IBM FileNet vs M-Files vs OpenText Documentum Content Management comparison

The compared IBM and M-Files solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #4 in ECM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 9.4% mindshare in the category. M-Files is ranked #7 in DMS , and holds a 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of M-Files users who would recommend it.

IBM FileNet

Read 102 IBM FileNet reviews

3,570 Views
3,284 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

M-Files

Read 2 M-Files reviews

960 Views
278 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

OpenText Documentum Content...

Read 32 OpenText Documentum Content Management reviews

3,726 Views
3,204 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

M-Files

OpenText Documentum Content...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM FileNet, M-Files, and OpenText Documentum Content Management based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Enterprise Content Management Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 862,514 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Enterprise Content Management

Document Management Software

Enterprise Content Management

Featured Reviews

Emad Rizki

System integrator at Indépendant

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.

Read full review

Laurie NYlund

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.

Read full review

Ashish Shelar

Technical Manager at Thames Water

Offers version control capabilities, easy to set up but highly-priced

The main thing is the cost. Most of the time, organizations move away from Documentum due to cost. It's highly-priced, and the support costs are high. Now, SharePoint and other options. Microsoft gives free licenses, so organizations mainly look for cost-effective products. The second thing is updates and patching. We patch very often, every six months or a year. We have SP1, SP2, and SP3, and then suddenly, it's moved out of support. That's the organization's main pain area. They don't want to keep investing from a storage perspective. The licensing model should be changed. The product itself is out of support. They have not considered it for AI initiatives. The new version should be on the cloud. I'm not sure if the new version of Documentum, xECM, is cloud compatible or on which cloud it is compatible, but the OpenText server itself is on a cloud, which would be beneficial to the business. And it would also be easier for migration.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use IBM Datacap's capabilities to capture data and then we use FileNet's capabilities for filing, to create an archive of documents... We [also] use FileNet's ability to expose information via APIs and interoperate with other systems."

"It has increased our productivity."

"It has a robust API. We are able to have systems communicate with each other, and do business process automation."

"FileNet has the capabilities to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. It is very secure."

"It allows for multiple people to access content simultaneously."

"It has a straightforward approach to the install."

"It saves our customers time by 30 to 40 percent by eliminating the time to process paper."

"I have found that it scales well."

More IBM FileNet pros

"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."

"The stability is very good."

"It is a very secure system. It is reliable, and that is one of the reasons people manage their content within Documentum. It gives them the confidence that the content is accessible to the right people and not to the wrong people."

"The product is user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the security, storage, and document search capability."

"I recommend Documentum as it supports big systems and offers good integration."

"I appreciate Documentum's scalability, allowing for vast volumes of content storage."

"The most valuable feature is the good automation engine, which helps in reducing the development cost and allows easy development of applications."

"The most valuable feature of Documentum for our content management needs is its ability to segregate access based on department and role."

More OpenText Documentum Content Management pros

Cons

"It may be a little complex to implement and take some effort."

"The initial setup is complex. It is complex because there are several pieces of software that have to be installed in the right order to make it work alright."

"The response time and resolution of issues by technical support need improvement."

"I would like to see in FileNet integrated with Watson, which can read something and send it without any human contact or interaction."

"The most valuable features of IBM File Manager are workflow, content, and process capabilities."

"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 application's processing engineer needs to be more advanced."

"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."

More IBM FileNet cons

"The integration with other products needs to be improved."

"The main issue is the software's performance when storing around 10 million or more documents. It becomes slow and needs improvement. Perhaps it's a cloud-related issue, but it needs to be addressed. It could be due to our S3 bucket or something else. Nevertheless, this is a significant challenge we're facing."

"The BPM side should be improved."

"I would like to see performance improvements, especially regarding slow response times."

"In BPM could be better. Its GUI needs the ability to build more rules. This is a crucial feature. For example, OpenText has some products that allow you to control your checks, invoices, and so on. They have exciting approaches to converting pictures to text, but the tool for business process management isn't easy to use. The GIU is not so good."

"The price is quite high as the licensing prices are significant."

"It's difficult to manage and customize Documentum."

"OpenText Documentum's user interface could be improved a little bit."

"We mostly use the Life Sciences package. That package is somewhat dated. There should be enhancements to the Life Science package and additional offerings to support pharma in particular."

More OpenText Documentum Content Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Yearly, we pay for the maintenance, which is $20,000."

"The platform is inexpensive."

"It has reduced operating costs by reducing the amount of manual work needed."

"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."

"There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need."

"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."

"The tool is expensive, and I rate its pricing a ten out of ten."

"The licensing cost of FileNet is comparable."

More IBM FileNet pricing and cost advice

"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."

"OpenText Documentum has announced a new licensing model, which could be more expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"It falls in line with a lot of things that are out there on the market. There is nothing extraordinary in terms of great or bad."

"It is quite an expensive product."

"The price is considered affordable now."

"OpenText Documentum's pricing is good."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM FileNet?

The product is robust and can process a lot of documents for enterprise content management.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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; w...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Documentum?

It falls in line with a lot of things that are out there on the market. There is nothing extraordinary in terms of gr...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenText Documentum?

The most valuable feature of Documentum for our content management needs is its ability to segregate access based on ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with OpenText Documentum?

The interface of OpenText Documentum could be more intuitive; sometimes it is hard to find where the information is l...

See all answers

Comparisons

SharePoint vs IBM FileNet

Compared 17% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 15% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet

Compared 8% of the time

Alfresco vs IBM FileNet

Compared 7% of the time

Box vs IBM FileNet

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

SharePoint vs M-Files

Compared 33% of the time

Microsoft Purview Records Management vs M-Files

Compared 14% of the time

Newgen OmniDocs vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

DocuWare vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

More M-Files Competitors

SharePoint vs OpenText Documentum Content Management

Compared 21% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs OpenText Documentum Content Management

Compared 15% of the time

Alfresco vs OpenText Documentum Content Management

Compared 13% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs OpenText Documentum Content Management

Compared 9% of the time

Adobe Experience Manager vs OpenText Documentum Content Management

Compared 2% of the time

More OpenText Documentum Content Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

July 2025

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

Document Management Software

July 2025

Download M-Files product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenText Documentum Content Management

July 2025

OpenText Documentum Content Management report

Download OpenText Documentum Content Management product report

Also Known As

No data available

Dell EMC Documentum, Documentum , Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform

Overview

IBM FileNet is a leading IBM enterprise content management product family. IBM FileNet is one of the ECM solutions that can change the way a company does business by enabling users to capture, activate, socialize, analyze, and govern content throughout its lifecycle.

There are many IBM FileNet products available, all of which are integrated and based on the FileNet P8 Platform.

IBM

M-Files is the leading platform for knowledge work automation. With M-Files, knowledge workers can find information faster, work smarter, and achieve more. M-Files features an innovative metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence that enable customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance. By embedding automation and GenAI into its core, M-Files' platform not only increases efficiencies for organizations but also empowers knowledge workers to focus on what truly matters—innovation and strategic growth. With 10 global offices, M-Files serves more than 5,000 customers in 100 countries. Start your free trial OR Schedule a demo. For more information, visit www.m-files.com.

M-Files

OpenText Documentum Content Management provides centralized document management with strong security, advanced metadata management, and seamless integration with systems like SAP and Salesforce, aiding businesses in overseeing content effectively.

OpenText Documentum Content Management is known for its strong integration capabilities, especially with systems such as SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle E-Business Suite, facilitating effective document management. Its strengths include advanced security features, comprehensive metadata management, and robust support for lifecycle and workflow management. The platform's scalability and business process automation capabilities support industries with large volumes of content. It is adaptable for various sectors, including healthcare, banking, insurance, and government, providing document storage, sharing, and collaboration functionalities. While the intuitive automation engine enhances workflows, users have noted that improvements are needed in UI design, performance, and integration with additional systems. Concerns about cloud transition security, high costs, outdated workflows, and complex metadata management indicate areas for development. Supports are sought for AI integrations, improved cloud functionality, and efficient documentation.

What are the key features of OpenText Documentum Content Management?

Security: Robust security features ensure content protection.
Metadata Management: Advanced handling of metadata enhances organization.
Integration: Seamless connectivity with systems like SAP and Salesforce.
Lifecycle Management: Comprehensive support for document lifecycles.
Automation Engine: Streamlined workflows through intuitive automation.

What benefits or ROI can users expect?

Improved Efficiency: Centralized management reduces redundancies.
Regulatory Compliance: Helps meet industry standards easily.
Scalability: Accommodates growing content volumes effortlessly.
Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates document sharing and teamwork.
Secure Cloud Transition: Maintains security while adopting cloud services.

Industries such as healthcare, banking, and government use OpenText Documentum Content Management for document-centric processes, ensuring regulatory compliance and facilitating collaboration. With Captiva enhancing OCR and batch scanning, it is crucial for managing high-quality documentation and compliance efforts across sectors.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.

Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator

Agility; Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Capitec Bank; Department of Social Development, Republic of South Africa; County of Los Angeles, Department of Human Resources; Fresenius Kabi; Heathrow Airport; Lahey Health; Linde PLC; Milestone Pharma Co. Ltd; National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development; Open Grid Europe GmbH; REPCO NEX Industrial Solutions; Springer Nature; Syngene International; Tata Power DDL; University of Texas Austin

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

July 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.