
"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes. Users must do their own research and see if it fits their purpose."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"Our client handles the licensing aspect. They have not yet purchased the premium version."
"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."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"Its price is good and similar to other products. It is about five or six dollars per user."
"We are on an annual license and could be less expensive."
"My company pays approximately 399 USD per month for the solution."
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"Our customers buy licenses. We are not involved in its purchase."
"Jira Align is quite expensive for small-to-medium companies, but it's quite reasonable for larger ones."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"At our company, we were concerned about the cost of Jira Align, which is expensive"
"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes."
"Jira Align was reasonably priced then, especially for a bundle license that accommodated around 50 monthly users."
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Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019
Some of the fundamental difference between AgileCraft & Jira are 1) Jira was originally a bug tracking tool that has been modified to try and support Agile projects. AgileCraft was developed out of the box with Agile in mind. 2) Jira data structure is flat which means creating a hierarchy for rolled up reporting is problematic even with the 3rd party plugins. 3) AgileCraft was designed...
2 out of 6 answers
MS
Apr 1, 2019
From: Nick Regan from IT Central Station Sent: Monday, April 1, 2019 11:09 AM To: Sternberger, Mark Subject: Seeking expertise in AgileCraft Hi Mark, Can you help out a colleague with the following question about AgileCraft: ----- What Is The Biggest Difference Between AgileCraft And JIRA? One of the most popular comparisons on IT Central Station is AgileCraft vs JIRA. People like you are trying to decide which one is best for their company. Can you help them out? What is the biggest difference between AgileCraft and JIRA? Which of these two solutions would you recommend to a colleague evaluating application lifecycle management suites and why? Thanks for helping your peers make the best decision! ----- Please reply to this email with your response or post your answer here. You've been a member of IT Central Station since March 2019. In a market full of vendor hype, we provide free connections between real users of AgileCraft to share advice and make better buying decisions. Thanks for being part of the community. Nick Regan Community Director, IT Central Station IT Central Station 244 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10001 (646) 328-1944 um-nqn 342024 To change notifications, please visit your subscription page or unsubscribe completely. gitbdelWHFUOFUyYk1sbkN2bzRLUUQyV1pibk1IeHJQRnRwUEFVSm5DYmFvVG0rNTdnQmE0YjY5T1NBS2tlQlNGa3A5SS0tdzNKeGVNUUsxK1JWdVRjblo0b1RQQT09--acfde43e76e9c3b13be36f6090940095bb440d60gitbdel Disclaimer: This email and any attachments are sent in strictest confidence for the sole use of the addressee and may contain legally privileged, confidential, and proprietary data. If you are not the intended recipient, please advise the sender by replying promptly to this email and then delete and destroy this email and any attachments without any further use, copying or forwarding.
KF
Apr 1, 2019
Hi Nick. Considering the two are now the same company, I would defer any answer to the team at Atlassian. https://investors.atlassian.com/financials-and-filings/news/news-details/2019/Atlassian-to-Acquire-AgileCraft-to-Help-Executives-Align-Strategy-to-Execution/default.aspx
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
48%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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.
What do you like most about Jira Align?
I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and...
What needs improvement with Jira Align?
The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration.
What is your primary use case for Jira Align?
We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Jira Software
AgileCraft
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Anthem, nielsen, Homeland Security, NCR, dimension data
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. Jira Align and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.