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 8.0, and holds a 10.5% mindshare in the category. M-Files is ranked #7 in DMS , and holds a 8.7% 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 101 IBM FileNet reviews

3,501 Views
2,225 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

M-Files

Read 2 M-Files reviews

263 Views
200 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

SharePoint

Read 160 SharePoint reviews

5,080 Views
4,307 Comparison Views

79% willing to recommend

IBM FileNet

M-Files

SharePoint

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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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Content Management

March 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

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.

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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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Sanil Paul

IT Service Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Streamlined collaboration through seamless integration and customization

I have been an administrator for SharePoint and have used it as an end-user for document storage. Predominantly, I've been involved in administration SharePoint helps a lot since we've moved from using it directly to using it as a backend for Teams, which makes collaboration easier. It supports…

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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

"The usability is really good. Our business users are pleased with it. They seem to get what they are looking for, and it's very efficient."

"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."

"I have found that it scales well."

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

"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."

"Provides records management functions."

"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."

"The API's extensibility and new user interface are its most valuable features."

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 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."

"It is very stable."

"The metadata services, the WCF service integration and the Voxel feature are three most valuable elements of this solution."

"The product makes it easy to manage lists, forms, searching, and security. One of the most valuable features is its integration with Active Directory."

"The product provides flexibility in collaboration."

"The ability to take Excel files and make them dynamic SharePoint lists with instant reporting capabilities has been a major benefit."

"Our staff found it simpler, as they did not have to work within a classification system."

"SharePoint's collaborative features are valuable as they enable productivity by allowing multiple users to edit documents simultaneously."

More SharePoint pros

Cons

"IBM doesn't offer new technologies every year, they offer new technologies after five years, for each release of the product."

"We'd like to use the docker, to have it containerized."

"The new software and trends with the cloud solution is a little slow. I would like them to move toward more cloud-based and microservices rather than a SaaS model. This is where the industry is going and what customers are asking for."

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

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

"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."

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

"The only downside is that it takes a dedicated staff to maintain it and the learning curve is pretty steep."

More IBM FileNet cons

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

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

"Search can be improved a lot because we are always trying to compare it with Google Search. Beyond that, it would be helpful to tag the documents."

"It will fully use your system resources."

"SharePoint sometimes cannot handle the amount of co-editing that we do."

"There are some limitations on storage."

"The web parts in SharePoint could be more intuitive for end users."

"Replication needs improvement."

"More hints and make it more user-customizable."

More SharePoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The platform is inexpensive."

"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 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."

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

"For the medium scale or large scale, I would recommend FileNet. FileNet is free of licensing expenses, thus good for the money. It is not expensive, but worth for the money, especially for medium scale and large scale industries."

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

"The cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance."

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."

"Any extended support from Microsoft is expensive."

"SharePoint is included with our Microsoft license."

"The pricing is competitive."

"The data classification and search elements are cheap."

"Licensing can be by server or by seat."

"The product is reasonably priced."

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

"The pricing is competitive."

More SharePoint pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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

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Comparison Review

it_user8925

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

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?

The product has become more expensive and requires significant investment for enterprise solutions.

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What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?

FileNet needs improvement in pricing as it has become very expensive. Also, in comparison to local solutions, the nee...

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What do you like most about SharePoint?

The search feature is valuable.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?

With SharePoint, we save by not needing multiple external licenses. Unlike Drupal ( /products/drupal-reviews ), all n...

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What needs improvement with SharePoint?

When working on a website with SharePoint Online, not many people can edit simultaneously. If I am editing one sectio...

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Comparisons

OpenText Extended ECM vs IBM FileNet

Compared 18% of the time

OpenText Documentum 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

Box vs IBM FileNet

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM FileNet Competitors

Microsoft Purview Records Management vs M-Files

Compared 15% of the time

OpenText Documentum vs M-Files

Compared 12% of the time

DocuWare vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs M-Files

Compared 7% of the time

Alfresco vs M-Files

Compared 5% of the time

More M-Files Competitors

OpenText Documentum vs SharePoint

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon WorkDocs vs SharePoint

Compared 8% of the time

WordPress vs SharePoint

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs SharePoint

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Content Manager vs SharePoint

Compared 4% of the time

More SharePoint Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM FileNet

April 2025

Download IBM FileNet product report

Buyer's Guide

Document Management Software

March 2025

Download M-Files product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint

March 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

March 2025

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