Item: M‑Files
Rating: 10
Author: Dave Turner

Overall Satisfaction

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use M-Files to manage all of my business and personal documents. Everything from quotes, RFPs, orders, invoices, emails, resumes, job descriptions, agreements to contracts and more. With M-Files I can easily find anything I need just by entering any of the stored metadata tags or anything from the contents into the search box. I also can create custom Views that act as a "saved search" giving me quick access to pertinent groups of documents filtering out all of the metadata properties and sorting them anyway that I want. I also use M-Files OCR module to turn all my paper docs into fully searchable PDFs. I use their Reporting Module to create reports showing me graphical statistics about the content that I have in my M-Files Vault.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Very easy to use
Tightly integrated with Windows Explorer and the MS Office suite, there are M-Files functional buttons inside Word, Excel, PPT and Outlook
I can access my information from anywhere using their Web browser and also via my iPhone using their Mobile Client downloaded from the App Store
Their prices are perfect for a small business

Cons

Their Mobile Browser could be improved to allow more functionality, I am told this is coming out in a soon to be released update.
It would be nice to be able to put annotations onto PDFs like drawings, I am told this is also coming out before the end of 2014

Return on Investment

I estimate that I save 20% of my total work time by not having to search for files and paper documents using my old folder structure and file cabinets

Alternatives Considered

I really did not evaluate any other products because M-Files met all my requirements and was very highly recommended by various web sites like TopTenReviews and also by Gartner and Forrester.

Likelihood to Renew

I can renew for only 25% of my license cost and keep getting new versions and access to their tech support. If I did not renew though, I think that I could be successful just using the current version I have for many years.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is my opinion that M-Files can benefit even the smallest business all the way up to a Fortune 100 company. Their price was not a barrier to me deciding to purchase and I was able to get up and running in just a few hours. I did it all myself because my needs were simple, but they offer full consultancy services to design and configure your vault to your requirements.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

M-Files simply easy to use Document Management Software priced for the small business

Software Version

Modules Used