M-Files is a platform for knowledge work automation. M-Files helps knowledge workers to find information faster, work smarter, and achieve more. M-Files features a metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence that enable customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance. By embedding automation and GenAI into its core, M-Files' platform not only increases efficiencies…
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Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.1 out of 10
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For document-intensive companies looking to improve business efficiency, Square 9 Softworks develops solutions for process automation that aim to drive increased productivity across all business applications.
$50
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Pricing
M‑Files
Square 9 Softworks
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Square 9 Process Automation Essentials
$50
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Digital Transformation Essentials
$68
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Enterprise Essentials
$75
per month per user (10 User Minimum)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
M‑Files
Square 9 Softworks
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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Offered via a three-tier pricing model that allows customers to scale their solution up or down based on the changing needs of their organization.
Pricing excludes professional services and implementation fees
M-Files provides an easier way of managing document that is needed for any organization and the integrations to other systems makes life easier when there needs migration of the documents to M-Files.
Configuration of general access vs Libraries and silos of data makes this such an easier application to use. Especially when it comes to workflows and security and then support of that configuration.
Microsoft Sharepoint is not very flexible in my opinion. Mass changes are not easy to carry out. Microsoft Teams data is too much. I can't keep up with all the Microsoft Teams groups I'm in.
We selected it because it is having out of box integration capabilities to connect with M-Files. We are using M-Files already as a content management system and we were lacking the feature of document sharing. With Hubshare now this gap has been filled.
Document handling is much easier as in Sharepoint. We select M-files because its metadata model fits our needs better, and it is easier to use than Sharepoint. You can customize metadata easily and fast.
M-Files is with totally unique features from these solutions, one of major is all these solutions have folder structure where M-Files has content based structure. Secondly one of major features is that it enables integration with filters to search within Drawing Documents, most …
The customization ability seemed to be a level above and easy to navigate and available options are constantly being reinvented. We have used OnBase for years and now desire to move away from this option for a number of reasons.
I've compared recently with Box, but they still predicate their storage on WHERE instead of WHAT, which means if it isn't in a specific folder, you won't find it. Some documents may relate to multiple projects. In M-Files instead of putting a copy of a file in many folders …
M-Files is a great ECM platform that has many of the bells and whistles companies are looking for for a casual and easy to use enterprise content system.
They have closer functions, but in my opinion, M-Files has many more features for document handling. Only GreenDocs has more capabilities related to Engineering, and if your company needs a solution for this area, this would be the best application. M-Files supports more …
Laserfiche could not even complete their installation. Square 9 Softworks was able to come in and rescue the failed project. We have hardly scratched the surface of what we believe we can do in terms of more implementations of the Square 9 Softworks program in other business …
This is the only product that I can think of that we use so far. But we are willing to explore other options, such as automating the invoices being directly uploaded into our accounting software. It would definitely cut down on the time our accounts payable has to input all the …
I have used Agris in the past, and the filing cabinet ability that was implemented was at the end of my time using it, so I never learned it as well as I have been able to with Square 9 Softworks. As, for the last 3 years, I have used it on a daily basis. I personally didn't …
Square 9 Softworks is very easy to setup, use, and maintain, when compared with SharePoint from Microsoft. Also, support is extremely easy to work with, more so than Microsoft. They are easy to reach, and easy to work with. Square 9 Softworks is a niche software company and a …
We reached out to Iron Mountain but did not pursue this option since we had an established relationship with Square 9 Softworks that could be expanded and not a complete restart.
Features look similar but the price point is much more affordable for my current employer. Square 9's training material could use an update but works overall.
We chose to leave ImageSilo and go with Square 9 Softworks because 1) ImageSilo was inconsistent and buggy and 2) Square 9 Softworks was streamlined and had a lot of helpful features. It seemed easier to maintain.
Square 9 was a better fit for our organization due to the costs and features that it offers. With Square 9, we were able to get 3 years of licensing for about 1 year of the competitors licensing costs.
Square 9 is also much easier to manage and use on a day-to-day basis than …
We did not research other product offerings so I have nothing to compare the program to. I can only share why we selected Square 9 Softworks to use as our document management system. Square 9 Softworks was amazing to work with from day 1 - we worked with Xerox initially for …
The main thing we liked was the ease of use of GlobalSearch. Also, the people doing the demo were able to answer somewhat technical questions without having to get back to us a day later from one of their more technical people.
I have not used other document management software. Prior to Global Search we manually entered metadata through Adobe Acrobat. This was extremely time consuming and not exactly user friendly. Global Search cut the indexing time to less than 1/4 the time we were spending on each …
Our company has been using this product for 20+ years. Since it was Fortis, then SmartSearch, to GlobalSearch, and for every transition the Square 9 team has been a great asset to making the change go smoothly
We actually had installed IBM FileNet and ended up switching to Square 9 Softworks due to an issue with the IBM reseller. In the end, we're happy it worked out this way because Square 9 Softworks was more suited for our small business. It was not only easier to use but required …
From an HR standpoint, it seems like other solutions stack up better than Square 9, but it may just be because we don't have it set up right. For example, with filing a document for an employee...I have to manually type (and get correct) ALL of the information related to that …
At my last job we used Square 9 for document storage but chose AvidXChange for Accounts Payable processing because of price and because also paid the invoices. At my current job, we chose Smart Search because it was more customizable, our invoice approvals were less …
M‑Files is great for companies with multiple locations. Drive letters can become cumbersome to use and collaborate with colleagues and M‑Files fills that gap. The check out/check in system is great and allows only one editor at a time. This can be good and bad depending on the situation.
Square 9 Softworks is well suited for unique needs within companies. We have built, renovated, and optimized custom workflows within our archives, designed highly specific interfaces with our ERP platform, and Square 9 Softworks has answered the bell through it all.
The software is very flexible, and the technicians were great at implementing our customizations for the PO project.
While indexing fields in Global Search, the Key Free tool works great.
Global Search is well-organized. It's easy to navigate and find your documents.
The process for completing your project was well done. Communicating with individuals at Square 9 who were responsible for different aspects of the project was easy.
More user friendly customization options that do not require knowledge of coding/scripting. For example, prompting the creation of a new document from a template in a workflow.
When using the 'insert property' feature in a Word doc, I would love to convert dates from a mm/dd/yy format to be written out (such as September 21, 2018). Or possibly even just to pull the year or the month from a selected date to insert into a document.
I've often wished that I could find more detailed tutorials online for some features.
Overall, it is not as stable as other software. Some errors could not be fixed, such as a form going forward without approval because a user pressed "enter" twice in a row.
I probably only use 20% of the functionality. Beyond that, I'd have to pay for development. We did that once, and the project that we paid for never was implemented. They allowed us to request a design before my time that was so complicated that they never got it to work. Once I came on board, I implemented a much simpler solution.
Our upgrade took much, much longer than expected, and was disrupted by so many software issues.
M-files meets our almost all needs, we dont have other option to replace m-files. it saves lots, like Hardware because of Vault Feature means we can create many vaults (mini-servers) in m-files in other solutions we need more hardware for more installations.
We are definitely renewing our SmartSearch. This is the only place all of our companies contracts and regulatory filings are kept. Our company would lose track of all expiring contracts if we did not renew. We would also need to spend many hours figuring out a new organizational system for all of our files, as well as savings the documents from SmartSearch onto the computer.
It is a powerful system that can locate content fast and effectively. The system takes quite some time to setup initially. It can be hard for M-Files support to know how businesses operate and how they want to use the system in a way that works for them. The customization makes it great for companies to cater to their own needs. Once the system is set up in a way that makes sense for the business, the user experience is positive. There is room for improvement in the notifications, workflow, and support areas.
The items I am searching for are easily found. They are found in at least 95% of the searches. The failure rate generally is related to another employees user error or a template error set up by our Square 9 team in house.
I noticed some lagging with the integration with Microsoft Office but not so much that I would not use it. It has gotten better with updates. to be fair the issues were when Office 2013 first came out.
With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.
Usually when I need help from them I got support and it was very good and focused to solve my problem. I didn't have so many problems, but when used it worked. I just would like to have a support in my native language, but I can understand that sometimes is hard for the companies.
Support is always extremely helpful and responsive. Whenever we have a question, it is simple contacting them and also setting-up an appointment, if necessary. Scheduling the appointment is easy and they are willing to talk on the phone, which is not always true with software companies. Their report support tools are also really east to use.
It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.
The key insight is that the most important thing is to have a open mind. The application is easy to use, but if you have a company with different views and it is not aligned could be a huge problem. So the company transformation is required together with the application. Ensure to use as much as possible the capabilities of the application helps to have best ROI.
I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.
I've compared recently with Box, but they still predicate their storage on WHERE instead of WHAT, which means if it isn't in a specific folder, you won't find it. Some documents may relate to multiple projects. In M-Files instead of putting a copy of a file in many folders (thus having many copies) you can build out the relationships, so there is only 1 copy of a document which prevents multiple "originals" from being developed separately.
SharePoint and Square 9 Softworks are similar in some ways and totally different in others. They both do workflow, although Square 9 Workflow gives administrators more options. They both have a repository, although Square 9 GlobalSearch is more structured in terms of customization. Using field values allows for more exact search capabilites. Square 9 AI tools allows administrators to get the correct data off the page more precisely with less effort.
The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.
The price we pay for M-Files is about one third less than the price that we were paying our previous vendor plus we have a custom-built amazing dependable system with great support.
From a compliance and legal standpoint, our policies are always available to end users including easy access to previous versions.
Reduction in human error through manual data entry process now being automated
Reduction in cost due to automation allowing the function to not require a full time employee
Reduction in time spent performing the previous manual tasks. Example: on our consolidated shipment days, it could take doc clerk 2-3 hours to prepare master document package. This has been reduced to 30 minutes or less (depending on size of shipment and time needed for OCR to complete)
