The best document management software of 2026

If your team signs in to Outlook and Teams every morning, you probably own SharePoint already. It comes with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium (for up to 300 users) and with the Enterprise plans, and Microsoft also sells it on its own as SharePoint Plan 1 and Plan 2. The files in a team's Teams channel live in a SharePoint library, so moving your shared drive there costs nothing extra and keeps documents where people already work.

As a document system it covers more than most buyers use. Each library keeps up to 50,000 major versions of a file, uploads can be as large as 250 GB, and a managed metadata term store lets you tag documents with your own list of clients, departments or document types. Microsoft 365 retention policies and eDiscovery holds apply to SharePoint sites, which matters if you ever need to prove a record was kept.

Storage is pooled across the whole company: 1 TB plus 10 GB for each license you buy, so 100 users share 2 TB. If you go over and do not buy more, Microsoft can switch the tenant to read-only until you clean up or pay for extra space.

The weak spot is setup. SharePoint does what you configure it to do, and a library with no structure turns into the same mess as the shared drive it replaced. Plan your sites, hubs and permissions before you move files, or ask a Microsoft partner to do it.

Box is the safest choice when much of your document traffic goes outside the company: contracts to clients, drawings to subcontractors, board packs to directors. Its plans are built around how many outside collaborators you need, how many old versions you keep and how big a single file can be.

The free Individual plan gives one person 10 GB, a 250 MB upload limit and a single saved version, which is enough to try the apps. Team plans start at three users. Business Starter (for up to 10 users) has 100 GB, 2 GB uploads and 25 versions. Business moves to unlimited storage, 5 GB uploads, 50 versions and unlimited e-signature requests through Box Sign. Business Plus adds unlimited external collaborators and 15 GB uploads, and Enterprise adds advanced workflows, HIPAA support and FedRAMP Moderate. Box advertises plans from $5 per user a month; the per-plan prices did not load for us.

If you need proper records rules, such as keeping invoices for seven years and then deleting them, or placing a legal hold, you need Box Governance, which Box sells as an add-on. Enterprise Advanced includes Box Archive for long-term storage.

Box makes sense when outside sharing and audit trails matter more than scanning and indexing paper. For an office that mainly files scanned invoices, Revver or DocuWare is a closer fit.

Zoho WorkDrive is the cheapest way on this list to give a small team shared folders, permissions and an office suite. Zoho's older Zoho Docs entry from earlier versions of this guide has been replaced by WorkDrive in Zoho's current lineup.

There are three plans, each with a three-user minimum. Starter costs $2.50 per user a month on a yearly plan ($3 month to month) and gives a team of 3 to 10 people 1 TB, with files up to 10 GB. Team costs $4.50 yearly ($6 monthly) for 3 TB, 50 GB files, your own logo, access statistics and a file activity timeline. Business costs $9 yearly ($11 monthly) for 5 TB and 250 GB files, and it is the plan that turns WorkDrive into a document system: custom workflows for approvals, data loss prevention, your own domain and recovery of deleted data for up to 120 days. Teams over 200 users are pushed to an Enterprise quote.

Every plan includes Zoho's own word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, so you can write and edit without a Microsoft license. A free plan gives one person 5 GB.

The 15-day trial gives you the Business plan with no card, and you get another 15 days to upgrade after it ends. Test the workflows during the trial, since they are the reason to pick Business over Team.

Revver, formerly eFileCabinet, suits the office that still has filing cabinets and scans paper it needs to find again. The old eFileCabinet address now redirects to Revver.

Its zonal OCR reads the same spot on every form, such as the invoice number or the client name, and uses it to name and file the document. No-code workflows move files for review and approval, retention rules handle how long each kind of record is kept, and clients can come in through a branded guest experience, with unlimited guest users. Revver also lists eSignatures, though the pricing page does not say which tier each feature sits in, so ask before you buy.

Pricing is per user a month with no account minimum, and you can mix tiers: Basic is $25, Essentials $67 and Full $87 at list price. Revver advertises volume prices as low as $4, $39 and $56 a user for larger accounts. Storage is unlimited for new users, and prices exclude setup and implementation services.

The 14-day trial needs no card and comes with sample templates and an example database, which is a quicker way to judge it than a sales demo.

Laserfiche suits organizations where documents are part of a process: a purchase request that needs three approvals, a permit application from the public, an employee file that has to be kept for a set number of years. Laserfiche also still sells a self-hosted version, Laserfiche 12, alongside its cloud plans.

The cloud plans are published. Professional costs $73 per user a month billed annually ($875 a user a year), starts at five users and includes 100 GB per user, one repository, custom forms, process automation and reporting, AI data extraction and classification, and Microsoft 365 integration. The cloud is SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA and ISO 27001 certified. Business, at $93 per user a month with a 25-user minimum, adds records lifecycle management, single sign-on and user provisioning, and public portals for publishing documents. Business+ is $42 per user a month but starts at 500 users.

Those prices exclude implementation and professional services, and for a process-heavy system those are often a large part of the first-year cost. The pricing page offers a demo rather than a trial.

If you only need a place to store and share files, Laserfiche is more than you need. Buy it for the forms and workflows.

M-Files files documents by what they are rather than where they sit. You tag a contract with its client, project and status, and it shows up wherever someone looks for that client or project, without a copy in three folders. That model suits consultancies, engineering firms and quality teams that keep asking "where is the latest version for this customer?".

It comes in two editions. Essentials has a public per-seat monthly price, though the page showed it to us in euros, and includes Aino, the built-in AI that finds information, summarizes documents and classifies them. Enterprise is quoted and adds more AI capacity, Aino agents that extract metadata and classify documents automatically, advanced compliance and automation, federated sign-in, enterprise key management, extended audit logs and advanced version control. Both editions work inside Microsoft 365, with integrations for Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Word and Excel.

Sharing with clients goes through Hubshare, which M-Files licenses separately, so add it to your quote if outside collaboration matters. M-Files offers a live demo rather than a free trial, and subscriptions are typically billed annually.

Pick M-Files if the folder tree is your problem. If your problem is invoices and approvals, DocuWare or Laserfiche fits better.

DocuWare sells document management by the job you want done. Its site leads with automated invoice processing, purchase-to-pay, contract management, sales order processing and employee file management, and the product pieces behind them are intelligent indexing (reading the vendor, amount and date off an invoice), workflow management, a task manager, electronic forms and e-signatures.

That focus makes it a strong pick for a finance team buried in supplier invoices or an HR department moving personnel files out of cabinets. Invoices arrive by email or scan, DocuWare reads the fields, routes the invoice for approval and exports the data to your accounting system. Integrations listed on its site include Microsoft Teams, Outlook and SAP, plus an iPaaS connector for other systems. You can run it in DocuWare's cloud or on your own servers, and there are mobile apps for approvals on the go.

DocuWare does not publish prices. Its pricing link now leads to a demo request, and its site also has a partner finder for buying and setup through a local reseller. Ask for the cost of setup and training as well as the license.

For a small office that mainly wants to scan and find documents, Revver gets you there with less setup.

Egnyte is a file platform with document controls on top, and its upload limits are the first thing to notice: 100 GB per file on Business and 150 GB on the higher plans. Teams that pass around video, CAD drawings or large scans hit the ceiling of cheaper drives quickly.

Business costs $22 per user a month billed annually, for up to 100 users and one domain. It includes permissions you set folder by folder, co-editing with Microsoft 365, a Google Workspace integration and AI questions about a single document. Enterprise Lite, at $39, is where the document management features arrive: ransomware detection, suspicious login alerts, retention rules for the content lifecycle and advanced workflows. Elite, at $48, adds Egnyte's AI Assistant, AI search and AI workflows, plus PDF markup, e-signatures and watermarking. Ultimate is quoted and adds sensitive data classification, snapshot recovery after ransomware and customer-managed encryption keys.

Egnyte offers a multi-year discount on every plan and a free trial, though the page does not say how long it lasts or how much storage each plan includes. Ask both questions before you compare it with Box.

If you mostly need search and filing of office documents, the cheaper plans of Zoho WorkDrive or SharePoint cover that for less.

Law firms do not organize work in folders. They organize it by client and matter, and NetDocuments is built that way: documents and email are filed to a client and matter, with version control and search across both. It sells to small, midsize and large law firms, corporate legal departments and public sector legal teams.

Lawyers work in Outlook, Word and Teams, and NetDocuments keeps the files filed in one place while they do. Email management is one of its core products, which matters in a firm where the email trail is as much a part of the file as the signed agreement.

If your firm still runs Worldox, the on-premises system an older version of this guide recommended, it is now a NetDocuments company. Worldox's site says existing customers can keep using the on-premises product and points them to NetDocuments as the cloud option, so moving within the same company is the obvious path to price first.

NetDocuments does not publish prices or offer a free trial. Pricing depends on team size, the products you choose and your security, compliance and migration needs, and you get it through a quote or a demo.

For a general business that only borrows legal habits, M-Files or SharePoint covers matter-style filing without legal pricing.