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Alfresco vs Box - Intelligent Content Management comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Alfresco delivers significant ROI with cost savings, efficiency, reduced IT support, automation, and centralized document management benefits.
Sentiment score
5.1
Box's content management enhances ROI through time savings, efficient file management, and potential risk reduction associated with compliance.
Centrally managing records has helped us automate legal retention policies and reduce physical storage costs by eighty percent, saving us in costs and protecting us from massive financial penalties associated with compliance failures.
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
Alfresco provides a significant return on investment by efficiently managing documents.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Alfresco customer support is generally positive but mixed, with prompt responses and some challenges due to complex workflows.
Sentiment score
4.9
Box's customer service is praised for commitment, though response times vary, with higher-tier contracts receiving quicker support.
I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
The support team was very responsive and resolved my query within forty-five minutes, which was a good experience.
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
Typically once you do, they are able to provide assistance on whatever you need.
Manager, Technology & Integration at GlobalMac IT
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.5
Alfresco efficiently scales with growth, excelling in clustering and customization, though complex setups are required for high document counts.
Sentiment score
7.2
Box excels in scalability and adaptability, managing vast users and data efficiently, with minor admin console challenges.
Implementations needing to handle millions of documents may involve complex cluster setups requiring expert assistance.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
However, if you are looking to expand into areas with more images and videos, the scalability is somewhat limited without a developer and customization.
Agile Solutions Designer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Box - Intelligent Content Management plans have unlimited data, which is great.
Manager, Technology & Integration at GlobalMac IT
I am uncertain about its effectiveness at an enterprise level, where SharePoint might be preferred.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Alfresco is stable and reliable with few issues, though proper scaling and expertise are essential for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Box offers stable, reliable content management with strong performance and security, with rare outages quickly resolved over 17 years.
Alfresco is definitely a stable and scalable solution.
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco is generally a very stable and high-performance platform.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Box was very stable and did not have any latency issues.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Alfresco requires UI refinement, enhanced security, better tools, documentation, modern database support, and smoother integration with other systems.
Box could enhance security, search, integrations, pricing, user interfaces, offline support, and API management for improved user experience.
It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Being able to leverage something such as MongoDB, a NoSQL database as part of the architecture would be a big improvement to enable high volume in the hundreds of millions of documents.
Manager, Major Accounts at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
If Box had an AI feature to summarize and identify documents based on their contents, it would significantly enhance usability.
Lead Ai Tech And Tech Automation Engineer at a individual & family service with 11-50 employees
To open and see who is accessing the document now and see my movements across the document or the file we are sharing together.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
Additional customization with the automation workflows that Box - Intelligent Content Management offers would be helpful.
Manager, Technology & Integration at GlobalMac IT
 

Setup Cost

Alfresco has competitive pricing for large enterprises, focusing on pay-per-use with potential costs for upgrades and integrations.
Box offers competitive prices with flexible plans and discounts, valued for extensive features over competitors by enterprise users.
Since we obtained Alfresco through AWS Marketplace, we are billed for what we use.
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Pricing is considered mid-range.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
I found the pricing reasonable because when I was working for an IBM partner, Box was free for us.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
Box - Intelligent Content Management has fairly good pricing for licenses, especially if you do an annual plan.
Manager, Technology & Integration at GlobalMac IT
 

Valuable Features

Alfresco offers robust document management, integration, customization, collaboration, and user-friendly features, meeting diverse organizational needs efficiently.
Box offers secure content management with AI-driven workflows, seamless multi-device use, real-time editing, and strong governance features.
This makes the record independent of the document, which is beneficial as documents often change, and it helps avoid continual updates to the registry.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Alfresco also provides automated lifecycle management that helps us enforce legal holds, retention schedules, and secure disposition of records, keeping the files secure and ensuring that our organization remains compliant with legal requirements.
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
It enabled users to find exactly what documents they were looking for in a timely fashion, as well as to export to patients and healthcare members what they needed to do for Medicaid, Medicare, or any other secondary insurance, including the documents they needed to fill out as well as prescriptions.
Agile Solutions Designer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Box had a very easy-to-use search feature and a good user interface on its website, which was faster and better than SharePoint.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I find the synchronization feature most valuable in Box. When I use multiple devices, it syncs them together and gives excellent results.
Senior Projects Manager at Tech-hub
The best features of Box for me include the structured file organizing, which is the most important part I found.
Lead Ai Tech And Tech Automation Engineer at a individual & family service with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Ranking in Document Management Software
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Box - Intelligent Content M...
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
9th
Ranking in Document Management Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (10th), Digital Asset Management (3rd), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 5.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Box - Intelligent Content Management is 4.1%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alfresco5.9%
Box - Intelligent Content Management4.1%
Other90.0%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jaspreet k - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of The Operations at Flash AI
Streamlined compliance workflows have reduced manual document handling and improved governance
Alfresco offers many features that I value highly. The first is the open architecture that provides extensive REST API and support of open standards such as CMIS, allowing our development team to easily extend their capabilities. The second valuable feature is the activity workflow engine, a powerful BPMN compliant workflow engine that automates complex and multi-step processes natively alongside the content. Another favorite feature is smart document processing. Due to its built-in AI capabilities, Alfresco can automatically classify documents based on our business requirements and tagging. This directly helps us find those documents by tagging them and locating them more easily. The smart document processing in Alfresco has helped us extract information via OCR and identify entities without requiring manual data entry, as it works on a metadata approach that is directly searched via OCR. The text is assigned as a token in the backend, and using the AI capabilities, Alfresco can automatically classify and read via OCR. Alfresco also provides automated lifecycle management that helps us enforce legal holds, retention schedules, and secure disposition of records, keeping the files secure and ensuring that our organization remains compliant with legal requirements.
Jeremey Kenney - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Technology & Integration at GlobalMac IT
Secure file governance has improved collaboration and automation for client document workflows
The best features are around security, being able to set up different groups, and the governance features are really great. The new AI functionality that they released has been pretty handy. For governance and security, the audit trail capability is excellent. We are able to see when people interact or change files or if something was deleted, and we can go through and review that audit trail. The AI has been great for creating different workflows that we are able to execute. When a form gets submitted into Box - Intelligent Content Management or a file is uploaded, there are certain automations that we can put in place to where it can essentially generate tickets in our system for new users or other tasks.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
Pricing, setup costs, and licensing are interesting aspects of Alfresco for our organization. We do not rely solely on licensing as it is based on a billing model rather than just licensing. Since ...
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
Alfresco could be improved in terms of maintenance and could have a simpler architecture regarding search functionality. If I change the metadata, I have to perform re-indexing of all the content f...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
My main use case for Alfresco is as a content management system at an enterprise level. A specific example of how I use Alfresco as an enterprise level content management system is for sharing docu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Box?
Box - Intelligent Content Management has fairly good pricing for licenses, especially if you do an annual plan. We always suggest our clients do a month-to-month plan so that they have flexibility ...
What needs improvement with Box?
I would suggest more out-of-the-box integrations as far as the automations go. Box - Intelligent Content Management has many templates, and you can customize some things, but there appear to be som...
What is your primary use case for Box?
Box - Intelligent Content Management is used for file storage for clients and provides a secure way to share files with other people as well as internally with our team. Box - Intelligent Content M...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfresco vs. Box - Intelligent Content Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.