No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Alfresco vs SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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

Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (1st)
SAP Extended Enterprise Con...
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 5.7%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alfresco5.7%
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management1.7%
Other92.6%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Albano Garcia - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Centralized document management has boosted search efficiency and supports secure collaboration
The best features Alfresco offers in my experience include the intelligent search, because sometimes you need to find a document, and this solution provides a full-text search across different document types and formats, which is perhaps the most remarkable feature, along with version control. The solution tracks all the changes of the documents and prevents accidental overrides or other issues. The intelligent search has made my work easier because you can just put a word. Perhaps you are thinking of finding something related to a client or a specific MSA agreement, and with one or two words, the intelligent search proposes all the documents that include this word, facilitating finding the information very easily and very quickly. This is the most important feature for us.
MukeshGiri - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Architect at Freeport LNG Development, L.P.
Offers advanced search capabilities, integrates seamlessly with SAP and efficiently stores non-essential business content
Consider you have some use cases. For example, something for your accounting or procurement department. And you purchase equipment, machines, and plants for plant-related operations. Essentially, there will be manuals and basically anything and everything related to your particular equipment. So, where do the equipment entries go? They go into SAP. Depending on your SAP deployment, it can go into some database. Most companies these days are talking about SAP HANA and stuff like that. So it will be stored in SAP HANA. But, these documentation, drawings, manuals, and help files for these big pieces of equipment, where do they go? That’s where Extended ECM for SAP comes into the picture. All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access. So as a user in the procurement department or the accounting department, or an engineering department where you are using SAP for asset management entries inside your system. All those related documents, drawings, manuals, and files have to be stored somewhere. If you store them in SAP, it will be a costly implementation going forward. After maybe a couple of years, you will realize that it’s too much to deal with because HANA database will be too costly. There will not be much business value because you cannot utilize a lot of search and cool features inside your application from an SAP perspective. That’s where you will integrate SAP. For example, SAP Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. One of the modules SAP provides is SAP Plant Maintenance. So what you will do is deploy Extended ECM for SAP, then try something called SAP Plant Maintenance, Extended ECM for SAP Plant Maintenance. The content maintenance, manuals, files, drawings, and related stuff, its details or tags, or any kind of stuff is stored in your SAP. But anything and everything else is pushed through this integration into Extended ECM platform. So now it is available to be utilized by your business user who knows nothing about SAP. They only live and breathe in a different management system. They can look into these details depending on what kind of integration has been done for that company. So that’s one use case. Second use case will be in SAP itself. Now, if you are an SAP user, you have this information readily available at your fingertips. Anything goes wrong in your maintenance or any kind of management, you can look into these details, which are readily available because this documentation lifecycle is being managed by Extended ECM for SAP. It will give you extended storage capabilities within your SAP application. So it will be a two-way integration, essentially. Similar, wider features will be available within Extended ECM platform. Within SAP, you have these extra features called business attachments or business content retrieval. Those business contents are stored inside Extended ECM, and those features will be available within your SAP GUI from an SAP perspective. So it’s a win-win situation for both worlds.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Alfresco is the most widely used open source ECM in the world and it has characteristics that I really like such as a Java based platform, lots of integration points, many protocols for accessing it, advanced workflow support, scripting, easily customizable user interface, a concept of a group/team based working area called site."
"Alfresco is a very good product that has very good inbuilt features, and at the same time, it is customizable and we can customize this product the way we want."
"The initial setup was straightforward, because Alfresco also provides a stack installer that includes the required supporting software."
"Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by improving the accessibility of documents across the enterprise, serving as a centralized location for all documents from every business unit."
"We are happy with Alfresco, believing it to be a very good and competitive solution in price as a great content management solution."
"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."
"If you are looking for a product which has all the common functionalities such as document and media management, record management, workflows, document indexing and searching, then in that case, Alfresco is the platform that you need."
"The features which are most valuable to us are rapid deployment, ease of installation, ease of use, and Linux platform support."
"The integration capabilities of the product are pretty good."
"All these integrations are through a one-way push, essentially, but with two-way access."
 

Cons

"Alfresco could be improved in terms of maintenance and could have a simpler architecture regarding search functionality."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality. Currently, for document capture functionality (ocr, read document metadata automatically, automatic document classification), Alfresco needs to be integrated with document capture such as: Kofax, Ephesoft, etc., while other Alfresco competitors already make document capture functionality as their default functionality."
"We would like to see improvement in the numbers of documents that can be managed by the repository."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"There is need to improve features such as the record management and case management in the product."
"Technical Support: Average, this might be because I am quite experienced and the questions I have might be difficult to find an answer to quickly as I have probably already exhausted most solution possibilities before I contact support."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The deployment could be costly because of resource availability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for Alfresco is expensive - not the maximum, but close. There are also extra costs once you start building integrations, as implementation seems to be very costly."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management by OpenText, SAP Extended ECM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Metropolitan Utilities District, MAN Diesel & Turbo
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfresco vs. SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.