No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Alfresco vs Box comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Alfresco delivers significant ROI with cost savings, efficiency, reduced IT support, automation, and centralized document management benefits.
Sentiment score
6.0
Box increases ROI by reducing turnaround times, supporting compliance, and enhancing file management efficiency for significant returns.
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.
Head of development at Flash
Alfresco provides a significant return on investment by efficiently managing documents.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
By having all documentation centralized, errors such as using a contract where the incorrect version was taken have been reduced.
Gerente De Proyectos at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Alfresco customer support is generally positive but mixed, with prompt responses and some challenges due to complex workflows.
Sentiment score
5.0
Box's customer service is helpful and efficient but can face delays and repetitive inquiries; cost varies by support package.
I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
I rate Alfresco's customer support as quick and effective.
Gerente De Proyectos at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.5
Alfresco efficiently scales with growth, excelling in clustering and customization, though complex setups are required for high document counts.
Sentiment score
7.4
Box provides scalable performance for various user counts and data sizes, with potential improvements in admin reporting for enterprises.
Implementations needing to handle millions of documents may involve complex cluster setups requiring expert assistance.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
It adapts well to the growth of my organization, and as more departments are added, you only need to buy additional licenses, and they join the process efficiently.
Gerente De Proyectos at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
However, if you are looking to expand into areas with more images and videos, the scalability is somewhat limited without a developer and customization.
Agile Product Owner - CMS at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
I am uncertain about its effectiveness at an enterprise level, where SharePoint might be preferred.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Alfresco is stable and reliable with few issues, though proper scaling and expertise are essential for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Box is highly rated for stability, with minor performance issues rare and seamless connectivity, even during sleep mode.
Alfresco is definitely a stable and scalable solution.
Head of development at Flash
The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco is generally a very stable and high-performance platform.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Box was very stable and did not have any latency issues.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Alfresco requires UI refinement, enhanced security, better tools, documentation, modern database support, and smoother integration with other systems.
Box users seek better control, improved integrations, and features like document indexing, enhanced UI, and efficient performance.
It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
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.
Manager, Major Accounts at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
If Box had an AI feature to summarize and identify documents based on their contents, it would significantly enhance usability.
Lead Ai Tech And Tech Automation Engineer at a individual & family service with 11-50 employees
To open and see who is accessing the document now and see my movements across the document or the file we are sharing together.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
Collaborative editing was challenging if multiple people were in a document at once.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Alfresco has competitive pricing for large enterprises, focusing on pay-per-use with potential costs for upgrades and integrations.
Box's pricing is viewed variably, offering competitive value for some, though others find it steep, especially with security features.
Since we obtained Alfresco through AWS Marketplace, we are billed for what we use.
Head of development at Flash
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
My experience with the price, implementation cost, and platform licenses has been that it has been a fair price.
Gerente De Proyectos at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
I found the pricing reasonable because when I was working for an IBM partner, Box was free for us.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
 

Valuable Features

Alfresco offers robust document management, integration, customization, collaboration, and user-friendly features, meeting diverse organizational needs efficiently.
Box offers secure collaboration, seamless integrations, user-friendly interface, and robust features for compliance, enhancing personal and professional experiences.
This makes the record independent of the document, which is beneficial as documents often change, and it helps avoid continual updates to the registry.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
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.
Head of development at Flash
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.
Agile Product Owner - CMS at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Box had a very easy-to-use search feature and a good user interface on its website, which was faster and better than SharePoint.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I find the synchronization feature most valuable in Box. When I use multiple devices, it syncs them together and gives excellent results.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
The best features of Box for me include the structured file organizing, which is the most important part I found.
Lead Ai Tech And Tech Automation Engineer at a individual & family service with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Ranking in Document Management Software
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Box
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
10th
Ranking in Document Management Software
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (10th), Digital Asset Management (5th), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 6.6%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Box is 3.8%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alfresco6.6%
Box3.8%
Other89.6%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2845779 - PeerSpot reviewer
Gerente De Proyectos at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Centralized document control has improved audits and daily workflows with accurate versions
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.
Chirag Morajkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Ai Tech And Tech Automation Engineer at a individual & family service with 11-50 employees
Structured cloud storage has streamlined document collaboration and automated workflows
The biggest friction point I have encountered with Box is mainly the pricing part; I think five dollars for this platform is not necessarily justified. While I have used it for integrating and using it as a cloud platform, I have not encountered any significant negative aspects. A few times, I might have faced performance issues, but I am uncertain whether that was due to the automation platform or Box itself. Overall, the only thing I could mention is that it can take a little time to understand how the integration works with Box; setup and figuring out what can and cannot be done might take some time, but other than that, I do not think anything else bothered me. One thing I would want Box to introduce to improve the platform and make it stand out even more would be incorporating AI. For example, the only way to identify documents shared in Box currently is by their names, and if those names are not precise, I can get confused. If Box had an AI feature to summarize and identify documents based on their contents, it would significantly enhance usability. AI is essential for making work easier, so that would be an excellent addition to the platform.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
904,928 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
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...
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
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 f...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
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 docu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Box?
I found the pricing reasonable because when I was working for an IBM partner, Box was free for us. We did not go to payment and other matters like this.
What needs improvement with Box?
The biggest friction point I have encountered with Box is mainly the pricing part; I think five dollars for this platform is not necessarily justified. While I have used it for integrating and usin...
What is your primary use case for Box?
My main use case for Box is storing cloud content on its cloud and managing it as a collaborating platform so that I can store secure files and share through Box. I use it for document management a...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfresco vs. Box and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,928 professionals have used our research since 2012.