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Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM 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

Microsoft Azure DevOps
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
2nd
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
3rd
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 14.8%, down from 23.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.3%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates agile transformation with potential for enhanced intuitiveness
What I liked about the solution is that it offers numerous features that are not available by default unless you are agile. Transitioning from the traditional Waterfall model to an agile methodology was challenging for us. Until 2020, our team predominantly worked with the Waterfall approach, using local tools like ServiceNow. We had a few team members who were familiar with Agile ISO, but none had experience with Azure. Therefore, we pursued Azure certification at the AZ-900 level. Our company organized a training session with a certified Azure expert, which was extremely beneficial for adopting best practices during the initial three months. This preparation helped us get accustomed to the new tool, as transitioning to a new system invariably requires time. Managing a pipeline of deliverables became significantly easier with this solution. We utilized it for stories and integrated change management with Azure DevOps. Eventually, everything related to the environment was organized there, enabling us to follow up and track progress with our technical engineers on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Reports were automatically generated and sent to management, offering them insights into our progress concerning the predefined roadmap.
Dina Bindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility
It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Most of the features are very valuable for us, especially the source code control and task management."
"Detailed logs allow us to pinpoint the exact cause of any issues, making troubleshooting efficient and accurate."
"Azure DevOps is effective for repository management and code collaboration. We can create branches, differentiate between code versions, save and review code later, get PR approvals, and more. All these features are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the complete integration between test cases, pipelines, and issue management."
"I think the most usable thing is that you can follow the whole progress of the development process. This makes it very useful for us."
"Version control practices have been perfect for us. It maintains a detailed history and is integrated with GitHub, which is also a Microsoft product. It is quite a game-changer."
"What I like the most is the DevOps Boards. It's easy to create a hierarchical project structure, assign tasks to people, and to track their tasks."
"We can forecast tasks and the number of hours a task will take and can compare it with how long a task actually takes."
"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"The technical support is quite good."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
 

Cons

"Its UI can be easier and more customer-friendly. The UI can be improved from the project management and agile perspective."
"The ability to extend work items was more flexible than it is now. Talking version control, one of our customers had some issues because they found it very difficult to manage more than 1000 repositories for one team project."
"Project management could be improved."
"The tool was developed for Agile project methodology, but I've noticed that there has also been a try to incorporate what is typically done in MS Project, which is for more sequential Waterfall projects. The problem with that is that it is half-baked for Waterfall projects. If you're going to do it, then either go all the way and allow us to use the tool for both or don't do it at all."
"Definitely, there should be more integration between GitHub and Azure DevOps."
"I would like to see a bit more project tracking."
"I can't think of any specific things at the moment, but I've run into things that I didn't like. I came across something that I wanted to be changed in DevOps, but I can't remember what it was. It was a particular feature I was looking for that I couldn't find."
"They do very frequent releases, there's a complete change in UI kind of stuff. Sometimes it feels like they change it too often."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an MPN subscription for Microsoft Azure DevOps, and it's all included."
"It's a good tool, quite rich, it has a lot of features, and quite a lot of analytical capabilities which are built on top of it so that you can see how your projects are going and all that stuff. It's a good tool."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps is free for up to five users and allows you to track a maximum of three projects."
"We pay a monthly license for Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"Compared to other tools, Microsoft Azure DevOps is a cheap solution."
"Its pricing is reasonable for the number of features that you get and the functionality that you can utilize for the agile delivery, which is what we are using it for. I found it extremely cost-effective."
"The price is reasonable, but of course, you can find others that are cheaper such as Atlassian."
"The main agile features are very expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"It is an expensive product."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
The backlog management for Agile in Polarion ALM could be improved or enhanced in future releases. What is missing is that if you have a hierarchy in your backlog with epics, features, and user sto...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
 

Also Known As

Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.