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Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet 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

Hyland OnBase
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (14th), Low-Code Development Platforms (15th)
IBM FileNet
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 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 FileNet is 6.0%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM FileNet6.0%
Hyland OnBase5.7%
Other88.3%
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.
Shankar-Kambhampaty - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting CTO at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees
Business workflows have been automated and document processes are streamlined at large scale
I believe IBM FileNet could be improved or enhanced in the future, specifically the user interface development support, which, despite all the improvements, still feels from the 2010s or 2000s. The current state of the user interface development support and the ability to customize it leaves much to be desired. The backend engine, process engine, and object engine are fantastic. However, the user interface, which is required to provide an impressive experience to the user, is difficult to build. IBM will need to do something about this area. Over time, IBM has made improvements with enhancements through CP4BA and other tools, with which user interfaces can be built. But there is much more is needed. The initial setup process for IBM FileNet requires specialists. IBM FileNet is not a click-click-click deploy kind of product. It has several components that need to be installed in different versions and in a particular order. Additionally, IBM Cloud does not provide a proper experience. The problem is I cannot use IBM Cloud easily. I cannot even get a membership easily. With AWS, I just use my credit card, sign up, and I am done. With IBM Cloud, that is not how it is. They go through all validation processes, and it is a nightmare at times. There are problems around IBM FileNet, not exactly with IBM FileNet itself, but the point is that it is not a click-click-click deploy either on the cloud or on-premise. It requires specialists, and there is a big learning curve toward deploying and managing the whole infrastructure as well as the software. I communicate with the technical support of IBM frequently. I have communicated several times, and frankly, there is much to be desired on that side. When you raise a ticket, it takes 24 to 48 hours for them to respond. We live in a time where business moves at the speed of light. Twenty-four hours is a very long time. You need to be able to get technical support instantaneously. It is not like the more contemporary support models where you get turnaround in minutes, not days.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very developed and we are not taking full advantage of its functionalities."
"The most valuable features are that it's very secure and provides audit trails for our documents."
"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."
"Integrating Hyland OnBase with our systems enabled us to automate document designs and templates, which was extremely helpful in the finance and banking industry."
"Hyland OnBase has drastically improved our business processes and made everyone's jobs easier."
"We found the setup process to be okay since they do offer a troubleshooting guide."
"It provided data security features, allowing restrictions on sensitive documents, such as who could view or modify them."
"The retention module is one of the most valuable features. Whatever we scan onto the system can be identified and we are notified when the records are due to be disposed."
"Gves us the ability to create an end-to-end [document] transaction."
"We probably would not have seen adoption so strongly without it."
"Provides records management functions."
"The most valuable features of IBM File Manager are workflow, content, and process capabilities."
"It saves our customers time by 30 to 40 percent by eliminating the time to process paper."
"There aren't very many ECM solutions that scale properly, both up and out. We have customers who hold billions of documents. There aren't very many that can scale that far, and that can also scale out so that they can handle lots of users, lots of documents, and that understand how to handle external users. FileNet is one that can."
"The product is very stable."
"It has increased our productivity."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement would be the training - getting our people up to speed on how to use it required more training than we expected due to the complexity of the solution."
"Software malfunctioning usually occurs when we receive documents from external sources."
"Hyland OnBase could be improved in terms of service support response time."
"We found the size of images to be a restriction, though this may have been due to the API used rather than the Hyland application."
"We are struggling with duplicates and would like to have OCR functionality when using this solution."
"We need to troubleshoot why our reports didn't get downloaded in a day. There is a workflow feature which powerful but also complicated."
"For my case, there should be a cleaner, easy-to-use change management and migration tool, which would be great."
"The solution’s initial setup is a little difficult."
"​I would rate the technical support as medium. I do not like the login process. It is not great."
"The basic and fundamental point about FileNet is that the interface is very bad. It's just not appealing so people are reluctant to use it."
"The response time and resolution of issues by technical support need improvement."
"I would like to have an offline DR deployment. If that is doable, then it would be a big win."
"We know that they're looking at documents, but we don't know what documents they're actually going and finding the most, or where the bottlenecks might be. It would be nice if there was some interconnectivity back into Bluemix to say, "Ok, you've got a workflow problem here." That would be a neat feature moving forward because we've got a lot of users that would just say, "The system is not working." We had a few threads would get hung up because they were just constantly banging on these few documents. If that were the case, if we knew that ahead of time, then we could fix that, change the search sequences to make it more efficient. But we were blind to that until the users said it's not working."
"In terms of functionality, what customers might be looking for is a little more in terms of native-records retention. Records Management is an add-on product. If there were just a little more of that built into the core functionality, that would be helpful."
"One of the things I know is a bit of a challenge for them - because I know that it lives on top of FileNet, so it's not necessarily living on top of a relational database, per se - is that we also are using it as our system of record for our language management and our language definitions. I know that that was a little bit of a challenge, just because of the underlying architecture."
"The response time and resolution of issues by technical support need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
"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."
"The solution costs around $6,000 per month."
"The tool's price is high."
"FileNet is quite expensive, although Documentum is expensive too."
"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."
"The biggest issue is the cost of the FileNet, because the license cost is very high. If a customer doesn't have good technical guides that are aware of the license calculation, they will pay too much. FileNet's license calculation depends on the processor and number of users. So my advice to a new customer is to be very careful with your calculations before purchasing FileNet."
"When it comes to pricing, IBM needs to make an effort to improve the cost. That's the main issue regarding use of FinalNet in Columbia."
"FileNet is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for. ​"
"It has reduced operating costs by reducing the amount of manual work needed."
"Licensing costs depend on the size of the storage."
"The solution saves time and money. It helps us to be able to accomplish the goals of our business, as opposed to being tangled in the weeds of what we could do."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise74
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hyland OnBase?
I find pricing to be on the higher side due to its monolithic architecture. I would rate it six out of ten. Transitioning to microservices, allowing users to pay for only what they use, could reduc...
What needs improvement with Hyland OnBase?
I believe the reporting features need improvement, as other competitors in the market provide better analytics. Hyland is working on a new platform (HXP) to integrate features from all products, ad...
What is your primary use case for Hyland OnBase?
I was a vendor managing Hyland OnBase ( /products/hyland-onbase-reviews ) for Hyland, not as a direct user but as a business partner. We managed the solution and were a partner with Hyland.
What do you like most about IBM FileNet?
The product is robust and can process a lot of documents for enterprise content management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?
The pricing and licensing of IBM FileNet is high. We are living in a world where the minimal license from IBM costs anywhere from seventy-five thousand to one hundred thousand US dollars, depending...
What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?
I believe IBM FileNet could be improved or enhanced in the future, specifically the user interface development support, which, despite all the improvements, still feels from the 2010s or 2000s. The...
 

Also Known As

OnBase
No data available
 

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
Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.
Find out what your peers are saying about Hyland OnBase vs. IBM FileNet and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.