Top 9 NetDocuments Alternatives

Choosing an alternative to NetDocuments involves several considerations that can significantly impact a law firm’s operations and strategic goals.

Here are detailed reasons for exploring other options:

By addressing these considerations, law firms can identify a document management solution that not only meets their current needs but also supports their long-term strategic objectives.

While NetDocuments has its place in the market, you may find some NetDocuments alternatives that better fit your essential needs while making your daily workflow better than ever.

While examining alternatives to NetDocuments, it’s valuable to discuss basic cloud storage solutions such as Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox.

These platforms offer general storage capabilities, accessibility, and ease of use. This section will explore each service’s features and provide an evaluation tailored to the context of law firms.

Although these options are widely recognized for their convenience, we’ll underscore why they might not fully meet the advanced document management and security requirements specific to legal practices, steering the conversation towards more specialized, legal-centric software solutions.

In exploring NetDocuments alternatives within basic cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box, it’s clear these services offer general ease of use and accessibility for various businesses.

However, their lack of specialized features tailored to the legal industry—such as advanced document management, security protocols, and compliance measures—highlights a significant gap for law firms.

While these platforms might serve as interim solutions or complement existing systems, law practices seeking comprehensive, legal-centric document management should consider dedicated alternatives designed with their specific needs in mind.

Document Management software stores documents, email, and (if the software is legal-centric) does so in a client/matter-centric way.

Document Management software typically provides full-text search, document tagging, document profiling, version management, check-out/check-in, external sharing, and more.

Take a look at the different software alternatives to NetDocuments below.

NetDocuments is a versatile, cloud-driven document storage and management platform designed to cater to a wide variety of industries beyond just legal practices. Its flexible features allow it to be integrated into diverse business types.

The software relies primarily, though not exclusively, on cloud technology, enabling users to access NetDocuments primarily through a web browser, eliminating the need for a server, similar to most Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

Unfortunately, NetDocuments does not work well for everyone. Firms that are configuring their technology strategy would benefit from taking a deeper look into NetDocuments to ensure that it will work as they hope.

For example, one of its noteworthy features, ndOffice, is an installed desktop extension that allows users to directly save documents to NetDocuments.

However, ndOffice is only compatible with Windows and doesn’t function on Macs. Consequently, firms that use Mac computers would need to resort to software like Parallels to run a Windows environment within their Mac device.

Intricacies like this could hinder firms’ efficiency and uptime if they’re not prepared. For this reason, let’s take a deeper look at NetDocuments.

“My favorite things about NetDocuments is that 1) you can access your documents from any place with an Internet connection, and 2) there is an easy way to search for documents.

Like everything else, there are a few downfalls.  First of al there needs to be a multi-level search function added.  Also, I dislike the fact that you have to jump through hoops to get documents to do what you want.  For example, at work I can click on a document and it opens for viewing/editing.  At home I click on a document and it downloads it, then I have to go through the process of uploading the changed document.

I like it, but a lot of people I work with do not like NetDocuments.”

“Pros: How secure our files are. Both security and dynamic version management are superb features.

Cons: How clunky and difficult to use it is. Also, how difficult it is to learn, especially the admin side – it’s like doing things on DOS – you have to know what you’re doing. It’s not intuitive at all.”

Pros: The e-mail integration is awesome, when it works. We run into too many issues to where it loses a connection or fails to uploaded an e-mail.

Cons:  Each update makes the system slower and slower. Every time they update their website, a feature breaks and they have to go back and fix it. Hold times for tech support and times can be a little ridiculous.

Generally speaking, legal document management software is special software that stores your documents and provides tools to manage them. The ‘manage’ part of document management software’s capabilities is what sets it apart from using a basic on-premise file server or simple cloud storage.

Document management software can come in either an on-premise variety (installed on your own local servers) or can be cloud-based.  The scope, features and capabilities of any given legal document management software varies from product to product; though broadly speaking, DMS software performs the following functions:

More modern, cloud-based Document Management Systems sometimes include these more sophisticated features:

As you can see, there are various features and aspects to consider when choosing the best Document Management Software and considering NetDocuments Alternatives.

Being no stranger to this decision process, we created the Legal Document Management Comparison Chart.

This chart helps you identify the different features that you find meaningful, so you can choose the DMS that best suits your firm’s needs.

Check out this sample from the chart:

Legacy Document Management Software

As wrap up our outline of NetDocuments alternatives, it’s important to highlight the challenges that law firms face when implementing new document management software.

While document management software has been in use for a long time, many older applications present significant hurdles that can impede efficient adoption.

One major challenge with legacy document management software is that older applications often require specialized consultants to set up and manage the installation, further driving up costs and potentially causing delays.

It’s important to understand these challenges and develop strategies to overcome them. Our video below, “The Problem with Legacy Document Management Software,” provides valuable insights and solutions to help law firms navigate the complexities of implementing new software in their organization.

By taking a strategic approach and leveraging the right resources, firms can successfully modernize their document management systems and gain a competitive advantage.

We hope you found this lineup of NetDocuments alternatives useful.  Should you wish to learn more about document management software and today’s options, don’t hesitate to contact our team.