Ascensio System OnlyOffice is a competent, business-grade document management solution with both cloud-based and on-premises plans. It costs $40 per month for 6-10 active users and 40 gigabytes (GB) of storage. It does not offer some of the enterprise features of Microsoft SharePoint Online, but it has a solid core feature set nonetheless. On top of that, it comes at an affordable price, so Ascensio System OnlyOffice is an easy pick for our Editors' Choice designation in our document management review roundup.

Apps and Pricing

Like many document management solutions, Ascensio System OnlyOffice can be used as a cloud application or you can install on your own servers in your corporate environment. Each option comes with its own set of benefits and complexities. The cloud version of Ascensio System OnlyOffice makes for a quick and easy install. It is priced per user on a monthly, annual, or three-year basis. It costs $5 per month, $2 per month, and $1 per user per month, respectively. However, its monthly pricing is only available for customers that have at least six users. Customers with even larger user pools will realize additional savings and will also receive additional storage space. Storage space options start at 8 GB of storage for 1-2 users, 20 GB of storage for 3-5 users, and 40 GB of storage for 6-10 users and up.

Businesses interested in the on-premises editions of Ascensio System OnlyOffice can start with the free Community Edition, which supports a maximum of 20 simultaneous connections and is open source. The three Enterprise Editions (Start, Standard, and Standard+) offer lifetime licenses of $900, $1,800, and $3,600 per server, respectively. Nonprofit and educational customers have some additional options, including free cloud licenses and hefty discounts on the on-premises solution for qualifying organizations. This may be worth considering for organizations looking to increase efficiency without spending extra cash.

Hitting the Ground Running

Getting started with the cloud edition of Ascensio System OnlyOffice involves signing up for a 30-day trial. Once the registration process is complete, you gain access to document storage, online document editors, mail, calendar, contacts, and chat. You also gain access to more advanced business functionality such as customer relationship management (CRM) and project management.

Administrators will likely want to start by adding users and groups, a process which can be initiated by importing users from your Gmail or Yahoo contacts, or by importing a properly formatted CSV file. On a downside, integration with Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is limited to those customers who use it via an Enterprise license, which means a local installation of Ascensio System OnlyOffice. Once a user's account is created, they can associate their social network accounts such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter to leverage existing (and easy-to-remember) credentials for authentication. In addition to full user accounts, you have the ability to identify guests, which provides a subset of functionality such as uploading and downloading files, working with the calendar, and using chat features.

Collaboration Made Easy

When users log into Ascensio System OnlyOffice and open the Documents module, there are several top-level options presented in the Navigation menu. The My Documents heading contains documents belonging to the current user. These documents can be shared, edited, downloaded, or added to by the owning user. Documents that have been shared with the current user, either directly or through the user's group membership, will be listed under the Shared With Me heading. Common Documents provides an area in which admins can create folders to be used collaboratively by multiple users. Files and folders added to common documents can be configured with fine-grained permissions, providing groups or users read-only or full access or even specifically denying access to a user or group. Project documents contain images and documents associated to Ascensio System OnlyOffice projects.

Ascensio System OnlyOffice features some collaboration capabilities that are on par with the top contenders in this category, starting with revision history. A key strength of Ascensio System OnlyOffice, revisions let you not only see who made changes to a document and view a preview or download the revision but you can also comment on revisions, restore a previous revision to the current active revision, or elect to finalize the document. In addition to the capabilities offered by revisions, Ascensio System OnlyOffice also supports simultaneous document editing. This lets users work on a document collaboratively with another user, even including a chat window in the online document editors.

Don't Stop There

Chances are you use other cloud storage services to contain some of your business files and Ascensio System OnlyOffice doesn't judge. Admins can easily enable integration with a handful of cloud storage providers, and users can connect their DropBox Business, Google Drive for Work, or Microsoft OneDrive for Business accounts to their Ascensio System OnlyOffice accounts, along with a few other options. This can be done either for the business versions of these services or by using their personal, consumer-grade equivalents. Either can be added to the Common Documents area for multi-user availability. Files and folders from these services can be edited directly with the cloud editors; they have the same sharing capabilities as files stored within other areas of Ascensio System OnlyOffice, though you don't have change tracking within third-party services.

One key factor when evaluating any document management suite is how effectively you can work with your documents under a variety of conditions—from a mobile device, corporate laptop, personal computer, or even a device in a hotel business center. The Ascensio System OnlyOffice cloud editors make working from any computer with an internet connection and a modern browser a completely viable option, giving you full-featured document editors wherever you might find yourself. In addition to the cloud editors, the Ascensio System OnlyOffice mobile app lets you work with your documents, albeit with a scaled-back interface. But collaboration features such as simultaneous editing work as if you were using a full document editor.

Powerful Collaboration on a Shoestring

Does Ascensio System OnlyOffice compare favorably to Microsoft Office 365 or even Microsoft SharePoint Online (5.00 Per User Per Month at Microsoft 365 Business) on features alone? Not really, but then again, it doesn't need to. There's a strong market for companies or even single users wanting a set of document management tools without needing all of the bells and whistles of a solution such as Microsoft SharePoint Online.

In addition, Ascensio System OnlyOffice offers an incredibly competitive pricing structure. As stated earlier, it costs $40 per month for 6-10 active users and includes 40 gigabytes (GB) of storage. But it starts as low as $1 per user per month if you commit to a 3-year subscription (compare that to Microsoft SharePoint Online, which starts at $5 per user per month). The features you get with Ascensio System OnlyOffice, coupled with its pricing, make Ascensio System OnlyOffice one of our Editors' Choice winners in the document management category.

The big distinction between Mirosoft SharePoint Online from where we sit has to do with the security and compliance features which Microsoft has baked into Office 365. Ascensio System OnlyOffice (and for that matter, the rest of the document management tools we've reviewed) can't compete with Microsoft on things such as their labeling, data loss prevention, and legal hold features. If these advanced security and compliance features aren't needed for your business situation, then there's not a whole lot of incentive to spend the extra money on SharePoint Online over Ascensio System OnlyOffice.

Artboard Created with Sketch. Ascensio System OnlyOffice 4.0 Editors' Choice Check Price Pros Budget-friendly pricing.

Strong core set of features.

Simultaneous document editing makes collaboration a breeze. Cons Compliance features could be better.

No corporate directory integration for cloud version. The Bottom Line Ascensio System OnlyOffice is an effective document management system for small to midsize businesses. Larger enterprises may want to look elsewhere, however.

Best Document Management Software Picks