5 DocuWare alternatives for document management in 2024

As businesses move toward having more distributed workforces, having a way to store, track, and access your documents remotely has never been more important.

DocuWare is one of the leaders in this space. The platform places an emphasis on cloud-based workflows, allowing teams to access, edit, and upload files from anywhere using any device. Its mobile app is particularly powerful, which is one of the most important features of document management software, according to Taylor Pettis, director of growth marketing and systems at Intel 471.

But DocuWare isn’t the only document management software on the market. There are dozens of alternatives to choose from. Here are five of the best.

Templafy

Templafy is one of the leading DocuWare alternatives, and any business looking to streamline its workflows should consider it. You can integrate apps that you use on a daily basis — such as Salesforce, Microsoft, and Box — into the Templafy platform, and you can create a new file for multiple apps and manage it from a single feed. You can also use the platform on any device and access documents from anywhere.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution with Templafy — everything is customizable based on the needs of your business. The modular nature of the platform means businesses can pick and choose which modules they need and which they don’t, streamlining the user experience.

eFileCabinet

eFileCabinet is another DocuWare alternative and a great way to centralize the storage of all your documents. It offers templates to streamline document creation permissions, and notifications let you keep track of changes to shared documents. File sharing, version control, and file requests are easy to implement through secure URLs.

If you weren’t satisfied with a previous version of eFileCabinet, it’s well worth giving it another shot. A redesigned interface makes for a cleaner and more intuitive user experience, and the platform now integrates with Citrix ShareFile to make collaboration even easier.

Navigating the platform is straightforward, says Michael Graw at TechRadar. There’s “a three-panel design that enables you to view your entire folder directory, the files within a selected folder, and a preview of an individual file,” he writes. “There’s also a search bar for quick document searches and a favorites panel for easy access to your most-used folders.”

Alfresco

Alfresco is a comprehensive document management system that lets you manage documents across more than 60 applications, including Google Drive, Microsoft 365, and IBM FileNet. It’s a popular DocuWare alternative, boasting more than 11 million customers in 190 countries. It’s also a cloud-native and open-source solution, with support for open standards and APIs, making it easy to customize it to your business needs.

Alfresco has a lot of features as well. There’s the standard document storage and management features present in all of the solutions in this list, but, on top of that, Alfresco boasts a robust set of security features and powerful search capabilities.

SharePoint

If your business already uses a lot of Microsoft products, then SharePoint is an obvious DocuWare alternative. It naturally integrates with all other Microsoft programs, which makes storing, sharing, and accessing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files secure and easy.

But there’s so much more to SharePoint than being part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Even if you don’t use any of their products, SharePoint still makes for an excellent document management tool.

It’s particularly powerful for large organizations, giving them the ability to create individual sites for different departments or projects. Each SharePoint site has its own document storage, security settings, design, and other features. In other words, your teams can customize the platform however they see fit.

M-Files

M-Files is a good document management solution for large teams that want to remove friction from their content management processes while keeping everything as secure and accessible as possible.

It’s particularly powerful for Microsoft-based teams, thanks to a deep integration with Microsoft 365. Users can build workflows, assign advanced permissions, and connect with others without leaving a Microsoft application.

That doesn’t make the platform hard to use, though. In fact, business.com’s Adam Uzialko rates M-Files as “the easiest-to-use document management software solution.” He adds that the design is what makes the platform particularly easy to use: “Its sleek and intuitive user interface offers the familiar feel of Windows File Explorer, reducing the learning curve for new users.”

M-Files offers AI capabilities that take document management to the next level. Upload a document to M-Files, and the platform will automatically organize it based on its content and metadata. It also detects duplicate documents based on file content and groups them together to give you the option of deleting unnecessary copies. You can even connect your existing network to the platform to have the AI tool sort and store your documents automatically.

Image by: Zan