IBM FileNet vs M-Files vs SharePoint 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 7.9, and holds a 8.2% mindshare in the category. M-Files is ranked #9 in DMS , and holds a 7.8% 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 103 IBM FileNet reviews

3,640 Views
3,349 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

M-Files

Read 2 M-Files reviews

977 Views
332 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

SharePoint

Read 162 SharePoint reviews

9,505 Views
4,657 Comparison Views

79% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

M-Files

SharePoint

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM FileNet, M-Files, and SharePoint 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

September 2025

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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 Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM FileNet	8.2%
SharePoint	15.0%
OpenText Documentum Content Management	10.2%
Other	66.6%

Enterprise Content Management

Document Management Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
M-Files	7.8%
Alfresco	15.9%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management	11.1%
Other	65.2%

Document Management Software

Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SharePoint	15.0%
OpenText Documentum Content Management	10.2%
OpenText Content Management	10.0%
Other	64.8%

Enterprise Content Management

Featured Reviews

ARTHUR BRUNO

Consultor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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.

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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.

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Madhur D'silva

Lead Consultant at Eviden

Collaborative work benefits while user-friendliness challenges persist

The most valuable feature of SharePoint is its user interface, which is very easy to use. I do not have to be very technical to use it. Its rights management capabilities and ability to restrict access to certain people are also very useful. Furthermore, I can access SharePoint from any device, whether it is a phone or laptop, which is very convenient.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FileNet is very user-friendly... We have business users using and it is quite friendly for them."

"It has improved my organization by how we release documents, claims, and policies."

"The product is very stable."

"IBM FileNet is a very robust system with many functionalities for content management."

"For a large company, for the robustness, stability, performance, and the growth — that you can grow it within seconds — I would advise using FileNet, without any doubt."

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

"FileNet is highly scalable and suited for implementation in large multinational organizations."

"One of the most valuable features is FileNet's ability to capture things from the stack, from e-mail, to scanning of Excel and Word. FileNet can also convert many types of files to PDFs very easily."

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."

"For SharePoint, I believe the most valuable feature is the customization and allowing you to share and edit files and documents. Being able to share externally and the precise administration of the files in terms of giving permissions and controlling who has access to what is a very good feature."

"It has an easy to distribute administration capability, and can also scale to meet a large number of future needs."

"It facilitates collaboration and the ability to create custom workflows."

"It is well supported by Microsoft."

"It's stable. It's very widely used by companies. Also, the knowledge of the product has improved over the years, and by other companies that support it or are Microsoft SharePoint partners. So if there are problems, there's always a user or company that knows the information or can help you; even with very uncommon problems."

"Its configuration management ability is critical for document-based systems."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to easily build intranet sites for communicating within teams, storing documentation, product information, pricing policies, updates on product infrastructure, and other related news."

"Removed the need of paper storage and people flow into the office."

More SharePoint pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the scanning solution, Datacap. It's improving all the time. But since it's more an end-user software, the end-users are constantly improving their processes, and I believe that sometimes we're not catching up with their requirements."

"I think the support could be better, and it could improve."

"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 FileNet API seems like it is very difficult and not transparent."

"FileNet and similar enterprise-level tools require substantial costs, starting in the millions, which limits their use to large enterprises."

"We would like to see, in FileNet, the ability to manage video and audio."

"Needs a better administration tool."

"We would like to have more automation of rollout solutions."

More IBM FileNet cons

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

"It is too heavy. MS should not have paid foreign coders dollars per each row of code. They wasted the stability and reliability in the end."

"I would like a simpler, more cost-effective solution for connecting data sources with workflows and BI tools, or data mining tools."

"There's room for improvement in the search functionality, although it has matured significantly over the years."

"Improve the user-friendliness."

"The search functionality could be improved, especially when dealing with 'lift' lists, where there are performance issues."

"Using SharePoint is difficult."

"The product must provide more automation."

"The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement."

More SharePoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution saves time and money. It helps us to be able to accomplish the goals of our business, as opposed to being tangled in the weeds of what we could do."

"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."

"It is still a leading ECM solution provider, however the cost to implement and maintain are higher than other solutions."

"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."

"The biggest issue is the cost of the FileNet, because the license cost is very high. If a customer doesn't have good technical guides that are aware of the license calculation, they will pay too much. FileNet's license calculation depends on the processor and number of users. So my advice to a new customer is to be very careful with your calculations before purchasing FileNet."

"FileNet is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for. "

"FileNet is quite expensive, although Documentum is expensive too."

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."

"The licensing model for SharePoint Online is based on per user, and it is monthly. The price of the solution overall is good."

"We have purchased add-ons to handle multiple site collections, form creation, and design."

"For this type of solution, it is not wise to buy it without Software Assurance."

"The pricing works for us."

"The solution's pricing is relatively expensive because it's bundled with other products."

"It comes bundled with the Microsoft 365 pricing plans."

"The pricing is competitive."

More SharePoint pricing and cost advice

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Developer with 51-200 employees

Aug 23, 2013

Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons

At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

Government

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	74

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	79
Midsize Enterprise	37
Large Enterprise	80

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.

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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...

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What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?

We almost do not utilize the automation capabilities of IBM FileNet to streamline our business processes. The process...

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What do you like most about SharePoint?

The search feature is valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?

As SharePoint is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, the pricing is acceptable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SharePoint?

Not with SharePoint specifically, but overall with the software or tools from Microsoft, I think there are areas that...

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Comparisons

OpenText Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 15% of the time

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs IBM FileNet

Compared 11% of the time

Alfresco vs IBM FileNet

Compared 10% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet

Compared 9% of the time

Newgen OmniDocs vs IBM FileNet

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs M-Files

Compared 13% of the time

Alfresco vs M-Files

Compared 12% of the time

Newgen OmniDocs vs M-Files

Compared 8% of the time

DocuWare vs M-Files

Compared 8% of the time

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

More M-Files Competitors

OpenText Documentum Content Management vs SharePoint

Compared 8% of the time

DocuSign vs SharePoint

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Content Management vs SharePoint

Compared 7% of the time

Box vs SharePoint

Compared 6% of the time

ShareFile vs SharePoint

Compared 3% of the time

More SharePoint Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

September 2025

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

Document Management Software

September 2025

Download M-Files product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint

September 2025

Download SharePoint product report

Also Known As

No data available

SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010

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

SharePoint is a Microsoft-based platform for building web applications. It covers a widerange of capabilities and while it is appropriate for experienced webdevelopers, even non-technical minded users can easily navigate through thesystem and execute functions such as collaborating data, managing documents andfiles, creating websites, managing social networking solutions, and automatingworkflow.

Major areas that SharePoint deals with are websites,communities, content, search, insights, and composites. The purpose is to give usersthe ability to create or develop these key business components on their owneven without technical knowledge of, for example, how to build a website or howto integrate coding. Configuring SharePoint into a business's system is meantto cut out all of the complicated steps, and pave the way for easierimplementation all around.

Microsoft

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

Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

September 2025

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