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IBM ECM 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

IBM ECM
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM FileNet
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of IBM ECM is 2.4%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FileNet is 9.4%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Omar_Ismail - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution for automation with high availability
Moving to the cloud with IBM ECM is not allowed. In Saudi Arabia, the cloud infrastructure is still non-operational, potentially for the next two to three months. Static clouds are prevalent among foundational enterprises such as IBM and Oracle. IBM offers its cloud insights, maintaining its cloud ecosystem. IBM's efforts to enhance the user experience within its ECM platform are lacking compared to competitors like OpenText. Progress in implementing new technologies and features seems sluggish. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Emad Rizki - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless integration for large enterprises with strong deployment capabilities
FileNet was scalable and could be implemented into big multinational organizations. However, it has become very expensive recently. Compared to low-code solutions such as Appian and outsystems, FileNet has gaps, mainly because it requires coding, which is not preferred by clients due to pricing concerns in Pakistan. We transitioned clients to cloud solutions, although FileNet has been strongly integrated with on-prem deployments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 vertical scalability, as we can use it across some of our applications."
"The content management is all about you as you can make the same content for minimal purpose solutions applications."
"The scalability is a valuable feature, that we're able to display our documents to so many people."
"It provides good stability and scalability for huge enterprises as well."
"It also helps with compliance and governance issues because it's a datastore that is not modifiable, and you can guarantee that. You cannot guarantee that with a folder-based file structure, where multiple people have access."
"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."
"It has given us a whole new environment to do document management and document storage."
"​Streamlined our business processes."
"The most valuable features of IBM File Manager are workflow, content, and process capabilities."
"​I have found that it scales well."
"The most valuable feature is the way in which it enables clients and customers to quickly access the content and information that they use for everyday functions."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think it's already getting away from Java applets. A lot of our users struggle with keeping up to date with Java versioning, so a lot of the functions they're doing, like printing, emailing, and even some of the viewing, they're struggling with."
"The development platform is not local. For example, you need 100 days in IBM, whereas other platforms, like ServiceNow, need only 20 days."
"I would like to see seamless application integration."
"It is ability to display legacy content needs improvement."
"I would like to have more governance features with more supervisory layers."
"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."
"However, the configuration does take a long time. Every company needs its own configuration design. It depends on how many applications are connecting to FileNet. It can take a long time, depending on the application count."
"We brought DocuSign into our company's solution three years before. At that time there was no direct integration. We would like to pull documents out from FileNet, push them to DocuSign and, when done, retrieve them and store them back in FileNet. We wrote our own custom solution for that. It would be nice if there was some tool we could have used to do that."
"The installation and configuration to start up needs expert level knowledge."
"It needs better collaboration between the IBM teams on the FileNet and CCM sides."
"The response time and resolution of issues by technical support need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Reach out to local IBM partners.​"
"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."
"Yearly, we pay for the maintenance, which is $20,000."
"My customers have seen ROI. There have been productivity gains, time savings gains, and things that they have been doing much more efficiently in a more modern way than they were before."
"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."
"The tool is expensive, and I rate its pricing a ten out of ten."
"​There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need.​​"
"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."
"The platform is inexpensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 on-site. You can integrate with other components and applications like SAP, Mic...
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 development platform is not local. For example, you need 100 days in IBM, whereas other platforms, like ServiceNow, need only 20 days.
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 somewhat expensive, it remains manageable. The company rates it between 3 and 5 be...
What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?
The API provided by IBM FileNet is a very out-of-date implementation. From the beginning, we cannot use a REST API; we have to use the IBM FileNet native API, which is quite outdated.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

KeyBank, Standard Chartered Bank, Union Bank, Sistema Tecnol‹gico de Monterrey, Illinois Department of Human Services, UnitedHealth Group
Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM ECM vs. IBM FileNet and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.