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Hyland OnBase vs IBM ECM vs SharePoint 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

As of April 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Hyland OnBase is 5.7%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM ECM is 2.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePoint is 11.6%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SharePoint11.6%
Hyland OnBase5.7%
IBM ECM2.5%
Other80.2%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Arjurn Dakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Deloitte
Workflow automation has transformed case management and reduced errors across our processes
Hyland OnBase is a great tool for document storage and retrieval, automating business processes using workflow, and building applications in WorkView. It saves a lot of time, reduces human errors, and is very cost-effective. Hyland OnBase has drastically improved our business processes and made everyone's jobs easier. Hyland OnBase is a fantastic system that does a lot for my organization. We use it for indexing and storing documents as the main reason we use Hyland OnBase, but it also has many features that we use every day. Workflows are the most common way that our employees interact with Hyland OnBase. We also ingest thousands of documents every day, and with our continued rate of growth, we do not see Hyland OnBase having any trouble handling the added traffic. It is very scalable. The best features Hyland OnBase offers include workflows, document retention and security, document ingesting and indexing, and document retrieval and storage. The user-friendly interface makes it very easy to use and provides a smooth learning curve for new users. Workflow is used to quickly and easily configure and improve business processes. We also have automation through workflow, which saves time and cost. Reporting dashboards allow us to create useful reports to keep personnel informed, making data-driven decisions easier. While we have grown a lot over the past five years, Hyland OnBase has allowed us to maintain our existing workflows rather than hiring additional employees, requiring fewer employees thanks to Hyland OnBase. Since Hyland OnBase is our central repository for all documents, our documents are more secure, allow greater work flexibility, especially for remote work, are more easily accessible, and are smarter. It has changed the way we as a company work. Through workflow automation, we have been able to save a lot of time, with forty to fifty-five percent of time being saved currently.
Thinh Tran - PeerSpot reviewer
BPM Consultant at TECHCOMBANK
Has supported enterprise document storage but lacks cloud readiness and AI capabilities
The new version of IBM ECM is at the end of support, and we need to migrate to a new version to get open support. We need AI capabilities from IBM ECM for additional functionalities in the next release. Specifically, AI is needed for finding documents. The trend is moving toward AI, and for managing many documents effectively, we need AI capabilities. Currently, IBM ECM only handles physical files, not unstructured files. IBM needs to work alongside customers and share best practices for IBM ECM. Reading the IBM Redbook alone is not sufficient for the knowledge we need to build the best architecture for my company. IBM ECM needs to improve the cloud version, such as compatibility with Amazon Cloud, not only IBM Cloud, to make their product more competitive.
reviewer2811600 - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 1 at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Centralized document governance has boosted collaboration and made knowledge sharing structured
SharePoint is a powerful platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved, such as user experience. For new users, the interface and navigation can feel quite complex, specifically when working with multiple sites and document libraries. Another improvement would be search functionalities. While it is good sometimes, it does not always return the most relevant result unless a document is very well-structured and tagged. Also, initial setup and customizations can be time-consuming and may require technical expertise, specifically when configuring workflows or permissions. From a modern development perspective, tighter and more seamless integrations with tools including Power Automate and better support for custom backend integrations through APIs could make it more efficient. Overall, simplifying usability and enhancing search and integration capability would make SharePoint even stronger. One additional area I would appreciate improvement would be performance and responsiveness, especially when dealing with a large document library. Sometimes loading or navigating through large datasets can feel quite slow. Another aspect is permissions management. While it is very powerful, it can become complex to manage at scale, specifically when there are multiple levels of access across teams and projects. Improving developer experience would also be beneficial. Making customization, API integrations, and extensions more straightforward would help teams, especially backend developers, leverage SharePoint more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OnBase is a remarkable tool; it is a well-done product with amazing stability that can grow horizontally and vertically and is built for growth, with technical support that is quite good and available throughout the year."
"OnBase provides high-value solutions for organizations with much less cost in comparison to other ECM solutions."
"The product's initial setup phase is not difficult."
"Integrating Hyland OnBase with our systems enabled us to automate document designs and templates, which was extremely helpful in the finance and banking industry."
"The impact of Hyland OnBase on our organization is that automating manual processes has had an incredible effect on our return on investment, and the man-hours saved by automating processes pays for the system, ranging from one to five hours."
"Hyland OnBase has drastically improved our business processes and made everyone's jobs easier."
"I like the cloud and its integrability."
"I like the flexibility and its modular nature that allows us to create solutions that meet our business needs."
"FileNet/IBM really excels when you get into the hundreds of thousands – the millions – of documents, and having some structure and some metadata on those documents."
"The experiences of our internal and external customers have absolutely changed since implementing the solution, as it is a pleasure to use the system to manage the data, we are more organized, we are more agile, we have more information, and we can react to that information better."
"It has definitely improved the way our organization functions."
"The tool is a very stable solution with high availability and no information leakage. It has built-in API integration on-site. You can integrate with other components and applications like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc."
"The content management is all about you as you can make the same content for minimal purpose solutions applications."
"The vertical scalability, as we can use it across some of our applications."
"We have been using it for awhile for the content management purposes of some of the bank's co-functionality, and we have not seen many issues lately, thus, so far, so good in terms of performance."
"It's given us compliance, the ability to go to cloud or to stay on-prem, it's at the forefront of technology with new products that give us new functionality and business capabilities, and IBM has fantastic, reliable support that has backed us over the years."
"SharePoint is smooth and easy to use for editing, updating, and uploading files."
"The SharePoint interface is adequate and also a little bit faster."
"Information is much more readily available."
"The ability to have version control and co-editing is vital to our workflows."
"The security feature is valuable."
"From my perspective, since I am a data professional and we have to keep a record of all the data as per our client's demand, SharePoint provides us a repository where we can keep all our data intact and updated."
"From my perspective as a developer I would say that the most valuable features are the wide variety of data source connections, completeness of features, and strong query possibilities (customisation, SQL, MDX, macros)."
"Yes, especially reducing the print paper and having a very quick response, and reducing the time between department and people."
 

Cons

"We are struggling with duplicates and would like to have OCR functionality when using this solution."
"For user experience, they would have to do more with the interface. It is not easy to work with and is a little messy. It is getting better, but it is not yet good enough. Other products are comparatively doing better in terms of the user interface. I have been hearing about Box, which is very easy to use and learn for the users. OnBase has to work on this aspect. It should have BPM capabilities. We compete with tools that provide the BPM feature and support those standards. They can do better in terms of the pricing model. It is a really expensive tool in Latin America. They should have different prices for different regions."
"Hyland OnBase could be improved in terms of service support response time."
"The migration is a bit difficult in the tool."
"The solution’s initial setup is a little difficult."
"Hyland OnBase can be improved because Report Services is an additional license and should be included with the base product."
"Hyland OnBase can be improved by reducing the many different applications that need to be used when being an administrator for this product."
"For user experience, they would have to do more with the interface. It is not easy to work with and is a little messy."
"Technical support is pretty good. It's a crap shoot."
"Currently, IBM ECM only handles physical files, not unstructured files."
"I would like to see seamless application integration."
"Datacap's solution development time is sometimes a multiple of other solutions’ development time, even for simple capture processes, because nothing is out of the box."
"We’d like for it to be able to ingest reports that were created on the distributed side and get them into the same repository, where you have one repository for all reports."
"I would recommend not going with ECM 8 and going with FileNet instead. It seems like that is the future of the lower-volume repository. It seems like they are moving away from ECM 8.5 so I think we're going to have some challenges coming up, getting off of that technology."
"We abandoned our Case manager solution as it was so complex and cost-prohibitive for us."
"More importantly, it is sometimes overly complex, and requires a lot of work from the infrastructure and administration standpoint; a lot of hands-on patches."
"The UI could be more flexible out of the box."
"The company also needs to make sure that their policies are dictating how information is stored and used, instead of letting SharePoint take control."
"We had some small issues and called MS tech support, but they were only able to help us 60% of the time before we fixed it ourselves."
"Achieving our goals in a multi-vendor project was not an easy task because of the 2010 UI."
"SharePoint Online is excellent as is, but licensing for the on-premises version is expensive."
"Allow more functionalities for the on-premise version. Do not force the move of content to a non-private cloud."
"SharePoint sometimes cannot handle the amount of co-editing that we do."
"Technical support is poor. Microsoft makes it tough to get quality support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is high."
"They can do better in terms of the pricing model. It is a really expensive tool in Latin America. They should have different prices for different regions."
"OnBase is reasonably priced."
"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
"The solution costs around $6,000 per month."
"Reach out to local IBM partners.​"
"The pricing works for us."
"The data classification and search elements are cheap."
"The solution's pricing is relatively expensive because it's bundled with other products."
"Any extended support from Microsoft is expensive."
"It is pretty reasonable. It is $5 per month per user. We have 12 users now, so it is about $60 per month."
"The pricing is competitive."
"It is very expensive.​"
"It comes bundled with the Microsoft 365 pricing plans."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise81
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hyland OnBase?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very cost-effective and affordable.
What needs improvement with Hyland OnBase?
Hyland OnBase could be improved in terms of service support response time. More timely updates to solution software s...
What is your primary use case for Hyland OnBase?
Hyland OnBase is used across the entirety of the organization in a variety of different ways, and its primary use is ...
What do you like most about IBM ECM?
The tool is a very stable solution with high availability and no information leakage. It has built-in API integration...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM ECM?
The product is expensive and has a perpetual license.
What needs improvement with IBM ECM?
The new version of IBM ECM is at the end of support, and we need to migrate to a new version to get open support. We ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
I do not know the difference between the prices of the two solutions; I did not work on this project.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
It is not really better; we use the same solution as before with Google Drive and the Google App solution. Sometimes ...
What is your primary use case for SharePoint?
I create a data warehouse and establish a link between different applications. For data exchange, the vendor is Oracle.
 

Also Known As

OnBase
No data available
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda France Industries, Hill County Texas, Hylant Group, ING Lease France, State of South Carolina, Syracuse University, Swindon College, Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rochester Institute of Technology, Moen, Odense University Hospital
KeyBank, Standard Chartered Bank, Union Bank, Sistema Tecnol‹gico de Monterrey, Illinois Department of Human Services, UnitedHealth Group
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, IBM, Adobe and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: March 2026.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.