Apple iCloud vs. iManage Work

Our growing organization uses about 95% Apple hardware. The Apple iCloud functionality across our organization ensures interfaces and synchronization that makes information workflow seamless. The cost structure and limited AI functionality keeps us dependent on products like Microsoft and Google and unable to put all of our cloud "eggs" into the Apple basket.

Incentivized

Legal team using this product helps the team to better access documents securely within their email app (Outlook) and the user experience to control the document is excellent and being able to make it private and isolate confidential documents during a court session is very important and iManage has met our requirements. Also, being able to access instantly from users' workstation/laptop devices is very important and iManage plugin for outlook has satisfied our Business requirements.

Incentivized

• Syncing files, appointments, Notes and contacts. If I'm away from home, and set an appointment using my phone, that appointment automatically updates real time to my home laptop and vice-versa.
• It stores files (e.g photos) nicely
• Once it's set up, it's fairly easy to use.

Incentivized

• Very reliable, once setup it is usually pretty flawless outside of Outlook-related issues.
• Simple and easy to use organization of files and groups.
• Customizable for different departments or sections to divide up access and partition document system.
• Allows collaboration with outside parties and makes sharing documents quick and easy.

Incentivized

• Customization - iCloud is great at the stuff it does well. But it lacks features that some competitors (in Google Drive or Dropbox) do really well. API support for third-party apps is really great for some other people.
• Remote use - Managing or accessing information from iCloud while not on one of your logged-in apple devices can sometimes be an issue. From a work computer for example. It doable, but the experience is much less user-friendly.
• Ability to edit documents on the cloud similar to google docs or some other competitors

Incentivized

• Proper implementation of the software is important. We have a client who also has iManage for their large in-house legal department but the implementation seems to have not been as thorough so their experience with the software has not been as positive.
• Again, proper implementation is key to how powerful the software can be. For a long while our organization did not have the full-text searching implemented, and it was a game changer when we finally did it.
• I understand that our implementation of iManage does not allow for multiple template matters based on different situations. So we have five default folders, but it would be nice to have a couple of templates, with different numbers and names of the subfolders depending on the situation.

Incentivized

It's so seamless that I can't imagine another product doing a better job synchronizing all of my devices. I simply do not think about it at all. Everything happens behind the scenes and I'm confident that Apple keeps my data safe and secure. I'm a happy customer as far as this is concerned. I have not had a bad experience with this service.

Incentivized

It has been what our firm has always used, and overall everyone seems to be pleased with it. It is user friendly and intuitive and it doesn't appear we have any intention of changing what we use for our purposes.

Incentivized

While it may be great to use with other Apple products, I find it's an absolutist-style workflow to be debilitating and to lead to many problems. When you sign into the cloud, it completely takes over your device in many ways that you don't notice at first until there is a problem.

Incentivized

To me iManage is very intuitive and user friendly. The switch from the application vs the Outlook extension was an adjustment, but it was one I made pretty easily once it happened.

Incentivized

Occasionally, large files that haven't yet been synced require a few minutes to pull down but I've rarely noticed delays. It does a good job of keeping data cached on my local machines while updating them with changes from other machines transparently.

Incentivized

Apple customer service is fantastic. iCloud is built with Apple in mind and its design is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. Additionally, whenever our team has encountered issues, the speed of Apple support has been more than timely in addressing our issues and solving our request. We have encountered relatively few issues in my time with the platform and this only improves our overall score for those who keep the platform stable.

Incentivized

We had an issue a few years ago where a plug-in of some sort which allowed the viewing of PDFs got updated and then whenever some people previewed PDFs in iManage then Outlook would crash. My outlook crashed over 20 times in a single day once. It was a pretty bad time. I know one of our information technology professionals in another office worked non-stop with iManage to get it resolved, and it seemed like they did take the issue pretty seriously.

Incentivized

Google Drive is similar to Apple iCloud, but since I prefer Apple products and have operated within the Apple ecosystem for many years, I use iCloud. Some clients who don't use Apple share documents with me in Google Drive so I have experience with the product, but I prefer iCloud. I do think photos syncing is superior in iCloud.

Incentivized

I have viewed several other document management system software, but iManage was already installed at my company before I started working here. For us, I think this is the right solution. Companies with a smaller number of employees or smaller document collections could find some other options that might suite their needs and budget better. We definitely want an on premises solution that provides all the security, tracking, searching, and integration issues iManage offers. Many of the other solutions have adopted cloud technologies only at this point and we are not ready to consider cloud storage due for our sensitive documents at this point.

Incentivized

• Apple's iCloud service can run very slow in countries where they aren't very focussed, like India.
• Apple did not back up videos over the cloud for a long time and needed manual sync. You will see similar issues like not allowing mobile data for some tasks.

Incentivized

• The amount of time needed in searching is reduced to few seconds and organizing the documents by case numbers has been the best ROI for our Legal team.
• The Automation for index searching and AI of relating to the case numbers increases the productivity for the users within our legal team where error is minimum.
• Less efforts are required to manage Permissions and granting permissions. Applying APIs for granting permissions has been automated.

Incentivized