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IBM FileNet vs M-Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (4th)
M-Files
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Content Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM FileNet is designed for Enterprise Content Management and holds a mindshare of 10.4%, up 9.6% compared to last year.
M-Files, on the other hand, focuses on Document Management Software, holds 7.9% mindshare, up 6.2% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management
Document Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

WolfgangPichler - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate, and enables our clients to guarantee compliance
The area of migrations to new versions must be made easier. It's quite good that they have now begun to improve the API area, to modernize the interfaces, but there's always a very big investment involved in migrating from one version to another. That prohibits rolling out new functionalities to customers. It's not so easy. You can't release a new version every three months to bring in new capabilities. That is the old-fashioned, the way it worked ten or 20 years ago. That is bad. In that area, they really must improve. We have FileNet, Content Manager, and TSM in our own installation. We migrated that installation three years ago to version 5.12. Now we have to migrate to 5.25 to bring in new facilities, and it's a big task. We have to do it in addition to our other tasks where we support customers. We need a parallel machine and to set it up there and to migrate step-by-step, then test it and roll it out. It's not so easy. That is a big area where there is much to be done to satisfy the needs of customers.
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.

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."
"Instead storing our documents offsite, we are storing all of our documents electronically."
"The most valuable features for us are Wex (Watson) for search, Datacap for OCR/ICR, and Automation Anywhere for RPA."
"IBM FileNet supports our document management and compliance processes."
"It saves our customers time by 30 to 40 percent by eliminating the time to process paper."
"[The most valuable features are] scalability and ease of use. These features are important because the customer where we have deployed it has millions of documents... And over the last five years, the volume of the documents has been increasing. It's handling all of them and without any errors."
"The API's extensibility and new user interface are its most valuable features."
"Provides records management functions."
"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."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, there can be issues with the database connections. FileNet has too many outages because things are broken in the database."
"For end-users there is a lack of administrative features. The interface of basic FileNet is not very good."
"The FileNet API seems like it is very difficult and not transparent."
"I think some of the technical pieces, when implementing it ourselves, were something of a roadblock until we discovered the Concierge. Those are some things they have to work on."
"There are only a few products large enterprises can choose from, and it doesn't really matter which one as it often depends on the consultants and the team implementing the solution."
"I would like to see in FileNet integrated with Watson, which can read something and send it without any human contact or interaction."
"The application's processing engineer needs to be more advanced."
"Our client feels FileNet does not provide them with content searchability. They feel it's cumbersome. They're only using Metadata. If the Metadata is not well-populated, it becomes a problem to retrieve a document."
"The integration with other products needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"FileNet is quite expensive, although Documentum is expensive too."
"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."
"​There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need.​​"
"It has reduced operating costs by reducing the amount of manual work needed."
"Yearly, we pay for the maintenance, which is $20,000."
"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."
"IBM FileNet is an expensive solution."
"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Insurance Company
9%
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?
It depends on the business partner providing the solution to the customer. We have an ESA contract with IBM which allows us to offer the solution at a competitive price, providing added value when ...
What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?
The setup process is very complex, and I would prefer if it were easier. A modern interface would also be an enhancement.
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.