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Hyland OnBase 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

Hyland OnBase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (14th), Enterprise Content Management (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (15th)
M-Files
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (11th)
 

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 1.3%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
M-Files, on the other hand, focuses on Document Management Software, holds 5.1% mindshare, down 8.7% since last year.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hyland OnBase1.3%
Camunda9.2%
IBM BPM4.3%
Other85.2%
Business Process Management (BPM)
Document Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
M-Files5.1%
Alfresco11.7%
OpenText Content Manager7.9%
Other75.30000000000001%
Document Management Software
 

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.
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

"With Hyland OnBase, every document is unique, and access can be restricted and audited depending on user permission, allowing a company to take control of their information and be more productive."
"A single platform with multiple capabilities to orchestrate processes, complex business rules and all types of business content."
"The most valuable features are that it's very secure and provides audit trails for our documents."
"The solution's most valuable features are integration and flexibility."
"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."
"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."
"Hyland OnBase is valued for its security, especially for those in the finance domain who require data confidentiality."
"I like the cloud and its integrability."
"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."
"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."
"For user experience, they would have to do more with the interface. It is not easy to work with and is a little messy."
"The look and feel could be better. The integration with the user could be better. It could also be more user-friendly."
"For my case, there should be a cleaner, easy-to-use change management and migration tool, which would be great."
"The look and feel could be better. The integration with the user could be better. It could also be more user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
"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."
"The tool's price is high."
"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
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
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?
Hyland OnBase could be improved in terms of service support response time. More timely updates to solution software support documentation also should be improved.
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 as a document storage solution that is used in conjunction with other systems su...
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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: March 2026.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.