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IBM FileNet vs OpenText Documentum Content Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 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

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 Content...
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of IBM FileNet is 9.4%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Documentum Content Management is 12.1%, 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ashish Shelar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"It allows for multiple people to access content simultaneously."
"The most valuable feature for me is the possibility to share and to collaborate, the possibility to connect FileNet with many other IBM products as well. It helps avoid the possibility of creating "island applications." We have an ecosystem where everything can be interconnected."
"If we run into problems, which is inevitable (and we run into problems all the time), we get quick responses and good solutions back from the technical support."
"FileNet is very user-friendly... We have business users using and it is quite friendly for them."
"We shred all our paper and no longer need the cabinet space. We used to have about six to 12 inches of cabinet space per customer, which is now gone."
"Stability is really good. We fairly recently upgraded a version of it and have not been having any problems. The resources seem to be really good with this version; it is a little easier to troubleshoot issues."
"It is quite good."
"It has the ability to categorize and search."
"I am satisfied with OpenText Documentum so far; it has great integration capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the management."
"The most valuable feature of Documentum for our content management needs is its ability to segregate access based on department and role."
"The most valuable feature is that the documents are kept secure."
"We like Documentum for its capacity and reliability."
"It has reduced the amount of paper documents; reducing time and errors in the process."
 

Cons

"​I would like to see the dashboard be a little bit more robust and a little more user-friendly"
"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."
"If I had a concern, it would be that we are sometimes not getting to the root cause of the issues from a technical standpoint as quickly as we should. For the most part, it's good. However, when things get a bit dicey with more involved issues, we have had some delays in getting feedback. If I had a concern, it's around the technical support and their responses in regards to things like root cause analysis."
"The only downside is that it takes a dedicated staff to maintain it and the learning curve is pretty steep."
"It is stable as long as you create the right environment. We have had issues at times, but just because of configuration issues."
"The FileNet API seems like it is very difficult and not transparent."
"Currently, our primary ERP system is SAP S/4HANA. Despite this, we have encountered difficulties integrating the solution with it, which remains an unresolved challenge for our team."
"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."
"One area for improvement in OpenText Documentum is its handling of outdated documents, especially technical ones."
"They should develop something so that bugs don't happen in our project. We make changes manually and some bugs happen."
"The product needs to improve the way documents are logged together. I believe running it on the cloud or containerization will bring value to it. The tool's Time to Market and deployment cycle need to be improved. Finding suitable training materials for OpenText Documentum is also a bottleneck. If we can find the training modules easily, we can bring together people, give them quick training, and start working on the deployment. It can help with quick outputs."
"It's difficult to manage and customize Documentum."
"It needs a better UI and it should also be cloud-ready. The UI has not changed in years."
"The documentation often leaves customers feeling somewhat frustrated, as OpenText seems to expect customers to remind them constantly about the need for better documentation, as they don't provide clear guidance on their documentation practices."
"An area that needs to improve is how to reduce storage space on the AWS site."
"OpenText Documentum has a lot of scope for improvement in terms of adding some AI integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool is expensive, and I rate its pricing a ten out of ten."
"​There are lots of components to the product. Make sure before you invest that you know which components you need.​​"
"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."
"IBM FileNet is an expensive solution."
"FileNet is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for. ​"
"We use extraction. Therefore, we can see 80 to 85 percent accuracy on data extraction. This reduces the manual indexing part, which is definitely a gain on performance efficiency."
"Licensing costs depend on the size of the storage."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The price is considered affordable now."
"OpenText Documentum has announced a new licensing model, which could be more expensive."
"OpenText Documentum's pricing is good."
"It is quite an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dell EMC Documentum, Documentum , Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FileNet vs. OpenText Documentum Content Management and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.