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Hyland OnBase vs M-Files comparison

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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

Hyland OnBase
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (13th), Enterprise Content Management (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (16th)
M-Files
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Content Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Hyland OnBase is designed for Business Process Management (BPM) and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, down 1.1% compared to last year.
M-Files, on the other hand, focuses on Document Management Software, holds 3.5% mindshare, down 7.8% since last year.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hyland OnBase1.0%
Camunda7.2%
IBM BPM4.3%
Other87.5%
Business Process Management (BPM)
Document Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
M-Files3.5%
Alfresco8.1%
Box - Intelligent Content Management6.7%
Other81.7%
Document Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Joao Santiago - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Digital workflows have transformed meeting minutes and document tracking across departments
There are some particular aspects of Hyland OnBase, such as layouts or some modules that have just been built, that are not designed with the end user in mind. That's something they need to improve. However, even if it's not adequate for the end user, you can still take that and, with custom development, use those modules and APIs in a user-friendly way. They need to improve the interface and usability of Unity and think more about usability. In terms of tool usability, sometimes there are too many clicks to perform an action, which, if you developed it yourself, you could do in two clicks, whereas within Unity you need four or five clicks to do the same process.
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

"OnBase provides high-value solutions for organizations with much less cost in comparison to other ECM solutions."
"Hyland OnBase is a powerful enterprise management platform that is scalable, flexible, and secure in storing, retrieving, and making workflow automations."
"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."
"Hyland OnBase is valued for its security, especially for those in the finance domain who require data confidentiality."
"I like the flexibility and its modular nature that allows us to create solutions that meet our business needs."
"Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allowed us to enforce strict data privacy requirements like LGPD by ensuring users could only access authorized records based on their role, while making user onboarding and permission management much faster and more reliable."
"This solution is easy to implement and easy to use as long as you know what your business requirement are or the specifications are straightforward."
"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."
"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

"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."
"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."
"For user experience, they would have to do more with the interface. It is not easy to work with and is a little messy."
"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."
"The application could potentially be more open-source, allowing integration with more solutions."
"I find OnBase's monolithic architecture to be expensive, and adopting microservices could be beneficial."
"Hyland OnBase could be improved in terms of service support response time."
"We are struggling with duplicates and would like to have OCR functionality when using this solution."
"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

"The solution costs around $6,000 per month."
"OnBase is reasonably priced."
"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
"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."
"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
No data available
 

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?
More training videos, if they are more findable, would improve documentation and training documentations from Hyland's side, because there is a lack of documentation and training materials from Hyl...
What is your primary use case for Hyland OnBase?
As a business analyst, while working on a recent project, I used Hyland OnBase as an enterprise-like document management tool. It was used for storing, organizing, and retrieving invoices regarding...
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Comparisons

 

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
Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Automation Anywhere, Pega and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: October 2026.
919,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.