When DOORS is still the right answer
Worth saying plainly, because the honest version is more useful to you than a sales pitch, and because if you are in one of these cases you will find out the expensive way anyway:
- You have a customer mandate. Primes in defence and large space programmes routinely name the tool in the contract. If your statement of work says DOORS, that argument is over.
- You have deep DXL investment. Years of custom DXL automation is real engineering, and it does not port. Reqlio has no equivalent scripting layer.
- You need on-premise or air-gapped. Reqlio is hosted. Self-hosting is an Enterprise conversation, not a checkbox.
- You already run the full IBM ELM suite — DOORS Next, ETM and EWM wired together — and requirements are only one part of a toolchain that works.
If none of those apply, the rest of this page is the comparison you came for.
The comparison
Every claim in the IBM column is sourced; the references are at the bottom of the page. Checked September 2026 — IBM changes its packaging, so check the date before you rely on it.
| IBM DOORS / DOORS Next | Reqlio | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a price | IBM's product page publishes no price — the call to action is "Book live demo"¹. Third-party listings put DOORS Next SaaS at around $164 per user per month² | On the pricing page. €59 and €99 per editor per month, billed annually |
| Do reviewers cost money? | Yes. Read-only access to requirements needs a Contributor client access licence. A user with no licence has read-only access to the Change Management capability only³ | No. Reviewers, approvers, viewers and supplier guests are free. Only editors are seats — sign-off is not one |
| Deployment | DOORS Classic is a Windows desktop client with DOORS Web Access alongside it; DOORS Next is browser-based on the Jazz platform, on-premises or SaaS² | Browser. One PostgreSQL database per customer |
| Verification and test | A separate product. Test management is IBM Engineering Test Management, linked to DOORS over OSLC⁴ | In the base product. Four methods, campaigns, runs, coverage matrix, live V-model status |
| Risk register and FMEA | Not part of DOORS or DOORS Next | In the base product. 5×5 exposure matrix, AIAG-VDA FMEA worksheets that escalate into the register |
| AI assistance | IBM markets AI quality scoring and a conversational query interface on the DOORS product page¹ — inside the same enterprise negotiation as everything else | Every plan, at the published price. Quality review, decomposition, link suggestions, risk identification, terminology extraction |
| Data residency | Depends entirely on which deployment you buy | Frankfurt, Germany. creoline GmbH (ISO/IEC 27001:2022, TÜV SÜD) in firstcolo FRA4. Does not leave the EU by default |
| Getting your data out | ReqIF, supported since DOORS 9.4⁵ | ReqIF, XLSX and CSV on every plan, at any time — including after cancellation |
The licence line is the one that decides most of these. On a team of eight where three people write requirements and five review them, DOORS bills you for eight — read-only access to requirements is a Contributor licence³. Reqlio bills you for three. That ratio gets worse as the review board grows, which is exactly backwards from how you want a tool to scale.
You do not have to give up the parts auditors care about
The usual reason a team stays on an expensive tool is the fear that the cheap one is a requirements list with a nice UI — fine until the first design review, when someone asks to see coverage. Reqlio is built around the same concepts DOORS trained everyone to expect:
- Specification trees, sections and stable identifiers per requirement, with full history behind every change.
- Traceability up and down the V — derivation matrix, trace explorer, and health checks that find the orphans before a reviewer does.
- Four verification methods — test, analysis, inspection, review of design — with activities, campaigns, runs and a coverage matrix.
- Baselines and gates, with drift against the active baseline visible rather than discovered.
- Formal reviews with rounds, reviewer-versus-approver roles, and verdicts anchored to the version that was actually reviewed.
- ReqIF, XLSX and CSV interchange, in both directions.
How you actually move
The migration question is the one that kills most tool changes, so: the path is ReqIF, which DOORS has exported since version 9.4⁵ and Reqlio imports. Identity is carried on ReqIF.ForeignID, so a re-import updates the requirements it already knows instead of duplicating them — the same mechanism that makes a supplier round trip work.
What that means in practice. You can import a module, work in Reqlio, export ReqIF and hand it back — so the first project does not have to be a one-way door. Run one real specification through the round trip before you commit anything that matters.
What comes across
- The requirements, keyed on ReqIF.ForeignID, which becomes the requirement ID here. That is the identity a later re-import matches on, so a round trip updates rather than duplicates.
- The structure. The specification hierarchy becomes sections, and heading objects (ReqIF.ChapterName) become the section names; parent/child nesting is preserved.
- Links. Spec relations come across as requirement links.
- Attributes you map. The import runs in two phases — a preview that parses the file and shows exactly what it would do, and an apply. You correct the attribute mapping in between, so nothing is written on a guess.
- Attributes you don't map are kept as text on the requirement rather than dropped, so an attribute nobody thought about is recoverable instead of gone.
What does not
- Attachments in a .reqifz bundle. The archive is opened and the ReqIF XML inside it is imported; the attached files are not stored. Anything that matters as evidence has to come over separately.
- Spec objects no specification references. They are skipped — and counted in a warning, so you find out rather than wonder.
- The other specifications in the file. One import targets one specification. The rest are reported, not silently merged.
- Anything your source tool computes in a view rather than stores as an attribute. A computed column is a view, not data, and there is nothing for ReqIF to carry — check your export definition before assuming a column travels.
None of which replaces doing it once with your own data. Import a real specification, look at the preview before you apply it, then export it back out and diff.
Questions people ask before switching
Is this a real requirements tool or a list with a nice UI?
The test is whether it survives a design review. Specification trees, four verification methods, baselines, RTMs and formal reviews are all in the base product — the same concepts auditors already expect, without the configuration project.
What counts as an editor?
Anyone who creates or edits requirements, specs, activities, risks, FMEA rows or budgets, logs test runs, runs AI actions, or manages baselines and reviews. Reviewers — people who read, comment, vote and approve or request changes — are free, as are viewers and supplier portal guests. Sign-off is not a seat.
Can we get our data out again?
Always. ReqIF, XLSX and CSV export are available on every plan, at any time — including after cancellation, when you keep read-only access to your data for twelve months. On Enterprise, source-code escrow is available.
Where is our data, and what does the AI see?
Hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, by creoline GmbH (ISO/IEC 27001:2022, TÜV SÜD) in firstcolo's FRA4 data centre, with one PostgreSQL database per customer. Data does not leave the EU by default. No model is trained on your data. On Business you can bring your own EU model endpoint, so requirement text reaches no third-party provider at all.
Who is behind Reqlio?
One engineer — German, based in the Netherlands, with a background in the aerospace industry. The verification campaigns, gates and budgets exist because they were missed on real programmes, not imagined in a product workshop. That is also why there is a written continuity statement instead of a sales deck: exports always on, read-only access after cancellation, escrow on Enterprise.
Sources
Every claim above about IBM products, with where it came from. Checked 18 September 2026.
- IBM, IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next — product page: no published price, "Book live demo" call to action, AI quality scoring and conversational query interface.
- G2, DOORS Next pricing — third-party listing, Professional SaaS from $164 per user per month. Not an IBM price list.
- IBM Documentation, Client access license management — Contributor grants read-only requirements management; a user with no client access licence has read-only access to Change Management only.
- IBM Documentation, Engineering Lifecycle Management — ETM, DOORS Next and EWM are separate products on a shared Jazz Team Server; DOORS↔ETM integration is over OSLC.
- IBM Documentation, Exchanging requirements with other databases — ReqIF support introduced in DOORS 9.4.
IBM, DOORS and DOORS Next are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Reqlio is not affiliated with or endorsed by IBM. Comparisons reflect publicly documented information on the date shown; check the sources before relying on them for a purchasing decision.
Try it against a real specification
Thirty days, every module and the AI included, no card. Import one DOORS module over ReqIF and see whether it holds up.