Alfresco Reviews

My main use case for Alfresco is to centralize customer files, loan documentation, digital contracts, onboarding processes, internal approval workflows, and evidence for audits.

I consider the best features that Alfresco offers to be its handling of document versioning, legal retention, traceability, and granular permissions, which helps considerably for audits.

Traceability and granular permissions have greatly impacted my daily management. These aspects have improved efficiency and security in my organization. Security has been improved since with granular permissions we can give the proper access to collaborators. Those who need to read a document only have that permission, and we can also see who has permission to view a document and control who can edit and who can upload a document.

Alfresco has positively impacted my organization since everything is centralized, so you do not have to waste time wondering whether the information you need is on this server or that server. Everything is in one place and everyone has their own access.

I have noticed a change in team efficiency, response times, and error reduction thanks to the centralization of information. Time has improved, meaning time is not lost searching for documents. In addition, errors have been reduced, as you always have the correct version of the file. There is not one version here and another over there. You always have the updated version.

Alfresco is not a plug-and-play platform. It has a considerable implementation curve and demanding technical administration.

I have been using Alfresco for around two years.

Alfresco's stability has been excellent, as I have not had any availability issues or failures.

The scalability of the platform has been good. It adapts well to the growth of my organization, as when more departments are added, you just need to buy additional licenses and they join the process efficiently.

I rate Alfresco's customer support as quick and effective, as they respond quickly and with the solutions we are looking for in the cases we have had.

Before using Alfresco, I used an in-house platform, which I changed to have something more robust that would comply with regulations.

My experience with the price, implementation cost, and licenses for the platform is that the price has been fair, the implementation cost stayed within budget, and we consider the platform licenses to be fair.

My advice for others considering implementing Alfresco is they should take into account that the implementation curve is considerable. They must have a project team dedicated solely to that, not shared resources, so that the project turns out well.

I have seen a return on investment with Alfresco as errors due to outdated documents have been reduced, processes have been improved, and the process flow has also been improved.

By having all the documentation centralized, errors have been reduced, such as taking a contract, for example, where the wrong version was used—one that had already been checked by legal and an earlier one with errors was taken instead. With everything centralized, the correct version of the document is always used.

My experience with the price, implementation cost, and licenses for the platform is that the price has been fair, the implementation cost stayed within budget, and we consider the platform licenses to be fair.

I evaluated other options before choosing Alfresco, such as OpenText, IBM, and Microsoft.

Alfresco is deployed in a private cloud in my organization. The private cloud provider I use for Alfresco is Amazon Web Services (AWS). I did not acquire Alfresco through AWS Marketplace; it was done directly through them. I would rate this review a 9 out of 10.

Alfresco serves as our cloud-native enterprise content management system and Business Process Management platform. Alfresco is a highly customizable solution that integrates seamlessly with services such as Salesforce and Office 365. Its features, including architecture control, modular architecture, and robust record management, help us manage our data effectively. Alfresco functions as an excellent alternative to other shared drive services such as SharePoint or Google Drive. It provides a safe and secure place to keep our data, store files, share folders, and collaborate on basic documents. We use Alfresco to ensure that our data is safe and secure, and the files are easily findable when we are searching for something.

Alfresco offers many features that I value highly. The first is the open architecture that provides extensive REST API and support of open standards such as CMIS, allowing our development team to easily extend their capabilities.

The second valuable feature is the activity workflow engine, a powerful BPMN compliant workflow engine that automates complex and multi-step processes natively alongside the content.

Another favorite feature is smart document processing. Due to its built-in AI capabilities, Alfresco can automatically classify documents based on our business requirements and tagging. This directly helps us find those documents by tagging them and locating them more easily.

The smart document processing in Alfresco has helped us extract information via OCR and identify entities without requiring manual data entry, as it works on a metadata approach that is directly searched via OCR. The text is assigned as a token in the backend, and using the AI capabilities, Alfresco can automatically classify and read via OCR.

Alfresco also provides automated lifecycle management that helps us enforce legal holds, retention schedules, and secure disposition of records, keeping the files secure and ensuring that our organization remains compliant with legal requirements.

Alfresco is a great platform, and we have seen fantastic return on investment. I feel there are no major challenges that I have faced, but the learning curve can be overwhelming for newcomers. The learning curve can sometimes be a challenge for my team as they adapt to the platform. Apart from that, everything functions well.

I have been working in this field for more than twelve years. We have been using Alfresco for the last one and a half years in our organization.

Alfresco is a one hundred percent stable solution. We have not faced any stability issues, downtime, glitches, or challenges. Alfresco is definitely a stable and scalable solution.

I interacted with the customer support team approximately six months ago while configuring another system in our organization. The support team was very responsive and resolved my query within forty-five minutes, which was a good experience. I rate the customer support team a ten out of ten.

We did not switch from any other solution before implementing Alfresco.

Deploying Alfresco in our environment was not a challenge. We easily deployed it in all environments, including test, production, and pre-production deployments. The configuration process was straightforward. We configured it easily with the help of the Alfresco team, who assisted us in onboarding and completed the configuration within a day or two.

The ROI from Alfresco is highly profitable for the company. It has helped us accelerate operational excellence and decrease compliance risk while increasing compliance mitigation. By automating manual document routing and data entry, Alfresco has saved us at least seventy to eighty percent in time and forty to forty-five percent in manual labor. It has also helped cut the processing time by ninety percent. Centrally managing records has helped us automate legal retention policies and reduce physical storage costs by eighty percent, saving us in costs and protecting us from massive financial penalties associated with compliance failures. Alfresco has saved us approximately one million dollars regarding compliance data failure and another million around lost legal documentation. In summary, Alfresco has accelerated operational excellence, ensured compliance risk mitigation, assisted in manual document routing with data entry, reduced processing times, and helped in managing legal retention policies, all while reducing our physical storage costs and protecting against legal risks.

Pricing, setup costs, and licensing are interesting aspects of Alfresco for our organization. We do not rely solely on licensing as it is based on a billing model rather than just licensing. Since we obtained Alfresco through AWS Marketplace, we are billed for what we use. Alfresco provides a good solution, and we only pay for what we use rather than for what we procure fully. For example, other similar alternatives charge for a fixed number of users, so if I need only sixty users at a time but they have a plan for one hundred users, they charge for one hundred users. In contrast, Alfresco is very functional because they manage licensing typically on consumed users rather than on the total user value, which is something I value about it.

We evaluated other options before choosing Alfresco. We looked at M-Files and Laserfiche for similar metadata approaches, but we felt that Alfresco was the most suitable solution for our organization.

We purchased Alfresco from AWS Marketplace. The integrations are seamless with all AWS services. Regarding procurement, it was straightforward and easy, and we did not encounter any challenges during that process. Anyone looking for a great solution for data management and transmission, along with excellent features that ensure document security, legal compliance, and protection from document theft or legal challenges, should definitely choose Alfresco. I rate this solution a five out of five.

This is mainly for unstructured document management systems with workflow and data classification.

The overall extensive base APIs are available, and it is open for extension. This part is something I appreciate. You can have your own use cases and customizations. It is highly extensible, meaning you can do whatever you want. You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement. You don't need Alfresco to be there for your future enhancements, which is very advantageous.

After onboarding Alfresco, many applications got decommissioned and everything merged into Alfresco.

Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the years, their documentation has highly improved. Initially, we had challenges finding the extension points and understanding how to extend the system. The workflow was one of the hurdles we had. At that time, it was not that beautiful or feature-rich. Even today, workflow consists of basic workflows. If you want to extend, you have to implement your own customizations. They are using it extensively with features such as records management, CMIS, Share UI, and Web Scripts. All these features are being used extensively.

Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. If you don't have a proper policy of how documents should be maintained, issues can arise. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children. This was advised by Alfresco, but we did not have that advice, so we had challenges when everything was dumped into single folders. It slows down the systems and sometimes becomes unusable. Whoever is going to use it should have that governance system in place.

It has been in use for around 10 years now.

Deployment is now straightforward with WAR-based deployments. They have a straightforward one-file deployment system. If you have different components, they need to improve that part as sometimes requirements are not declared.

Initially, the clustering was not efficient as you could not start multiple servers together. Those issues have now been corrected. In the past, you had to restart or start servers one by one, as two nodes could not join the cluster at the same time.

Customer support is good because they are responsive. Sometimes it takes time to resolve issues, but the customer support team attends to concerns promptly.

Positive

Before choosing Alfresco, there were in-house document management systems. Many document management systems existed with every business unit having their own system.

Initially, there were challenges. After release 6.2, these things became much better. Before 6.2, we faced various issues. With the help of Alfresco Technical Account Manager, we could resolve many of the problems.

I give Alfresco a rating of 8 out of 10. If I expect resolution today, I sometimes don't get it until tomorrow. However, the overall experience is not bad.

I use Alfresco as a centralized repository of documents, managing all the proposals, materials, and all the information that we have about our solution software.

An example of how we use Alfresco as a centralized repository is that we have a repository where we include all the information about a customer, such as all the contract proposals, materials, drafts, and preparations. It is the place where we centralize all documents and all the team can work individually while centralizing everything in one place.

We use Alfresco from our laptops and mobile devices, which gives us so much flexibility to work with the solution.

Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by providing an easy way to work with the tool because we centralize all the documentation of our practice. This has a huge impact that is not very visible sometimes, but when you are using it without any issues, you feel that you can find any document very quickly, which reflects the higher impact.

The best features Alfresco offers in my experience include the intelligent search, because sometimes you need to find a document, and this solution provides a full-text search across different document types and formats, which is perhaps the most remarkable feature, along with version control. The solution tracks all the changes of the documents and prevents accidental overrides or other issues.

The intelligent search has made my work easier because you can just put a word. Perhaps you are thinking of finding something related to a client or a specific MSA agreement, and with one or two words, the intelligent search proposes all the documents that include this word, facilitating finding the information very easily and very quickly. This is the most important feature for us.

The areas where Alfresco can be improved include perhaps the interface, which is not very modern, as you can find other solutions with a more attractive design. The mobile app is quite old and could be modernized.

I have been using Alfresco for four or five years.

The performance in general is good, and regarding integrations, we have not integrated the solution.

The easy access to documents has affected my team's productivity by saving time, which is the most remarkable difference, along with the easy navigation, as it is totally intuitive and easy to navigate through Alfresco to find the information. We have classified all the documents in a folder structure, and with just two clicks, you can easily find the information you are looking for, making usability and quick response times the two main remarkable aspects.

Regarding Alfresco's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security are quite robust and working well. We never have issues, and they provide detailed audit trails, certifying who has accessed or downloaded a document.

To be honest, we are not utilizing Alfresco's AI capabilities very much. We use the application, and while they have implemented AI capabilities, they are quite transparent for us, as we are not conscious of the AI capabilities we are using, which may be something quite new and not utilized at all.

I need to check with my technical team regarding which cloud provider we use for our Alfresco deployment, but I mean, it is a commercial cloud and nothing particularly relevant. It is one of those servers that you can find, but I do not really know the name.

I would advise others looking into using Alfresco that it is a very good tool, easy to implement in a few weeks, covering the main features you expect from a content management solution. You can easily find the information, classify all documents, have really fast access, and enjoy a good user experience. It might not be the most advanced solution, but it covers the basics very well, which is why we are really happy with Alfresco.

Regarding our business relationship with this vendor, I think we are not a reseller, but we have implemented Alfresco in other clients. The specifics of the relationship might be managed from the US, so I do not have much information, but I know that we have worked with Alfresco in several projects with various clients.

I have no additional comments. We are happy with Alfresco, believing it to be a very good and competitive solution in price as a great content management solution. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Alfresco was working for a healthcare company in 2023 that was using Alfresco, where I helped them migrate all their documentation out of it into Contentful.

The documentation I was migrating included Word documents and PDF documents, all healthcare-related. I was in charge of the team that was to extract them and ensure that they did not get corrupted, while ensuring that everything naming-wise was detailed correctly for the metadata to be transferred into Contentful.

Alfresco had the ability to store a large volume of documents, which was excellent, although handling images, videos, and clips was somewhat more challenging. It proved to be a good data document CMS system.

The best features Alfresco offers in my experience include a strong document repository, the ability to conduct audits on the history of the documents, and having security and permissions around it, which I found very useful.

Alfresco positively impacted my organization by enabling the ability to store hundreds of thousands of documents. This capability helped my team save time and reduce errors. It enabled users to find exactly what documents they were looking for in a timely fashion, as well as to export to patients and healthcare members what they needed to do for Medicaid, Medicare, or any other secondary insurance, including the documents they needed to fill out as well as prescriptions.

Alfresco can be improved by having a more intuitive interface and greater ability to be customized without needing a developer, making it a more user-friendly out-of-the-box CMS.

There is always a learning curve for users, and more helpful documentation on how to find things for people who are not accustomed to working in a CMS platform would be beneficial.

I have been using Alfresco for about a year.

Alfresco is stable.

Regarding Alfresco's scalability, I think it is able to be scaled for specific industries. However, if you are looking to expand into areas with more images and videos, the scalability is somewhat limited without a developer and customization.

Before choosing Alfresco, they did evaluate other options. At that time, Alfresco had the most security and governance for regulated industries, which is why they chose it.

I have not seen a return on investment, as at the time it was not saving them money at Evernorth and Cigna, which is why they moved out of it.

I would give advice to others looking into using Alfresco that it is a strong document management system great for version control and security. However, sometimes finding content if you do not use the right metadata practices can be difficult, and user understanding of how to search is not quite as easy. More documentation and how-to guides would probably be more helpful, along with a bit more technical support.

My main use case for Alfresco is as a content management system at an enterprise level.

A specific example of how I use Alfresco as an enterprise level content management system is for sharing documents across business units, maintaining versions, audits, and access controls across various groups.

Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by improving the accessibility of documents across the enterprise, serving as a centralized location for all documents from every business unit.

Specific outcomes I have seen from this improvement include an increase in the digital workspace regarding accessing the right content at the right place with the right access, which is the key.

The best features that I appreciate about Alfresco include its search functionality, especially content search, where I can search for a specific word within a document, and the access control list at the folder level and at the document level.

The search functionality and access controls help me daily by allowing users to get to the content quicker because people do not remember the metadata.

Alfresco could be improved in terms of maintenance and could have a simpler architecture regarding search functionality. If I change the metadata, I have to perform re-indexing of all the content from scratch, which is cumbersome.

I have been using Alfresco for almost ten years.

My advice to others who are considering using Alfresco is that it is somewhat expensive and involves considerable maintenance, so I would investigate those two factors carefully. I would rate this product a seven out of ten.

Positive

My main use case for Alfresco was that I was a sales rep for Alfresco.

A specific example of how Alfresco was used by my customers is loan automation to take an onboarding for a bank loan and automate that process for the consumers.

In addition to that, I was involved with insurance claims processing as another typical use case I saw with Alfresco.

From what I have seen in those projects, the best features Alfresco offers include the ability to customize using APIs and using Alfresco as a headless repository.

Customers typically make use of Alfresco's APIs or the headless repository by building their own custom front end, either a web page or a Java application that would use APIs to talk to the repository.

Regarding features, the flexibility of the APIs is something that mainly stands out.

Alfresco has impacted my organization and my customers' organizations positively by enabling them to have a very flexible solution that could meet their requirements.

Specific outcomes that demonstrate how Alfresco helped those organizations include process improvement and being able to search and find documents within seconds versus manually having to hunt for them in other systems.

Alfresco can be improved as the roadmap went a little stagnant for the past few years, so there had not been any new development, and coming out with a new roadmap with new features and executing and delivering on those new features would be an improvement.

Additional needed improvements include the ability to use a NoSQL database versus relying on a relational database, which has capped performance at 50 million documents, so being able to leverage something such as MongoDB, a NoSQL database as part of the architecture would be a big improvement to enable high volume in the hundreds of millions of documents, and claims processing scenarios to be more efficient and performant.

I have been using Alfresco for 15 years.

Alfresco is deployed in my customers' organizations predominantly with about 70% of the customers being on-premise or 80% on-premise, about 20% cloud, and it was probably more 90% on-premise and 10% cloud, with the barrier being that if it is a federal government, FedRAMP compliance was not available at this point and that kept a lot of the heavy compliance government customers from being able to go cloud.

For those customers using cloud, they typically had to use AWS, as that was the only option. Some of those customers purchased Alfresco through the AWS Marketplace.

My advice to others looking into using Alfresco is that it depends on the use case; there is definitely a fit if you need high customization to meet a requirement, and it should be considered, but if you are looking for more out-of-the-box solutions, then there are other solutions that are a better fit. I would rate this product a 7.

We used Alfresco as a document management system for automating and digitizing manual forms. Those were the main use cases.

The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes has improved our organization.

The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata. The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant.

Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities.

I have been working with Alfresco for approximately four years.

The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down, deserving a rating of eight out of ten.

We encountered no issues with scalability. It scales well.

Customer support is responsive when we encounter issues, however, I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice.

Neutral

We switched to SharePoint because it was part of our existing license with Office 365, eliminating the need for a separate license fee.

The setup process for Alfresco was complex.

We required a consultant for implementation, which was another concern.

Pricing is considered mid-range, and there are considerations regarding the cost of licensing.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Alfresco six. There is certainly room for improvement. I can recommend the product to other users.

I use Alfresco primarily to look up documents. However, it is not as user-friendly as the previous solution, Nautilus, which I was more familiar with due to my involvement in its configuration and setup.

It is a basic solution where you store documents and perform searches. Alfresco allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive.

The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge. The index fields and their values are not intuitive, making it difficult to find documents. You often need a cross-reference document to navigate categories for specific items like check images.

I have been using Alfresco for probably two years.

We have had to contact Hyland for scheduling classes or recertifications. They were always very helpful and friendly.

Previously, we used Nautilus, which I found more robust. I was involved in the configuration and setup of Nautilus, which made it easier for me to use. I have no idea why our company switched to Alfresco.

Setting up and configuring Alfresco is moderately challenging. On a scale of one to ten, it is probably about a five. Training is necessary, but Hyland provides the training, guidelines, reference books, and setup manuals to help. With the right guidance, it is relatively easy to figure out the setup.

The product might seem less robust due to improper configuration, and proper training is essential for effective use.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.