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Alfresco vs Kiteworks 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (1st)
Kiteworks
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (26th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (8th), Content Collaboration Platforms (14th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 6.4%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kiteworks is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alfresco6.4%
Kiteworks1.4%
Other92.2%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jaspreet k - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
Streamlined compliance workflows have reduced manual document handling and improved governance
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.
KT
Associate Consultant at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Streamlined global file sharing with user-friendly interface and self-service capabilities
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifications, they can understand any disruptions are due to issues with their network or bandwidth rather than the site or Kiteworks. Additionally, I work from offshore India, and I told my client manager to communicate with the Kiteworks forum salesman regarding one feature. I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Alfresco is the only enterprise CMS that has features like contribution, sharing, workflows, automation and robust content and record management, that are also Open Source."
"Alfresco is a very good product that has very good inbuilt features, and at the same time, it is customizable and we can customize this product the way we want."
"The ROI from Alfresco is highly profitable for the company, helping us accelerate operational excellence and decrease compliance risk while increasing compliance mitigation, saving at least seventy to eighty percent in time and forty to forty-five percent in manual labor, cutting processing time by ninety percent, reducing physical storage costs by eighty percent, and protecting us from massive financial penalties associated with compliance failures totaling approximately two million dollars."
"Alfresco positively impacted my organization by enabling the ability to store hundreds of thousands of documents, helping my team save time and reduce errors, enabling 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."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"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."
"The features which are most valuable to us are rapid deployment, ease of installation, ease of use, and Linux platform support."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to send a large file of 30 GB in size and more. In Outlook and other email applications, you cannot send files that are larger than 20 MB. But with Kiteworks, 30 GB is transferable by default and, with the proper approval, a file of up to 100 GB can be sent. It makes file transfer very easy and smooth."
"As a file-sharing application, it's an absolute 10 out of 10."
"The top two features are the two-factor authentication, which is pretty good. It's easily understood by the users. And their API is rather robust. We have numerous integrations that work off the API."
"Scalability is impressive."
"I like Kiteworks or Accellion because it's continuously upgraded. I also know that it probably works with a lot of clients."
"We could see whether the customer with whom we shared a file had downloaded it, which was not available with GitHub."
"I can identify from which region our users are uploading or downloading files."
"The solution can be used remotely, including from mobiles, and it's easy to upload and share files."
 

Cons

"Technical Support: Average, this might be because I am quite experienced and the questions I have might be difficult to find an answer to quickly as I have probably already exhausted most solution possibilities before I contact support."
"Some of the user interface could be more intuitive, such as the new record category, where the expression is a term and not really a dynamically evaluated expression as it might imply."
"There is need to improve features such as the record management and case management in the product."
"We did encounter some stability issues when there were many simultaneous requests on the server."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality. Currently, for document capture functionality (ocr, read document metadata automatically, automatic document classification), Alfresco needs to be integrated with document capture such as: Kofax, Ephesoft, etc., while other Alfresco competitors already make document capture functionality as their default functionality."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"There is one particular thing that is a nuisance."
"We have experienced some issues with stability due to bugs."
"It would be nice if Kiteworks could provide a free version of the platform so that it could be used for a certain number of file transfers. We could be charged a fee if we exceeded the number of allotted file transfers."
"In my experience, their technical support can be a little slow."
"File location could be improved."
"We have experienced a few hiccups and bugs when using the admin console and from a user perspective."
"I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful."
"Kiteworks could benefit from enhancing the proposal knowledge base section, specifically regarding the type of work involved. Currently, the knowledge base seems insufficiently dedicated to this topic, making it challenging for new users to access the relevant administrative law. Improving the visual aids and providing clearer explanations could alleviate this issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"They changed it midstream. We were being charged a certain flat rate for SFTP traffic. For whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, our pricing changed, and we are now being charged more for using a feature of the product than we were when we first bought it. That has been our experience with billing. It turned out to be more expensive than when we started with it."
"The solution is very expensive because we are buying with Malaysian Ringgit and it's sold in US dollars."
"The price of Kiteworks is reasonable."
"I believe it's a little costly, but given the faith that we put into it from a security perspective to maintain the integrity of our patient information that is being transferred through this system, that's a small price to pay. So, on the surface, it might look like a lot of money, but depending on the need for security, which is where we feel it shines, it's okay price-wise."
"The license management is changing and confusing. If I could make one change to it, it would be better license management through the API."
"It is not really expensive. I mean, to me it's obviously expensive, but it's worth it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that Alfresco is very cheap and cost-effective.
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 Kiteworks?
Kiteworks is a secured file sharing platform that enables users to collaborate with different parties across a robust offering of secured protected channels. Users have the option of virtual privat...
What needs improvement with Kiteworks?
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifi...
What advice do you have for others considering Kiteworks?
Scalability is impressive. It can be highly available, resilient, and scalable infrastructure. I can confidently give it a nine. It suits any level of organization, whether a small setup with two a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Accellion
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
United States Securities and Exchange Commission, National Health Service, Husch Blackwell LLP, NYC Health + Hospitals, Viatris, MITRE Corporation, Chubb, Kraft Heinz, KPMG, Kohler, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Purdue Pharma, AVL
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfresco vs. Kiteworks and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.