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OpenText Application Quality Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

OpenText Application Qualit...
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Quality Management Software (1st), Test Management Tools (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText Application Quality Management is 7.5%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.5%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Application Quality Management7.5%
Polarion ALM4.5%
Other88.0%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

GS
Partner at IS Nordic AS
Manages multiple releases seamlessly
We have done some work with companies, probably four or five years ago and found the ability to manage multiple releases simultaneously as a main advantage, especially in complex programs with multiple concurrent releases. Running automated tests against back-level versions in certain environments is possible, and newer versions can be tested as well. It creates constant visibility into the test process, showing the status, bugs, and automated test results. It is a solid product in large corporations in Denmark, ensuring everyone knows where the process stands. There is a good understanding of what is critical, allowing prioritization of test cases.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having HP ALM has helped in streamlining the Performance testing projects and now management has a better view of the projects and their status."
"Quality Center has definitely added value as it has easy accessibility for all our employees and is very useful for defect triage and scrum meetings."
"It is still the best QA tool on the market that integrates with most of other tools we use."
"The biggest lesson I've learned from using Quality Center is that, when it's used well, it's an exceptionally powerful tool."
"All types of data can be seen in one place."
"ALM has got really a good feature which captures screens, decodes them and puts them in a code format."
"Business process management is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"Prior to using Quality Center, my organization used spreadsheets and emails to track testing efforts, therefore, QC helped my team become more efficient by tracking all testing activities with the tool."
"The solution offers good integration."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"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."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"Even though Polarion is quite expensive, it's quite a good solution for medical device development in general, especially for software development."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"Polarion ALM is powerful in easily creating your own workflows for completely different kinds of things."
"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."
 

Cons

"ALM only works on Internet Explorer. It doesn't work on any other browser. In my opinion, Internet Explorer is generally a bit slower. I would like to see it work on Chrome or on other browsers."
"License costs are still staggeringly high."
"Certainly on the UI part, it has to be improved to make it user-friendly and more presentable."
"There were multiple modules and stuff to the solution so maybe the requirements can map to test scripts. It can't map to test steps. If you've got a process that's set up and you've got multiple test scripts that are in it, each script has to be linked to the requirement and the whole set can't be. If we're doing process-driven testing, it's more difficult to do it at the script level, which is what we're finding from a traceability perspective."
"Overall the user experience of HP ALM is very good, there are some small improvements which can help those who are doing defect triage and management, and also the actual testers who use a test lab."
"We need to move test cases manually from Test Case module to Test Execution module. This consumes more manual interaction."
"I'd like to see the idea of users being flushed out more, so not just, "This defect is now assigned to a particular person," or "This person is assigned to execute a test.""
"Requirements management could be improved as the use is very limited. I see room for improvements in this rather outdated tool."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"I don't think that this solution scales well. It means that we have to split our project and use something with fewer objects in it."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Quality Center is pricey, but cheaper is not always less expensive."
"We have divided our licenses between Micro Focus ALM and ALM Octane. It works for us."
"It all comes down to how many people are going to access the tool. When teams go above 20, I think ALM is a better tool to use from a collaboration and streamlining perspective."
"The licensing fee is a little expensive."
"We pay around $30,000 for thirty users, translating to approximately $6,000 to $10,000 per user, which is high."
"The full ALM license lets you use the requirements tab, along with test automation and the Performance Center. You can also just buy the Quality Center edition (Manual testing only), or the Performance Center version (Performance Testing only)."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Compared to the market, the price is high."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
6%
Manufacturing Company
30%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center?
The on-premises setup tends to be on the expensive side. It would be cheaper to use a cloud model with a pay-per-use licensing model.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM Quality Center?
Regarding integration with various development tools, I can provide examples, and I am using customizable dashboards in OpenText ALM _ Quality Center, which definitely help identify project bottlen...
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center?
People are using OpenText ALM _ Quality Center for recording user cases, testing and hand documentation, defect tracking, business purposes, and reporting.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center, HPE ALM, Quality Center, Quality Center, Micro Focus ALM, OpenText Quality Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus Defense and Space, Vodafone, JTI, Xellia, and Banco de Creìdito e Inversiones (Bci)
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Application Quality Management vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.