IBM FileNet vs OpenText Documentum comparison

IBM and OpenText are both solutions in the Enterprise Content Management category. IBM is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while OpenText is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.6. IBM holds a 10.0% mindshare in ECM, compared to OpenText’s 12.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

IBM FileNet

Read 102 IBM FileNet reviews

3,352 Views
1,921 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

OpenText Documentum

Read 32 OpenText Documentum reviews

3,256 Views
2,162 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

OpenText Documentum

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

OpenText Documentum and IBM FileNet compete in the document management solutions category. IBM FileNet appears to have the upper hand due to its strong scalability and automation capabilities, especially for organizations with complex integration needs.

Features: OpenText Documentum offers comprehensive content management capabilities, including lifecycle management, centralized repository access, and robust security features. Users also appreciate its ability to manage content metadata effectively. IBM FileNet excels in enterprise scalability and flexibility, with strengths in automation and document-centric workflows. It provides efficient case management and seamless integration capabilities with other solutions, making it highly adaptable for complex business processes.

Room for Improvement: OpenText Documentum users highlight the need for better interface usability and integration with ERP systems, as well as addressing high costs and improving performance. It also has challenges with slow response times and limited documentation. IBM FileNet faces criticism regarding interface complexity and challenging migration processes. Users seek enhanced integration with other IBM products and better automation features to improve overall usability and deployment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenText Documentum supports deployment across on-premises, public, and hybrid clouds, offering deployment flexibility but facing inconsistencies in technical support quality. Users report experiencing delays and varied assistance levels. IBM FileNet mainly supports on-premises deployment with average technical support, and users find support for older versions lacking. While Documentum provides more deployment options, both systems need to improve support quality and consistency.

Pricing and ROI: OpenText Documentum sees its pricing as high, posing a barrier to smaller organizations, despite noted licensing model adjustments for better ROI in compliance and management. IBM FileNet also appears costly, with pricing based on storage size and processor needs. Its licensing complexity adds challenges to cost management, but high costs are justified through improved content management efficiencies and ROI. Documentum is still expensive despite pricing efforts, while FileNet complexity impacts cost management efforts.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum

June 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:

Categories and Ranking

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

OpenText Documentum

Ranking in Enterprise Content Management

2nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of IBM FileNet is 10.0%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Documentum is 12.4%, up from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

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

"There aren't very many ECM solutions that scale properly, both up and out. We have customers who hold billions of documents. There aren't very many that can scale that far, and that can also scale out so that they can handle lots of users, lots of documents, and that understand how to handle external users. FileNet is one that can."

"We have made our service routes more efficient, as far as moving work through the system and being able to react to customer situations and needs better by improving things, such as, address and beneficiary changes. I know that we have definitely made improvements in the process."

"We are able to find the proper documents which are needed for business processes."

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

"IBM FileNet supports our document management and compliance processes."

"It is really usable. There is a lot of support for it. You have the online components to trawl through the storage. I have a lot of fun with it."

"The most critical benefit has been ease of use. It speeds along our development helping us go to market a lot sooner."

"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."

More IBM FileNet pros

"Documentum is a highly scalable document management solution because it's built on a solid platform."

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

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

"It is quite good."

"I am satisfied with OpenText Documentum so far; it has great integration capabilities."

"Two things are excellent in Documentum. One is business process management. The other is its support for metadata."

"The product is user-friendly."

"The most impactful thing is the size, which is almost 25 TB."

Cons

"I would like to see it able to capture NLP in an advanced search. It would also be good if it could capture images and segregate them in categories within a span of seconds."

"There is no room for improvement in the current version of FileNet, and I have not identified any potential new features or existing problems that require attention."

"What I would like to see is more integration."

"I think it's to the point where there are probably too many features. Every software, as it matures and graduates, grows the list of features. What many of our customers express is that it's just too complicated. They're using maybe five or ten percent of the features but they're having to pay for 100 percent. There is room for improvement in terms of simplifying it."

"We know that they're looking at documents, but we don't know what documents they're actually going and finding the most, or where the bottlenecks might be. It would be nice if there was some interconnectivity back into Bluemix to say, "Ok, you've got a workflow problem here." That would be a neat feature moving forward because we've got a lot of users that would just say, "The system is not working." We had a few threads would get hung up because they were just constantly banging on these few documents. If that were the case, if we knew that ahead of time, then we could fix that, change the search sequences to make it more efficient. But we were blind to that until the users said it's not working."

"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."

"Needs a better administration tool."

"I would like to have more governance features with more supervisory layers."

More IBM FileNet cons

"It should provide more tools to help clients upgrade solutions based on Webtop."

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

"The BPM side should be improved."

"It needs a better UI and it should also be cloud-ready. The UI has not changed in years."

"While generally secure, some noted security issues need consideration. The installation process for on-premise setup needs improvement as well."

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

"They should develop something so that bugs don't happen in our project. We make changes manually and some bugs happen."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The licensing cost of FileNet is comparable."

"Licensing costs depend on the size of the storage."

"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."

More IBM FileNet pricing and cost advice

"OpenText Documentum's pricing is good."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 somewhat expensive, it remains manageable. The company rates it between 3 and 5 be...

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; we have to use the IBM FileNet native API, which is quite outdated.

See all answers

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 great or bad.

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 department and role.

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 located.

See all answers

Comparisons

SharePoint vs IBM FileNet

Compared 17% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs IBM FileNet

Compared 16% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs IBM FileNet

Compared 8% of the time

Alfresco vs IBM FileNet

Compared 6% of the time

IBM ECM vs IBM FileNet

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

SharePoint vs OpenText Documentum

Compared 22% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs OpenText Documentum

Compared 17% of the time

Alfresco vs OpenText Documentum

Compared 13% of the time

Hyland OnBase vs OpenText Documentum

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Content Manager vs OpenText Documentum

Compared 5% of the time

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

June 2025

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenText Documentum

May 2025

Download OpenText Documentum 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

OpenText Documentum organizes, preserves and makes information
accessible, while ensuring it adheres to all privacy and security
protocols. Documentum manages content across file stores and integrates
with enterprise applications, including SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft,
to help organizations conquer information management challenges.

Documentum provides integrated support for the entire lifecycle of a
wide range of content; beyond typical office documents to include CAD files, design
templates, rich media, audio, video, instant messaging threads, blog
posts, images and more.

OpenText

Sample Customers

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

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

IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum

June 2025

Free Report: IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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