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Alfresco vs M-Files vs Microsoft OneDrive for Business comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alfresco8.8%
SharePoint15.0%
OpenText Documentum Content Management10.2%
Other66.0%
Enterprise Content Management
Document Management Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
M-Files7.8%
Alfresco15.9%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management11.1%
Other65.2%
Document Management Software
Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft OneDrive for Business9.1%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise10.1%
Google Workspace9.8%
Other71.0%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Karthi Keyan - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
LN
Good workflows, and it is easy to use with a dashboard that improves contract visibility
My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is to do a pilot first. After you do your research, do an actual pilot before you commit because everyone has nuances and you might find out that it is not what you want, or that it doesn't really do what you think it's going to do. It is not the simplest product to use but because of the robustness of its feature set in the ability with the workflows, and the APIs, to do just about anything you can imagine with it, that's very valuable. I wish it was a little easier to use because we have to spend more time than I'd like with new users, teaching them how it works. We try to hide all that from them but the setup time to get everything the way we wanted was probably two months. That is two months in one resource working on it half time a week, but it just took a lot of work to get the metadata set up, to get the workflows set up, and to get all the documents added to the repository. Now we've got versioning and we know where everything's at, the dashboard is great, but don't assume when they tell you that you'll be up and running in two weeks, that that is the truth. It takes much longer than you think. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Richard Griggs - PeerSpot reviewer
Long-term data security and automatic saving features improve efficiency with smooth setup and deployment processes
Some of the best features of Microsoft OneDrive for Business are the ability to ensure automatic saving. I've been in IT for over thirty years and have seen plenty of times when people forgot to hit file save and lost data, and having this automatically saved constantly is a very nice feature set. The synchronization capabilities of Microsoft OneDrive for Business certainly support my work as it is handy if you're concerned about people writing data on their local PCs and the laptops getting stolen or crashing, to have it sync everything up to your Microsoft OneDrive for Business account so that you're not having to worry about backing up locally. You try to make sure that people are putting things in the right folder to ensure they'll get backed up. Before using Microsoft OneDrive for Business, we were actually storing things locally and had shared folders or home folders out on the network. They made the change to Microsoft OneDrive for Business because they wanted to put it out in the cloud and get better performance, automatic backups, and all the rest of it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."
"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."
"Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional."
"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."
"The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."
"Alfresco allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive."
"Document repository."
"Using M-Files means anybody on the executive team to go in and immediately look at a dashboard and know the status of a contract."
"The best features of Microsoft OneDrive for Business are its continuous improvement in terms of cloud capabilities, security features, and user experience as it's enhancing every day compared to the past."
"One of the good features is that the users are not even aware that they're using it."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the amount of space allotted to each user that is issued a subscription."
"I recommend Microsoft OneDrive to others because everyone in my office uses it, the Microsoft products are in my environment, we use Microsoft, and all my customers use Microsoft, many people use Microsoft, and it is a universal tool, which is what other options may lack."
"It is simple to use and it allows me to give me the opportunity to access anything I want from any device."
"It is good as a central hub for the storage of documents and sharing among team members."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that Microsoft OneDrive works with any Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office app. You can edit a document on the cloud, share documents with your colleagues, and monitor changes. You can access your work almost anywhere. You can also sync Microsoft OneDrive with your workstation so that whatever you are working on gets automatically backed up to the cloud at regular intervals. So even if your system crashes, you still have a copy of your documents in the cloud, which I found very useful."
"We use Microsoft OneDrive for file sharing without the need for additional hardware (such as flash drives or external hard drives)."
 

Cons

"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"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 think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"The integration with other products needs to be improved."
"Technical support is not very impressive and is typical of large company software support."
"The scalability has room for improvement."
"Performance is an issue when sharing a large number of files in a single folder."
"The solution has sub-folders, which are visible to various team members. If you want to ensure the information is private, you would need to have a certain level of seniority in the office."
"The security is not as flexible as it is with Dropbox, which means that we can't share our OneDrive files."
"There are not enough ways to assign permissions to shared folders and files."
"The area that can be improved is to be able to share easily with folks outside the organization and with folks who don't have an office account. Sometimes, when you send a link, you might have some form of repetition. If you don't know how to share it properly, whoever you are sharing it with will have issues using it. Also, the link that you use to share a document can be made a bit shorter. It doesn't have to be long. Typically, when you want to share a document, it has everything, such as the name of the organization, SharePoint, etc. A short URL will be easier to use, and it will just make life easier, especially because a lot of people are now going mobile. I'm not sure if there's a mobile version of Microsoft OneDrive, similar to Google Drive. If they don't have a mobile app, it would also be nice to have a mobile app because that would help in checking out your documents. It would be easy to check your documents on the go on your phone."
"An increase in the capacity of storage in the free version would be nice."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"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."
"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
"Costwise, it is a great option. In most cases, it is a free space, which will be more than enough for most customers."
"We pay a lot for the Enterprise version, but it is a premium service."
"It is free if you are using Office 365, and you get a terabyte of storage with your account."
"This is a pricy solution, given that we are only using it at 50% capacity."
"OneDrive comes with Microsoft 365 so it is just an added part of that package."
"Using this software, it has had an amazing impact moneywise on our business. It allows us to share documents without the need of extra hardware."
"The price of Microsoft OneDrive is reasonable and compatible with competitors."
"The licensing is expensive and on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
 

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...
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the y...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
This is mainly for unstructured document management systems with workflow and data classification.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Microsoft OneDrive?
Regarding Microsoft OneDrive for Business's versioning control, sometimes there are syncing problems. Microsoft OneDr...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft OneDrive?
I have been working with Microsoft OneDrive for Business for three years; I started my job in that industry when I ca...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft OneDrive?
The pricing for Microsoft OneDrive for Business would be average. If we analyze deeper or require extra storage apart...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
MS OneDrive
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator
Chevron, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, DBS, Nestle, Lowe's, MGM Resorts, Textron, MGM Resorts
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.