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

Box vs M-Files 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Box
Ranking in Document Management Software
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (10th), Cloud Storage (10th), Digital Asset Management (4th), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th)
M-Files
Ranking in Document Management Software
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Document Management Software category, the mindshare of Box is 5.4%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of M-Files is 3.7%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Document Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Box5.4%
M-Files3.7%
Other90.9%
Document Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
LN
Director of IT at JH Kelly
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The collaboration of the solution is good."
"Most amazingly its integration with Office 365 (online) is one of the best features it has other than integrating with other apps like Salesforce, etc."
"Customer service is top notch with having a dedicated customer success manager assigned to the account."
"The system's performance is impressive, and file sharing is notably straightforward."
"It is a very user-friendly product."
"We use Box for collaboration with files or folders, and our use is mostly for collaboration, especially on the documentation."
"The ability to collaborate around data anywhere, anytime is the most powerful features of Box."
"Some units have migrated their content and processes from on premises storage to Box, saving money and time, and putting the power of collaboration into the hands of the users instead of requiring admin intervention."
"M-Files licence model is very flexible. You have the choice of Named User, Concurrent, or SaaS. This gives the business so much room and flexibility to implement new projects whilst maintaining costs and maximizing production."
"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."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, their website doesn't work properly."
"If you want to delete something in Box, you have to do it manually, one by one. That was my recent experience. They might have a bulk delete, but I could not find that option. If you want to delete something, you have to go to each and every file and delete it."
"The security settings are such that if I have a folder with subfolders several levels deep, whatever security setting I have for the parent folder gets inherited at all the subfolders. This has been limiting."
"If there was a plugin that added some sort of toolbar in Office, that would be great."
"Improvements in speed - Box's high level of security impacts performance, especially when compared with other similar services."
"If you want to delete something in Box, you have to do it manually, one by one."
"Collaborative editing was challenging if multiple people were in a document at once."
"Data privacy, regarding where to store your data: Offering several transparent(!) options (where to store my data and whether to sync back or not and where to sync) regarding the local law situations (USA, EU, Switzerland!) would increase the credibility of a US based company (after NSA ‘snooping’)."
"The integration with other products needs to be improved."
"Technical support is probably the weakest part. We had a number of authentication issues and support has been very slow to respond and get us solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There's a free version that allows you to use it with almost full-feature access. Even in the free version, it gives you all you need."
"I'm in Higher Ed, so we purchase through Internet2-Net+. I absolutely recommend going that route for Higher Ed customers."
"Better sign a full year's contract to get a discount."
"My organization pays for the license."
"The pricing may seem steep at first, but delve into the features and you'll soon realize it is incredible value for what you get."
"The more you dig, the deeper the level of tools, and the more expensive it becomes."
"Box's pricing is excellent."
"I believe Box is cheaper than SharePoint."
"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Document Management Software solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise30
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc
Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator
Find out what your peers are saying about Box vs. M-Files and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.