Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

"The most valuable feature is access control."
"The important features to me are that it is stable, scalable, and the integration between this platform and the other platforms is very good."
"The most valuable features of FileNet are its comprehensive ability to store content, to get insights from the content, and to use that content for making decisions routed through workflow."
"IBM FileNet was more scalable."
"In terms of stability, we haven't experienced any big technical issues or downtime with IBM FileNet, which is a difference compared to smaller products."
"Centralized our business documents."
"We have made our service routes more efficient, as far as moving work through the system and being able to react to customer situations and needs better by improving things, such as, address and beneficiary changes. I know that we have definitely made improvements in the process."
"The document collaboration is very good. There is something called Pink Note where departments can collaborate within the document. It has a built-in viewer to see any type of document."
"The most valuable feature is that the documents are kept secure."
"The most valuable feature is the good automation engine, which helps in reducing the development cost and allows easy development of applications."
"It is quite good."
"We like Documentum for its capacity and reliability."
"We primarily use it for storing documents. We host a variety of documents in OpenText Documentum. This includes raw files, analyzed files, and documents in multiple formats."
"It provides possibilities for us to save documents and supporting the business process while doing so."
"I recommend Documentum as it supports big systems and offers good integration."
"The product is tamper-proof and enables us to return to the document source, which is helpful in legal issues."
 

Cons

"There is no room for improvement in the current version of FileNet, and I have not identified any potential new features or existing problems that require attention."
"During the initial setup, all the details and different technical things that we were trying to figure out became complex."
"It would be nice to have additional integration features, which could be integration with IoOT-based products and solutions that also have automation requirements on the IOT side. Anything can be integrated from a Gateway or API perspective would be a plus."
"The basic and fundamental point about FileNet is that the interface is very bad. It's just not appealing so people are reluctant to use it."
"We know that they're looking at documents, but we don't know what documents they're actually going and finding the most, or where the bottlenecks might be. It would be nice if there was some interconnectivity back into Bluemix to say, "Ok, you've got a workflow problem here." That would be a neat feature moving forward because we've got a lot of users that would just say, "The system is not working." We had a few threads would get hung up because they were just constantly banging on these few documents. If that were the case, if we knew that ahead of time, then we could fix that, change the search sequences to make it more efficient. But we were blind to that until the users said it's not working."
"The setup process is very complex."
"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."
"​I would like to see Azure AD added."
"OpenText Documentum needs to improve its support."
"The user interface can be a bit more intuitive."
"OpenText Documentum has a lot of scope for improvement in terms of adding some AI integrations."
"OpenText Documentum's user interface could be improved a little bit."
"Documentum is a very robust system. Everything can be improved, but at this time, I do not have anything in particular. If anything, they can put our software in their standard."
"In BPM could be better. Its GUI needs the ability to build more rules. This is a crucial feature. For example, OpenText has some products that allow you to control your checks, invoices, and so on. They have exciting approaches to converting pictures to text, but the tool for business process management isn't easy to use. The GIU is not so good."
"The price is quite high as the licensing prices are significant."
"The biggest issue for us is the price of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Yearly, we pay for the maintenance, which is $20,000."
"The tool is expensive, and I rate its pricing a ten out of ten."
"The solution saves time and money. It helps us to be able to accomplish the goals of our business, as opposed to being tangled in the weeds of what we could do."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"IBM FileNet is an expensive solution."
"1. It will be more expensive than estimated to setup. 2. You will need to double the staff while you are running the old system and installing the new system. 3. Depending on the number of documents to be migrated, make sure you understand the potentially massive amount of time and effort required to migrate the existing content to the new platform."
"The licensing cost of FileNet is comparable."
"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."
"The price is considered affordable now."
"OpenText Documentum has announced a new licensing model, which could be more expensive."
"It is quite an expensive product."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"OpenText Documentum's pricing is good."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.