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M-Files vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 26, 2025

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

M-Files
Ranking in Document Management Software
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Document Management Software
2nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (29th), Microsoft Security Suite (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Document Management Software category, the mindshare of M-Files is 8.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 13.0%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Document Management Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management13.0%
M-Files8.7%
Other78.3%
Document Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

LN
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.
Al Mcpherson - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides clear visibility into our entire information estate, reduces our time to action, and saves us time
The integration across Azure is straightforward. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management has been a game-changer for our data governance. We now have clear visibility into our entire information estate, allowing us to pinpoint data location and implement effective classification. Even though real-time compliance isn't a current need, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management offers that capability for future requirements. Purview Data Lifecycle Management has reduced our time to action – since we previously lacked such a tool, it's effectively cut our response time in half. Purview Data Lifecycle Management has saved us one working day per month.

Quotes from Members

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

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."
"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
 

Cons

"The integration with other products needs to be improved."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about DocuWare, Microsoft, OpenText and others in Document Management Software. Updated: August 2025.
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