Enterprise content management system assists enterprises in managing their digital content by supplying the capabilities required to handle business documents from creation to disposition. In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the 9 best enterprise content management systems, along with my top 4 choices, so that you can pick the best one for your organization.
The best enterprise content management systems are Alfresco, OpenText, Hyland, SharePoint, IBM Cloud Pak, M-Files, Laserfiche, Newgen, and AODocs.
Accounts
Projects
Storage
Sub-domains
Alfresco
Suits general use cases
High customer satisfaction rate
Contact for pricing
OpenText
Suits general use cases
Customized per industry
Contact for pricing
Medium to large businesses
FREE trial available
For small to large businesses
FREE trial available
Contact me, if you want your product to be reviewed
An enterprise content management system is used by enterprises to manage their content, implement their ECM strategy, and achieve best practices. These solutions can be used for different purposes such as managing the content and making it available for other departments, or for external customers.
When choosing the best ECM system for your organization, you must take your time and carefully plan your path forward in order to locate the ideal solution with optimized components, since this decision will play a significant role in achieving your business goals.
Enterprise content management system includes all of the necessary capabilities to enable enterprises to manage their information digitally in a centralized repository. It will help their operations and business goals by making information easily accessible and helpful throughout their lifecycle.
Whether you’re running a large organization or a medium business, chances are you’re creating a lot of documents. These documents need to be organized, maintained, secured and disposed of to increase productivity, reduce operations costs, and comply with different rules and regulations.
The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Market was valued at USD 47.29 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 105.56 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 25.7%. Check out this guide if you are interested to know more about related statistics.
ECM software is becoming increasingly popular – and for good reason.
They assist you in keeping track of document versions, quickly locating documents, sharing documents with various stakeholders, following up with the latest ECM trends, and automating business-related processes.
Let’s get started.
Comparison of Best Enterprise Content Management System
| Best For | Use Cases | Free Trial | Deployment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alfresco | Small to large businesses | General, banking and insurance, healthcare, government, manufacturing | FREE | Cloud, on-premise |
| OpenText | Medium to large businesses | General, Oil & Gaz, legal, banking, healthcare, automotive. | NO | Cloud, hybrid, on-premise |
| Hyland | Medium to large businesses | Oil and gas, government agencies, and healthcare providers, among others. | YES | Cloud, hybrid, on-premise |
| Microsoft SharePoint | Small to large businesses | General | YES | Cloud, on-premise |
| IBM Cloud Pak | Large businesses | General, banking, insurance, and retail. | YES | Cloud |
| M-Files | Small to medium businesses | General, construction and engineering, financial services, and manufacturing. | YES | On-premise |
| Laserfiche | Small to medium businesses | General, government, education, and financial services | YES | Cloud, on-premise |
| Newgen | Medium to large businesses | Financial, government, insurance, and healthcare. | YES | Cloud, hybrid, on-premise |
| AODocs | Small to medium businesses | Life sciences, financial, government, manufacturing | YES | Cloud |
What Is The Best Enterprise Content Management System?
Here are my top picks for the best enterprise content management systems to use this year.
Each of these ECM systems has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. Choosing the proper enterprise content management software for your business necessitates thorough preparation and real-world testing to ensure that it meets your business requirements.
1- Alfresco
Alfresco is one of the best enterprise content management systems. Its smart interface, content management, and powerful document management module have made it your go-to choice for maintaining your organization’s core documents and digital assets.
Alfresco is enterprise software that provides all the most important document management, case management, and document approval functionalities on a daily basis with its strong automated records management capabilities enabling your business to comply with rules and regulations.
Although it may be utilized in almost any industry, it has a track record of success with banking and insurance, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and content publishing companies.
The most significant aspect is their ability to continue expanding their comprehensive ECM software with modern technology to increase document lifecycle management, automation, and security.
Alfresco, founded in 2005, has over 1300 clients, 10 distinct global offices, and a customer satisfaction score of more than 90%.
PROS
- The license fee is significantly lower than other providers
- Document versioning
- Document workflow
- Easy customization
- Fine-grained role and permission
- Community support
- Digital asset management
CONS
- The user interface is not instinctive
- ECM and BPM have distinct licensing and user interfaces
- Documentation could be improved
- Restricting the deployment model to only Docker
Best for small to large businesses
PRICING
Alfresco comes with a community edition that is completely free to download and a paid edition in which you need to contact them to get the quote.
2- OpenText
OpenText is a leading enterprise content management system and communications provider with solutions such as Intelligent Capture, Records Management & Archiving, Compliance Management, document management solutions, and many more.
Their cloud based platform is an enterprise content management software, known in the market and used successfully by thousands of organizations to boost productivity and reduce costs.
OpenText extended ecm platform offers a variety of enterprise solutions such as extended ECM, core content, core sharing, archiving, document preview, and so on. In addition, they leverage AI technology for automated data capturing and document classifications which reduces human errors and increase the ability to find digital files faster.
The verticalization of their main platform to suit different sectors is their most powerful area. For example, they offer a solution aimed at the construction industry called OpenText Extended ECM for Engineering.
PROS:
- Support industry-specific use cases
- Extensive document management, document approval, and collaboration capabilities
- Automated records management (retention, preservation, etc.)
- OCR is really good with high accuracy
- Online document collaboration with annotations and redlining
- Supports AI data capturing and classifications
- Robust security model
- Metadata management
CONS:
- Long learning curve
- Integrations need improvements
- Can become costly depending on the implementation scale
Best for medium to large businesses
PRICING
Pricing cannot be decided in advance. You must contact them, and various meetings will be scheduled in order to understand the scope of your implementation and provide you with the best offer.
3- Hyland
Hyland is also one of the top enterprise content management system available in the market. They have a different product suite that helps organizations manage content, automate processes, and get the most out of their information.
Their flagship product OnBase centralizes critical business content in a single secure location and then delivers information to you whenever and wherever you need it.
With OnBase, organizations can capture documents and data, manage information in one system, access content from anywhere, manage the entire content lifecycle, integrate with other business line applications, measure process, and system performance, and store and destroy content.
Throughout its more than 25-year history, OnBase has assisted organizations with general use cases that cover all of their departments’ requirements. Furthermore, they have verticalized their core platform to better suit specific industries such as oil and gas, government agencies, and healthcare providers, among others.
PROS:
- Repository federation
- Provides scalability that is not possible anywhere else
- Integrates with many different lines of business applications
- Complete records management module
- Excellent technical support, as well as online resources, are available
- Document Workflows
- Intelligent automation
CONS:
- High licensing prices compared to other solutions
- Hosted rather than SaaS
- Support through partners can delay response in case of complex issues
Best for medium to large businesses
PRICING:
As with most ECM software vendors, you must contact them in order for them to understand the size of your organization and the modules you require in order for them to provide the appropriate licensing prices.
4- Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Sharepoint is a cloud platform for collaboration online, in the cloud, and on mobile devices. It offers a single web-based interface from which multiple servers and applications can be accessed. It provides comprehensive administrative and file management, document collaboration, and content management services.
SharePoint’s mission is to help companies unleash their creativity, maximize time, and streamline collaboration. Designed for maximum performance with the most creative work in mind, it helps professionals get more done faster.
Because of the widespread use of Microsoft products in companies, it has become the go-to product due to its ease of integration with Microsoft teams, Microsoft office apps, and other related products. However, in order to get the most out of this ECM software, some customizations must be made.
There are numerous Microsoft-certified partners who can assist you in fully customizing this program to better meet your business needs.
PROS:
- Productivity suite integration
- Third-party partner ecosystem
- Team groups (integration with MS Teams)
- Approval processes
- Clean and easy user interface
- Version control
- Document imaging
CONS:
- Need extra support
- More integration with non-Microsoft products
PRICING:
There are three plans: 5$ user/month, 10$ user/month, 23$ user/month
5- IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation is software solutions that encapsulate IBM FileNet Content Manager (for document management), IBM Enterprise Records (for records management), IBM Business Automation Workflow, IBM Business Automation Insights (reporting), IBM Document Processing (content intelligence to support content services use cases), and IBM Datacap is all available (intelligent document capture).
These enterprise content management tools have over 10k customers with a strong presence in industries such as banking, insurance, and retail.
PROS:
- Highly scalable
- Sophisticated AI and ML tools for content classification, data extraction, and image recognition
- Creates an end-to-end automation platform
- Excellent documentation
- Key features document management capabilities
- Automatically tag content
CONS:
- Declining market share
- Expensive to acquire
- Requires a lot of training and reskilling of the workforce
PRICING:
There are no clear pricing instructions however Pricing is the most frequently mentioned reason for considering alternative platforms.
6- M-Files
M-Files is an enterprise content management platform that creates a unified view of all content, no matter the system or repository within which it’s stored. M-files will be easily integrated into the workflow of office products, making them more versatile because it is compatible with Microsoft Office, Windows, Outlook, and MS SQL databases.
With M-Files, it’s easy to line up, implement, and we can even customize our workflows to support our preferences in addition as also import, exporting, or editing our data through our smartphones.
They use advanced technology such as AI to optimize information retrieval, storage, and delivery. Unlike other ECM software, they do not rely on logical hierarchies such as folders to organize and manage documents, they do it based on metadata which gives more power and control to the end-users.
They also have customized solutions for various industries, such as construction and engineering, financial services, manufacturing, and so on, to help control the challenging area of information management.
In summary, M-Files is an affordable best enterprise content management system with extensive capabilities and offers a free trial version.
PROS:
- Ease of use: their software is like navigating your windows directories.
- Organize by metadata
- Robust security
- Easy document process automation
- Built-in file viewing capabilities
- Offline document access
- Supports multiple file attachments per document
- Batch document creation
- Pay as you need (modules)
CONS:
- Windows client performance needs improvement
- Support is slow due to a shortage of professional services coverage
- Web-version should be more powerful
Best for medium to large businesses
PRICING:
As with most ECM software providers, you must contact them in order for them to understand the size of your organization and the modules you require in order for them to provide the appropriate licensing prices.
7- Laserfiche
Founded in 1987, Laserfiche is one of the oldest electronic content management software that provides an extensive list of capabilities to manage electronic documents, automate processes, and integrate with other business applications within organizations.
The combination of an intuitive interface with strong customization flexibility makes it a very strong player in the market.
Throughout their operational years, they have served a wide range of governmental entities, financial agencies, and educational institutions.
Laserfiche’s product lines are divided into two categories: Laserfiche Rio and Laserfiche Avante.
Laserfiche Rio is intended to meet the requirements of large organizations with more than 100 users. It combines eletronic content management with business process management (BPM), security and auditing, an unlimited number of servers, and a thin-client interface. DoD 5015.2-certified records management functionality, public Web portals, and production-level document capture and processing are available as add-ons. (source wikipedia)
Laserfiche Avante is an ECM suite designed for small to medium-sized businesses with fewer than 100 users. It combines content management with business process automation tools. Laserfiche Avante, which is built on the Microsoft platform, allows users to drag and drop e-mails from Outlook into Laserfiche.
Best for medium to large businesses
PROS:
- Easy to use and learn
- Intelligent search
- Extensive document management capabilities
- Extensive records management capabilities
- Workflow and forms can be developed quickly to automate document-centric processes
- Keeping up with advanced technologies
CONS:
- Documentation needs improvements
- Limited international presence
- Weak marketing and brand recognition
- Web-version should contain more functionalities to match the desktop version
- Metadata management
PRICING:
Laserfiche is available in SaaS, on-premises, and hybrid deployment options.
- Cloud: starting with 50$ per user per month up to 79$
- Self-hosted starts with 45$ per user per month up to 69$.
- For the enterprise edition, you should contact them to get a quote
8- Newgen
Newgen is the leading provider of a unified digital transformation platform that includes native automation, content services, and communication management.
It has over 100 critical governmental implementations, 1400 clients worldwide, and 17 verticalized solutions.
Coca-Cola, Philips, AstraZeneca, HSBC, ESPN, Castrol, and other companies are among their clients. They claim to have the largest ECM deployment in the world, with over 15 billion documents and over 25000 users.
I personally haven’t used this ECM software but it should be worth checking it out.
PROS:
- Multi-channel capture
- Auto document classification
- CMIS compliant
- Advanced integrated workflow capabilities
- Strong record management
CONS:
- When contacting technical support, the response time is slow
- At times, the speed becomes extremely slow
- Complex deployments
PRICING:
Newgen comes with two versions: On the cloud and on-premise. However, we didn’t find any related information covering the pricing schema. Contact them for more info.
9- AODocs
AODocs is the only enterprise content management software that is built on top of Google Drive. It provides a collaborative, user-intuitive platform that enables organizations to easily implement business-critical processes, control documents, and meet compliance requirements.
If your organization is relying on google technologies to operate, it could be the best possible ECM software to adopt as they provide excellent integration with google technologies.
Their clients are typically midsize businesses in key industries such as life sciences, manufacturing, and education.
PROS:
- Google workspace
- Growing business solution portfolio
- Integration with the Google platform
- Easy to implement and use
- The ability to design the workflow, as well as assign roles, actions, and permissions
- Revision approvals and comments history
CONS:
- Integration limitations
- No batch operations on documents
- Users may be puzzled by the distinction between drive and AOdocs
Best for small to medium companies
PRICING
It is provided as SaaS or on a private cloud however, there is no mention of pricing schema. You should contact them for a quote.
What is an enterprise content management system?
An enterprise content management system is a software that manages and stores all the content of an organization. It is a combination of various software products that work together to manage data, documents, and files.
The main goal of an ECM system is to ensure that all the content within an organization can be found, managed and shared. It also ensures the availability of access to this information at any time.
The future of ECM is bright as most organizations have realized that it is an essential aspect of any digital transformation initiative.
