Alfresco vs IBM FileNet vs Nuxeo comparison

Hyland and IBM are both solutions in the Enterprise Content Management category. Hyland is ranked #9 with an average rating of 6.3, while IBM is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. Hyland holds a 7.7% mindshare in ECM, compared to IBM’s 10.0% mindshare. Additionally, 78% of Hyland users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Alfresco

Read 14 Alfresco reviews

2,040 Views
1,288 Comparison Views

78% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

Read 102 IBM FileNet reviews

3,352 Views
1,921 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Nuxeo

Read 2 Nuxeo reviews

347 Views
251 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Alfresco

IBM FileNet

Nuxeo

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Alfresco, IBM FileNet, and Nuxeo based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Enterprise Content Management Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 859,545 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 7.7%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FileNet is 10.0%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nuxeo is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Content Management

Featured Reviews

Karthi Keyan

Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Streamlining document management with enhanced digitalization features needed

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…

Read full review

Emad Rizki

System integrator at Indépendant

Facilitates seamless integration for large enterprises with strong deployment capabilities

FileNet was scalable and could be implemented into big multinational organizations. However, it has become very expensive recently. Compared to low-code solutions such as Appian and outsystems, FileNet has gaps, mainly because it requires coding, which is not preferred by clients due to pricing concerns in Pakistan. We transitioned clients to cloud solutions, although FileNet has been strongly integrated with on-prem deployments.

Read full review

reviewer2650419

Customer Success Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Powerful data model building enables comprehensive document management for government sectors

The learning curve in Nuxeo is not easy, and it requires additional time. It's challenging to onboard new users or new developers. The resources on Hyland are good but lack exercises and use cases to apply by oneself during learning. There is not much practice to apply that knowledge directly on Nuxeo and get further details into the platform.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."

"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."

"Document repository."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."

"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 digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."

"I like the ease of use, sections, and calendar."

"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."

More Alfresco pros

"The most valuable features of FileNet are its comprehensive ability to store content, to get insights from the content, and to use that content for making decisions routed through workflow."

"It is really usable. There is a lot of support for it. You have the online components to trawl through the storage. I have a lot of fun with it."

"In terms of stability, we haven't experienced any big technical issues or downtime with IBM FileNet, which is a difference compared to smaller products."

"It allows for multiple people to access content simultaneously."

"The application, in terms of durability, has been able to withstand the usage, given that it was installed in 2003 and it's still working."

"The API's extensibility and new user interface are its most valuable features."

"The important features to me are that it is stable, scalable, and the integration between this platform and the other platforms is very good."

"It also helps with compliance and governance issues because it's a datastore that is not modifiable, and you can guarantee that. You cannot guarantee that with a folder-based file structure, where multiple people have access."

More IBM FileNet pros

"Nuxeo is very powerful in terms of building up the data model and the context model."

Cons

"If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children."

"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."

"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."

"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."

"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."

"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."

"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."

"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."

More Alfresco cons

"The FileNet API seems like it is very difficult and not transparent."

"To start with there are too many add-ons, which makes it hard for us. If they simplified the add-ons and plugins to be added to our existing systems, it would definitely help us in the future."

"We do have some individuals that do need to come up to speed on it technically, and the only onsite training for Case Manager is in Europe, there is not a lot of US-based training. So they have to do all their training online rather than being able to go and have a good bootcamp-style training somewhere nearby."

"The API provided by IBM FileNet is a very out-of-date implementation. From the beginning, we cannot use a REST API; we have to use the IBM FileNet native API, which is quite outdated."

"Currently, our primary ERP system is SAP S/4HANA. Despite this, we have encountered difficulties integrating the solution with it, which remains an unresolved challenge for our team."

"IBM has a lot of documentation but the kind of information in a lot of the documents can be confusing to our clients. It would be easier if they used video tutorials. Right now, the information is too hard to understand, and there is a lot of it. If they used videos I think FinalNet would be easy to use for an end-user."

"I think it's to the point where there are probably too many features. Every software, as it matures and graduates, grows the list of features. What many of our customers express is that it's just too complicated. They're using maybe five or ten percent of the features but they're having to pay for 100 percent. There is room for improvement in terms of simplifying it."

"I think the support could be better, and it could improve."

More IBM FileNet cons

"The learning curve in Nuxeo is not easy, and it requires additional time. It's challenging to onboard new users or new developers."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."

"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."

"The license for Alfresco is expensive - not the maximum, but close. There are also extra costs once you start building integrations, as implementation seems to be very costly."

"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."

"The platform is inexpensive."

"For small scale industries, they allow different options. They can do open source. It is the complexity of the data security that they should think about before they choose."

"Talking about the cost is difficult because IBM has offers that combine different products, and each of these offers has different types of licensing. IBM also has a policy that the actual price for a given customer may be very different from the stated book price. It's hard to say whether it's expensive or not."

"My customers have seen ROI. There have been productivity gains, time savings gains, and things that they have been doing much more efficiently in a more modern way than they were before."

"The cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance."

"1. It will be more expensive than estimated to setup. 2. You will need to double the staff while you are running the old system and installing the new system. 3. Depending on the number of documents to be migrated, make sure you understand the potentially massive amount of time and effort required to migrate the existing content to the new platform."

"Yearly, we pay for the maintenance, which is $20,000."

"There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need."

More IBM FileNet pricing and cost advice

Information not available

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

859,545 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?

The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects. There is often a transition fr...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Alfresco?

Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the y...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Alfresco?

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

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM FileNet?

The product is robust and can process a lot of documents for enterprise content management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?

From the company's perspective, the licensing cost for IBM FileNet is still affordable. Though the license cost is so...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?

The API provided by IBM FileNet is a very out-of-date implementation. From the beginning, we cannot use a REST API; w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nuxeo?

The learning curve in Nuxeo is not easy, and it requires additional time. It's challenging to onboard new users or ne...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nuxeo?

We are mainly using Nuxeo for the government sector, and we are providing document management for those government se...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Nuxeo?

The overall rating for Nuxeo is eight out of ten. My advice would be to consider sector and customer requirements car...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs Alfresco

Compared 20% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs Alfresco

Compared 17% of the time

SharePoint vs Alfresco

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs Alfresco

Compared 9% of the time

DocuWare vs Alfresco

Compared 6% of the time

More Alfresco Competitors

SharePoint vs IBM FileNet

Compared 16% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 16% of the time

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 15% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet

Compared 8% of the time

Mobius Content Services Platform vs IBM FileNet

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

Hyland OnBase vs Nuxeo

Compared 14% of the time

SharePoint vs Nuxeo

Compared 12% of the time

OpenText Content Manager vs Nuxeo

Compared 9% of the time

More Nuxeo Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alfresco

June 2025

Download Alfresco product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

June 2025

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

June 2025

Download Nuxeo product report

Overview

The Alfresco Digital Business Platform offers open, secure content services to let you unlock the value from your most important business information. Give users access to their content wherever and however they work with Alfresco’s open, flexible, and highly scalable cloud-native content services platform. Easily integrate and connect with everyday business applications. Find, view, collaborate on, govern, and securely share digital content—and get information to the right person at the right time.

Hyland

IBM FileNet is a leading IBM enterprise content management product family. IBM FileNet is one of the ECM solutions that can change the way a company does business by enabling users to capture, activate, socialize, analyze, and govern content throughout its lifecycle.

There are many IBM FileNet products available, all of which are integrated and based on the FileNet P8 Platform.

IBM

Nuxeo, now part of Hyland, makes it easy to build smart content applications that enhance customer experiences, improve decision making, and accelerate products to market. Common use cases for the Nuxeo Platform include digital asset management (DAM), enterprise content management (ECM), product asset management (PAM), document management, case management, and knowledge management. The Nuxeo Platform has been architected to take full advantage of the cloud and uses a modular architecture to deliver elastic scalability and performance. The platform provides critical content management capabilities with advanced functionality in search, collaboration, workflow, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), renditions, a configurable user interface, and the industry's most advanced metadata modeling. Leading organizations use Nuxeo to modernize their information management systems or accelerate ideas to market by connecting data and digital assets.

Hyland

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.

Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.

Electronic Arts, Jeppesen, U.S. Navy, Orange, GSD&M, Sirona Dental, Skyscanner, Verizon, Unizin, Enernoc, NHS

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

June 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

859,545 professionals have used our research since 2012.