Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management 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 October 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Hyland OnBase is 6.5%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FileNet is 8.2%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM FileNet8.2%
Hyland OnBase6.5%
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management1.1%
Other84.2%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Rao Kagitha - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good dashboards and reports but fails to offer better migration features
The migration is a bit difficult in the tool. Whenever we make certain changes to workflow or other stuff, migrating the code from one environment to another is a bit tedious. The tool has an option for export and import, which is not robust. Most of the time, we need to do things stuff manually. For example, if we make any changes in the existing life cycle or any queues, we have to move those changes manually. There is no robust way to migrate code from one environment to a lower environment, like prod. When it comes to the product's technical support, the turnaround time is a bit longer than expected. The issue may be because there are a number of issues or a large number of customers who are reaching out to the support team for help. I believe that the solution's technical team can provide a solution more quickly.
ARTHUR BRUNO - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided robust content management but requires simplification in configuration and usability
We almost do not utilize the automation capabilities of IBM FileNet to streamline our business processes. The process automation and business automation features are barely used. Currently, we primarily use it to store content. We are now trying to use all of the functionalities of IBM FileNet, but we have not yet utilized the full capacity of the system. We are trying to reduce redundancy with IBM FileNet by enhancing our business rules. However, we still have significant redundancy. IBM FileNet can help us reduce redundancy, but we need to understand the tool and use all the functionalities to accomplish this. Ease of use with IBM FileNet is a disadvantage of this tool. It is complex and hard to use. When we try to set up IBM FileNet, we have many questions. We do not understand what we need to do in IBM FileNet. There are many configurations we must make but do not know how to implement. While IBM FileNet is very reliable, it is very difficult to set up. When reading the documentation about IBM FileNet, it appears to be very reliable and secure, but setting up configurations, access rules, authorization, and authentication seems to be very challenging.
MukeshGiri - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers advanced search capabilities, integrates seamlessly with SAP and efficiently stores non-essential business content
Consider you have some use cases. For example, something for your accounting or procurement department. And you purchase equipment, machines, and plants for plant-related operations. Essentially, there will be manuals and basically anything and everything related to your particular equipment. So, where do the equipment entries go? They go into SAP. Depending on your SAP deployment, it can go into some database. Most companies these days are talking about SAP HANA and stuff like that. So it will be stored in SAP HANA. But, these documentation, drawings, manuals, and help files for these big pieces of equipment, where do they go? That’s where Extended ECM for SAP comes into the picture. All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access. So as a user in the procurement department or the accounting department, or an engineering department where you are using SAP for asset management entries inside your system. All those related documents, drawings, manuals, and files have to be stored somewhere. If you store them in SAP, it will be a costly implementation going forward. After maybe a couple of years, you will realize that it’s too much to deal with because HANA database will be too costly. There will not be much business value because you cannot utilize a lot of search and cool features inside your application from an SAP perspective. That’s where you will integrate SAP. For example, SAP Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. One of the modules SAP provides is SAP Plant Maintenance. So what you will do is deploy Extended ECM for SAP, then try something called SAP Plant Maintenance, Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. The content maintenance, manuals, files, drawings, and related stuff, its details or tags, or any kind of stuff is stored in your SAP. But anything and everything else is pushed through this integration into Extended ECM platform. So now it is available to be utilized by your business user who knows nothing about SAP. They only live and breathe in a different management system. They can look into these details depending on what kind of integration has been done for that company. So that’s one use case. Second use case will be in SAP itself. Now, if you are an SAP user, you have this information readily available at your fingertips. Anything goes wrong in your maintenance or any kind of management, you can look into these details, which are readily available because this documentation lifecycle is being managed by Extended ECM for SAP. It will give you extended storage capabilities within your SAP application. So it will be a two-way integration, essentially. Similar, wider features will be available within Extended ECM platform. Within SAP, you have these extra features called business attachments or business content retrieval. Those business contents are stored inside Extended ECM, and those features will be available within your SAP GUI from an SAP perspective. So it’s a win-win situation for both worlds.

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."
"Hyland OnBase is valued for its security, especially for those in the finance domain who require data confidentiality."
"The most valuable features are that it's very secure and provides audit trails for our documents."
"It provided data security features, allowing restrictions on sensitive documents, such as who could view or modify them."
"I like the cloud and its integrability."
"The solution's most valuable features are integration and flexibility."
"OnBase is a remarkable tool. It is a well-done product. Hyland has a lot of experience in building it and looking for new things for clients in terms of functionalities. It has amazing stability, and it can grow horizontally and vertically. It is built for growth. Their technical support is also quite good and available throughout the year."
"The product's initial setup phase is not difficult."
"It has an excellent document storage repository, which is good at what it does."
"Everybody ties into Active Directory and things like that, but on top of that are the extra layers of security for encryption, so they can meet standards required by PCI and by HIPAA: encryption at rest, encryption in flight, encryption in the database, all together. There are really only three products on the market that know how to do that, and FileNet is one of them."
"It puts governance in place around the content and processes. Access levels can be set to certain parts of the document based on role level."
"We are able to find the proper documents which are needed for business processes."
"IBM FileNet is a very robust system with many functionalities for content management."
"It improves the time when providing customer service to our constituents."
"​I have found that it scales well."
"There are a lot of valuable features, but the biggest advantage is that this system is stable; it's always online, it always works... once it's configured and running, we don't need to touch it and constantly make changes to it. It's a low-maintenance platform."
"The integration capabilities of the product are pretty good."
"All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access."
 

Cons

"I find OnBase's monolithic architecture to be expensive, and adopting microservices could be beneficial."
"The solution’s initial setup is a little difficult."
"We need to troubleshoot why our reports didn't get downloaded in a day. There is a workflow feature which powerful but also complicated."
"The look and feel could be better. The integration with the user could be better. It could also be more user-friendly."
"We are struggling with duplicates and would like to have OCR functionality when using this solution."
"The application could potentially be more open-source, allowing integration with more solutions."
"The migration is a bit difficult in the tool."
"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."
"We do have some individuals that do need to come up to speed on it technically, and the only onsite training for Case Manager is in Europe, there is not a lot of US-based training. So they have to do all their training online rather than being able to go and have a good bootcamp-style training somewhere nearby."
"Simplifying both training and maintenance would be an improvement."
"There is no room for improvement in the current version of FileNet, and I have not identified any potential new features or existing problems that require attention."
"IBM has a lot of documentation but the kind of information in a lot of the documents can be confusing to our clients. It would be easier if they used video tutorials. Right now, the information is too hard to understand, and there is a lot of it. If they used videos I think FinalNet would be easy to use for an end-user."
"The setup process is very complex."
"There is room for improvement in the file management. It's very complex."
"Needs a better administration tool."
"It would be nice to have additional integration features, which could be integration with IoOT-based products and solutions that also have automation requirements on the IOT side. Anything can be integrated from a Gateway or API perspective would be a plus."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The deployment could be costly because of resource availability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
"The tool's price is high."
"The solution costs around $6,000 per month."
"OnBase is reasonably priced."
"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."
"We use extraction. Therefore, we can see 80 to 85 percent accuracy on data extraction. This reduces the manual indexing part, which is definitely a gain on performance efficiency."
"It is still a leading ECM solution provider, however the cost to implement and maintain are higher than other solutions."
"Talking about the cost is difficult because IBM has offers that combine different products, and each of these offers has different types of licensing. IBM also has a policy that the actual price for a given customer may be very different from the stated book price. It's hard to say whether it's expensive or not."
"The cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"For small scale industries, they allow different options. They can do open source. It is the complexity of the data security that they should think about before they choose."
"FileNet is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for. ​"
"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."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
869,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
22%
University
14%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise74
No data available
 

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. Transitio...
What needs improvement with Hyland OnBase?
I believe the reporting features need improvement, as other competitors in the market provide better analytics. Hylan...
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 b...
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?
From the company's perspective, the licensing cost for IBM FileNet is still affordable. Though the license cost is so...
What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?
We almost do not utilize the automation capabilities of IBM FileNet to streamline our business processes. The process...
What do you like most about SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?
The integration capabilities of the product are pretty good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?
The prices can vary depending on the customer, region, and domain. I rate the product price an eight on a scale of on...
What needs improvement with SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management?
Improvement could be more about training because it is one of the giants in this market. Nobody can be exposed to SAP...
 

Also Known As

OnBase
No data available
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management by OpenText, SAP Extended ECM
 

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.
Metropolitan Utilities District, MAN Diesel & Turbo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: September 2025.
869,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.