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IBM Maximo vs IFS Cloud Platform 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 Maximo
Ranking in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Billing Software (3rd)
IFS Cloud Platform
Ranking in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
CRM (22nd), Customer Experience Management (7th), Field Service Management (2nd), Help Desk Software (12th), ERP (14th), Activity Based Costing Software (7th), Local Government CRM (6th), IT Asset Management (10th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (11th), License Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) category, the mindshare of IBM Maximo is 28.7%, up from 27.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IFS Cloud Platform is 9.7%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Jose Pedro Muñoz - PeerSpot reviewer
A very strong and powerful tool in the market preferred by a variety of industries
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. Three levels of support in IBM. The first one is a fixed level, while levels two and three are very good. Here, level one is not very good, as it takes time to go from level one to level two and from level two to level three. So, level one is of low capacity.
Brendan Fisher - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust, customizable, and modern
IFS is a very large and complex software, and implementation of IFS can be challenging and may lead to a difficult lengthy project. It can take between 12 and 24 months in some cases to deploy. I have found that not all clients are fully aware of how big the task is that they're undertaking when they make a decision to move to software like this. Companies need to be more aware of the complexity of an ERP implementation project and while I fully recommend moving to IFS, it is not easy and does require business change when adopting an ERP solution. New features are a difficult ask - I work across multiple industries and everyone would probably choose a different feature. Maybe BIM in Construction or Customs link-ups for importers/exporters.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We were doing all kinds of paperwork for every type of order and to maintain our assets but with the use of the IBM Maximo application, we can automate a lot of the processes."
"The large range of configurability of the product is great, since everyone has a different way of doing things."
"​Maximo is very stable. We really do not have problem with stability.​"
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"I have found Work Order management the most valuable feature. Additionally, it is a very robust and powerful solution."
"IBM Maximo is the best software for assets management."
"We are very thankful to have IBM integrated with our own Legacy cloud-based system"
"The ability to configure and integrate it with other solutions for ERP."
"All the modules are valuable in their own right, but everything has to go through the ERP. IFS has done an excellent job integrating the various modules to complete these processes. My expertise is in the finance module, but I have used the other verticals. It's an all-around good product."
"IFS Applications is an all-in-one solution for finance, accounting, and production."
"The workflow of the solution is very good."
"When it comes to financing, the solution has helped us to concentrate finance functions like accounting processes in one system. This includes about 70 internal entities around the world."
"The financial posting controls are quite handy. The user interface is really friendly, highly flexible, and pretty intuitive for end users."
"Feature-wise, I like the way it provides inventory details...It is a stable solution."
"A high level of ERP can be handled in IFS."
"I like the connectivity and interfaces. In V10, it's easy to modify the interfaces and layouts, but it's becoming more complicated in the cloud. IFS is excellent at asset maintenance and incident management. They have specialized modules for IFS that cover incident and asset management and everything else connected to finance. The reporting in IFS is also easy to use."
 

Cons

"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is easy and one is difficult, I rate the setup process a two since it is very complicated."
"I feel that the interface is a little too complicated with a large number of fields to enter."
"Areas for improvement include: an enhanced Service Catalog on Mobile; Agent intelligence; better dashboards for KPIs."
"IBM Maximo can improve the financial support and financial application, to make it more similar to an ERP as opposed to an EAM. Overall they can improve the financial processes."
"It's quite reliable, but new versions often are not too stable. They bring in enhancements but they break other stuff."
"Although you can create notifications with Maximo, the configuration and options could be improved."
"Areas for improvement would be the user interface and support for Arabic. They could also be more customer-oriented."
"Aspects of HR and payroll could be better."
"The user interface can be improved. When you're clicking through the screens, there are some icons or symbols that really need updating and would be more useful and noticeable if they are aesthetically pleasing."
"I have seen that one of the areas that my company has identified for improvement might be the rental management capabilities within the solution."
"We would like to see AI-driven CSI functions built into the tool that would allow us to quickly tie our improvement goals to metrics and activities, so Assyst will suggest the next steps to help us get closer to our goals."
"Sometimes from the sales perspective, clients don't always fully understand how large a task or a project they're getting involved in when they decide, "We're going to switch across to IFS." They could probably do a little bit more, maybe around preparing people for these projects."
"Ability to place approval check-points in the custom workflow, so clients can decide what they want it."
"IFS uses Crystal Report mostly, which isn't too user-friendly. Developing reports isn't easy and requires a lot of dev time. Since SAP bought it, Crystal Report has become more complicated to use on IFS. You have a dashboard for reporting that is good, but it's incomplete. Most of our clients use Power BI or some additional tooling for BI."
"I'm a business analyst, so I do a lot of customer-facing work. I take calls from businesses I have to troubleshoot. One thing that bugs me is the error messages you get from IFS. If I get an error message, I have to dig to find the cause because, often, the error message doesn't precisely describe the problem. It'll hint about where the problem lies, but you have to work to find the root cause. It doesn't help in my situation. You expect an error message to point to the field or what is causing the issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay for what you get. There are lots of options depending on how you would like to implement Maximo."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"​Explore internal processes in order to evaluate the correct number of users in each Maximo module, then evaluate the different offers of pricing and licensing.​"
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"There are varying license levels that you can purchase."
"The pricing is relatively high compared to competitors."
"IFS Applications are competitive in terms of pricing compared to other vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, and Epicor. They are generally cheaper, especially for licensing costs."
"It is better to buy implementation services from IFS than from partners"
"The product is reasonably priced."
"Ask for all-inclusive pricing, as they are pretty flexible if you ask for custom models."
"Licensing is on an annual basis, with no additional costs."
"IFS Applications is expensive software, but it's on par with SAP and Oracle. It's for large enterprises and government entities and not for small and medium-sized enterprises. They have one licensing model, but if you want to have a module-specific license, they provide component-based licenses. Unlike SAP and Oracle, it doesn't have different levels of licensing. It's one level of licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world.
What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
Though I liked it a lot, I think it was lagging a lot. It was very slow due to the lagging issues. So that was kind of frustrating, considering how slow it was while functioning. The aforementioned...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world. With IBM Maximo,...
What do you like most about IFS Applications?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten since it is an extremely scalable solution that can be used for various use cases with thousands of users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IFS Applications?
The product is reasonably priced. The costs are justified by the value provided, considering the comprehensive features and minimal need for customization. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.
What needs improvement with IFS Applications?
I am not able to recall much about batch. Documentation-wise, they need more. There is not much available online, and the documentation availability is on the lower side compared to other products,...
 

Also Known As

Maximo
IFS Applications, Assyst, IFS Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
China Airlines, Electrolux Group, Babcock, Cimcorp, Sky, Multiplex, Veolia. 
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Maximo vs. IFS Cloud Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.