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M-Files vs SharePoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

M-Files
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (11th)
SharePoint
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
164
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (1st), Web Content Management (2nd), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (1st), Enterprise Intranet (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Content Management solutions, they serve different purposes. M-Files is designed for Document Management Software and holds a mindshare of 5.1%, down 7.7% compared to last year.
SharePoint, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Content Management, holds 11.8% mindshare, down 17.8% since last year.
Document Management Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
M-Files5.1%
Alfresco11.8%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management8.0%
Other75.1%
Document Management Software
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SharePoint11.8%
OpenText Content Management8.4%
OpenText Documentum Content Management8.0%
Other71.8%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

LN
Director of IT at JH Kelly
Good workflows, and it is easy to use with a dashboard that improves contract visibility
My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is to do a pilot first. After you do your research, do an actual pilot before you commit because everyone has nuances and you might find out that it is not what you want, or that it doesn't really do what you think it's going to do. It is not the simplest product to use but because of the robustness of its feature set in the ability with the workflows, and the APIs, to do just about anything you can imagine with it, that's very valuable. I wish it was a little easier to use because we have to spend more time than I'd like with new users, teaching them how it works. We try to hide all that from them but the setup time to get everything the way we wanted was probably two months. That is two months in one resource working on it half time a week, but it just took a lot of work to get the metadata set up, to get the workflows set up, and to get all the documents added to the repository. Now we've got versioning and we know where everything's at, the dashboard is great, but don't assume when they tell you that you'll be up and running in two weeks, that that is the truth. It takes much longer than you think. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
AnjneyBhardwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Market Research Analyst at IDC Corporate
Collaboration has improved through simplified document access and controlled sharing
SharePoint is definitely used to keep a record of our files and data. The capability is quite good because it is time-saving. I have used it only four or five times, but it has been very helpful to keep all my information in a consolidated manner. The search feature is one of the most beneficial factors that we use to filter out the latest data or the latest file as per our convenience and use case. When you have a large repository, this feature is particularly valuable. Role-based access control has been helpful while developing the knowledge platform. The roles were defined clearly, which made it easy for the four or five of us to work simultaneously and collaborate on our project in a similar manner.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using M-Files means anybody on the executive team to go in and immediately look at a dashboard and know the status of a contract."
"It offers an easy way to store unstructured content (.pdf, .doc, .xls, images) and to tag them with metadata."
"The ability to have version control and co-editing is vital to our workflows."
"For SharePoint, I believe the most valuable feature is the customization and allowing you to share and edit files and documents. Being able to share externally and the precise administration of the files in terms of giving permissions and controlling who has access to what is a very good feature."
"It has made us faster and more efficient."
"SharePoint is already moving to cloud, if you are using SharePoint online, which is cloud-based technology, it is more accessible."
"No code and low code, scalable, and stable collaboration platform. Straightforward to set up. Its support system is good and offers fast issue resolution."
"It is well supported by Microsoft."
"It has improve our organization by speeding up document sharing."
 

Cons

"The integration with other products needs to be improved."
"It does not integrate despite being part of the Microsoft family."
"We'd like to be able to upload from MS Excel to deploy tasks and use drop-down lists to collect further information."
"Search can be improved a lot because we are always trying to compare it with Google Search. Beyond that, it would be helpful to tag the documents."
"This solution would benefit from the implementation of enhanced online forms and template development capabilities."
"Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases."
"The search functionality could be improved, especially when dealing with 'lift' lists, where there are performance issues."
"SharePoint is not always intuitive to use and can be overwhelming for non-tech-savvy users."
"I have been facing some challenges when using SharePoint, as the workflows freeze at times, so there is a maintenance activity which needs to be done periodically."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They have an Optical Character Scanning module but we didn't buy it because it's ridiculously expensive."
"As usual, Microsoft’s licensing structures don’t really seem to fit the needs of their products. This leads to always paying for a project you will never use fully or always be adding to."
"Any extended support from Microsoft is expensive."
"They are about an eight in comparison to other similar products."
"SharePoint is included with our Microsoft license."
"The pricing works for us."
"It comes bundled with the Microsoft 365 pricing plans."
"Licensing can be by server or by seat."
"The pricing is competitive."
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Retailer
7%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise81
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
I do not know the difference between the prices of the two solutions; I did not work on this project.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
It is not really better; we use the same solution as before with Google Drive and the Google App solution. Sometimes I have to refresh pages more than with Google, but it does not charge; the page ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Crowe UK, Stearns Bank, Head Energy, OMV, TK Elevator
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Hyland, Microsoft, OpenText and others in Document Management Software. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.