aqua vs. Polarion
Automation Management
26 mins read
July 9, 2024

aqua vs Polarion: Which is the Best Enterprise ALM Solution?

Test management tools are neat, but many companies go all the way and organise their entire product development effort in a single solution. They use Application Lifecycle Management software, and we will be diving into what aqua and Polarion have to offer here.

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Kate Hornysh
Denis Matusovskiy

Deployment models

aqua and Polarion both come with Cloud and On-Premise offerings. The latter is mandatory for heavily regulated industries that deal with sensitive data as well as government organisations. On-Premise offerings can generally be negotiated into the level of vendor maintenance & support that works best for your company.

aqua deployment models

aqua deployment models

Deployment model
Polarion
aqua
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User Management

ALM usually pay much more attention to user management than the average test management solution. After all, you have many more people using the software and they come from several teams and even departments. Some people are working on the project part-time, so you may want to limit their input. Itā€™s even more important when you have crowd testers.

Polarion and aqua deliver to help you tackle all these scenarios. They come with default roles, but you can create new roles and even assign individual permissions.

Polarion permissions

Polarion permissions

aqua's permission editor

aqua’s permission editor

Criteria
Polarion
aqua
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Test Management

Polarion is a pretty close match for aquaā€™s test management functionality. It has proper test management functionality with test cases that can be parametrised, grouped into test scenarios, executed, and edited in bulk when needed. The only notable omissions relative to aqua are nested test cases (or a similar time-efficient way to reuse test cases) and shared views of the workspace.

Defining test steps in Polarion

Defining test steps in Polarion

Polarion test report

Polarion test report

Create smart test scenarios

Test scenarios in aqua

Run nested test cases

Nested test cases in aqua

Feature
Polarion
aqua
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Integrations & Automated Testing

Polarion goes wide but not necessarily deep with how they handle integrations. It has very few native integrations, driving customers to establish connections themselves via APIs. There is also an extensions marketplace, but the extensions there are neither maintained nor endorsed by Polarion.

aqua has a much bigger suite of native integrations. Unlike Polarionā€™s, it focuses on test automation rather than exchanging data with other management tools. You too can use REST API to connect any other solution.

I know there is some bias at play, but aquaā€™s offering is more compelling. The native integrations cover virtually all major test automation tools, while Polarion requires custom integration(s) or adopting xUnit framework for automated QA.

Feature
Polarion
aqua
Yes ( Jira, HP QC, Matlab Simulink, Microsoft TFS )
Yes ( Jira link, Jira sync )
No
Yes ( 10 tools )
Yes ( DIY framework (xUnit) )
Yes
Yes ( Java Open API, Web Services API )
Yes ( REST API )
No
No
No
No
Full list of aqua integrations

Full list of aqua integrations

Best QA integrations suite in the market

Try aqua ALM

Dashboards

QA dashboards are insightful for both testers and their colleagues. The main requirements here are utilising any data in the workspace and supporting custom data. Both aqua and Polarion do that.

aqua, however, also offers KPI Alerts. You can set up values that certain metrics should not go above or under (e.g. over 2 Critical bugs in Safari). If that happens, the dashboard widget changes the pattern so you see the anomaly at a glance. Conservative KPI Alerts is how you prevent issues from piling up.

Test run statistics in Polarion

Test run statistics in Polarion

aqua dashboard with KPI Alert at work

aqua dashboard with KPI Alert at work

Feature
Polarion
aqua
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes ( Pie, bar, line chart )
Yes ( Pie, bar, stacked bar, line chart; table chart )
No
Yes

Reporting

Polarion and aqua both have some of the most advanced reports in the field. They support external text and imagery, transform and enhance workspace data for any need, and can easily be exported or shared elsewhere.

 

aqua report example

aqua report example

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Polarion
aqua
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ALM

aqua and Polarion both handle the entire applicationā€™s lifecycle, from gathering requirements and fulfilling them to testing and defect management.

Feature
Polarion
aqua
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Code overview in Polarion

Code overview in Polarion

Polarion project plan

Polarion project plan

aqua workflows

aqua workflows

Pricing and Scaling

Polarion ALM does not disclose their pricing. The general market rate for an Enterprise-focused tool like that would be several thousand euros per 12-month license per user. A permanent license could very well be pushing ā‚¬10,000, especially when you factor in maintenance and support costs.

What we can compare here is pricing of aqua and Polarion X, which seems to be a modernised reskin of Polarion ALM. The Base plan starts at $36/month (before VAT), but this tier is largely here to lower the perceived entry cost. Going over 20 users mandates switch to Pro at $98/month, and 100+ users is $135/month (before VAT).

Even teams with under 20 users may ultimately have to splurge cash for Polarion X Pro. The Base plan is limited to 500 documents and 25,000 work items, and reaching that is just a matter of time for any ongoing project. All plans are also billed annually, which is a bit counterintuitive for a truly small-scale endeavour.

By contrast, aqua costs ā‚¬89/month per user no matter the size of your team. There is also room to add high-volume, Enterprise-grade features at a reasonable extra fee. One paid aqua license also gives you unlimited free Basic licenses, which can be used not just for browsing but for test runs as well.

Plan
Polarion*
aqua
Yes ( $36/user (Base) )
Yes ( ā‚¬89/user )
Yes ( $98/user (Pro) )
Yes ( ā‚¬89/user )
Yes ( $135/user (Enterprise) )
Yes ( ā‚¬89/user )
Yes ( 1ā€“5 per paid license )
Yes ( Unlimited )
Yes ( Annual )
Yes ( Monthly )
Yes ( Pro and Enterprise only )
Yes ( All customers )

*Polarion pricing doesnā€™t include VAT

Conclusion

Polarion and aqua are evenly matched when it comes to their feature suite. The only major distinction is aquaā€™s approach to automation with much more native integrations. You will likely not need to build any integrations yourself via API, and thatā€™s just not the case for Polarion. Thereā€™s generally more complexity and at times redundancy when it comes to setting up Polarion, onboarding employees, and maintaining the workspace.

What makes a huge difference is cost, where Polarion quickly ramps up to at least triple the aqua price. Make no mistake: any company with 20+ people will be paying extra, and smaller established teams will eventually bump against other limits as well. This becomes poor value real quick.

On the other hand, aqua has the same price of ā‚¬89/month. You can scale up and down when needed without artificial limits with monthly billing. The free Basic licenses also spare you the expense of paying for seldom users that do not create new test cases or requirements (they can still report bugs). aqua may already be a better deal for companies below 20 users, and it certainly is above that.

Enterprise-grade ALM at a sensible price

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FAQ
What is Polarion testing software used for?

Polarion is a software testing tool used for requirements management, testing, and collaboration in software development projects.

What are the differences between aqua and polarion?

When it comes to their feature suite, Polarion and Aqua are comparable. However, aqua stands out due to its automation approach with a greater number of native integrations. You probably won’t have to create any API-based integrations yourself with aqua, but that is not the case with Polarion. Setting up Polarion, onboarding employees, and managing the workspace can be more complex and redundant compared to aqua.

What are the benefits of the aqua testing tool?

aqua is an AI-powered tool for QA management with focus on saving time for testers, developers and their managers. aqua is used for central configuration of different manual and automated tools. It collects its test schedules, progress & results in one place automatically so that testers save time for other more complex tasks. aqua AI assistant helps testers to automatically create test cases out of requirements which drastically speeds up testing.

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