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IBM FileNet vs OpenText Documentum Content Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 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
6.6
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenText Documentum Content...
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of IBM FileNet is 8.4%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Documentum Content Management is 10.6%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Documentum Content Management10.6%
IBM FileNet8.4%
Other81.0%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

RTHUR BRUNO - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided robust content management but requires simplification in configuration and usability
We almost do not utilize the automation capabilities of IBM FileNet to streamline our business processes. The process automation and business automation features are barely used. Currently, we primarily use it to store content. We are now trying to use all of the functionalities of IBM FileNet, but we have not yet utilized the full capacity of the system. We are trying to reduce redundancy with IBM FileNet by enhancing our business rules. However, we still have significant redundancy. IBM FileNet can help us reduce redundancy, but we need to understand the tool and use all the functionalities to accomplish this. Ease of use with IBM FileNet is a disadvantage of this tool. It is complex and hard to use. When we try to set up IBM FileNet, we have many questions. We do not understand what we need to do in IBM FileNet. There are many configurations we must make but do not know how to implement. While IBM FileNet is very reliable, it is very difficult to set up. When reading the documentation about IBM FileNet, it appears to be very reliable and secure, but setting up configurations, access rules, authorization, and authentication seems to be very challenging.
Salih çakır - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly content management but needs more customizations
We use OpenText Documentum for managing the command life cycle and for content management Documentum helps by saving time during daily operations. The product is user-friendly. The BPM side should be improved. It would be beneficial to have more ability to customize features for specific use…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Provides records management functions."
"The most critical benefit has been ease of use. It speeds along our development helping us go to market a lot sooner."
"The most valuable features of IBM File Manager are workflow, content, and process capabilities."
"IBM FileNet supports our document management and compliance processes."
"[The most valuable features are] scalability and ease of use. These features are important because the customer where we have deployed it has millions of documents... And over the last five years, the volume of the documents has been increasing. It's handling all of them and without any errors."
"The most valuable feature for me is the possibility to share and to collaborate, the possibility to connect FileNet with many other IBM products as well. It helps avoid the possibility of creating "island applications." We have an ecosystem where everything can be interconnected."
"It provides good stability and scalability for huge enterprises as well."
"The application, in terms of durability, has been able to withstand the usage, given that it was installed in 2003 and it's still working."
"OpenText Documentum is a robust choice for enterprise-level document management."
"The storage of metadata content, workflows, and life cycles are the most valuable features of OpenText Documentum."
"It has reduced the amount of paper documents; reducing time and errors in the process."
"The product is user-friendly."
"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 is quite good."
"The most valuable feature is the good automation engine, which helps in reducing the development cost and allows easy development of applications."
"OpenText Documentum's composition is good. It is convenient and straight out of the box."
 

Cons

"The new software and trends with the cloud solution is a little slow. I would like them to move toward more cloud-based and microservices rather than a SaaS model. This is where the industry is going and what customers are asking for."
"The analytics in FileNet are too complicated and they consume too much infrastructure, memory, and CPU. They're too expensive to work with."
"IBM has a lot of documentation but the kind of information in a lot of the documents can be confusing to our clients. It would be easier if they used video tutorials. Right now, the information is too hard to understand, and there is a lot of it. If they used videos I think FinalNet would be easy to use for an end-user."
"We would like to have more automation of rollout solutions."
"Needs a better administration tool."
"IBM doesn't offer new technologies every year, they offer new technologies after five years, for each release of the product."
"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."
"I would like to have easier steps for setting up the application. They should have an easy one step process for the whole installation. Right now, you have to know the application well to set it up and have IT expertise."
"The price is quite high as the licensing prices are significant."
"It can be somewhat cumbersome for the operations team since it’s not a cloud instance"
"It's difficult to manage and customize Documentum."
"The biggest issue for us is the price of the product."
"OpenText Documentum needs to improve its support."
"The main issue is the software's performance when storing around 10 million or more documents. It becomes slow and needs improvement. Perhaps it's a cloud-related issue, but it needs to be addressed. It could be due to our S3 bucket or something else. Nevertheless, this is a significant challenge we're facing."
"It needs a better UI and it should also be cloud-ready. The UI has not changed in years."
"OpenText Documentum has a lot of scope for improvement in terms of adding some AI integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has reduced operating costs by reducing the amount of manual work needed."
"FileNet is quite expensive, although Documentum is expensive too."
"It is still a leading ECM solution provider, however the cost to implement and maintain are higher than other solutions."
"FileNet is not cheap, but you absolutely get what you pay for. ​"
"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 cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance."
"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 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."
"It is quite an expensive product."
"OpenText Documentum's pricing is good."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"OpenText Documentum has announced a new licensing model, which could be more expensive."
"The price is considered affordable now."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise74
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
 

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: September 2025.
868,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.