6 Best Free Document Management Software For Windows

Here is the list of best free document management software for Windows. These software are really good at storing and managing electronic documents. Along with document management, these software also let you share documents easily. Not just that, you can also set sharing permissions (read only, read and edit, etc.) for different users. Security feature with password security is also available for secure document management. Easily manageable folders and collections can be created to categorize documents. Some of these software also provide advanced sorting options to sort documents based on date, time, user, recent, old, etc. Besides storing and managing, you can also preview and edit documents using some of these software.

Some of the commonly supported document formats are: DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, TXT, CSV, XML, PPT, and more.

Out of the six document management software mentioned here, 4 are PHP based web applications that require database software like: XAMPP, WAMP, etc. to run. Other 2 are based on Java, that need Java and Tomcat to run on your PC.

My favorite Document Management Software:

Krystal DMS is my favorite, because it provides all essential features such as document management, preview, edit, sharing, sorting, etc. Plus, it’s easy-to-use interface makes it a handy tool.

Alfresco is another really good document management software. I really liked its document labeling feature, using which, you can label documents as “I am editing” or “others are editing“. These labels help other users to know the status of document. It is also a feature rich software which makes it one of my favorite DMS software.

You can also check the list of best free School Management, Library Management, and Project Management software for Windows.

Krystal DMS

Krystal DMS is a free document management software for Windows. It can be used to store, manage, and track documents. Some of the supported document formats are: XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX, PPT, TXT, XML, CSV, ZIP, etc. To manage documents, you can create various folders and store documents in them. It lets you share documents with different users. For users, you can set permission based on documents to view or edit them. You can also restrict document access using the Checkout option.

A Pie Chart is available on its interface that tells various statistics about documents stored, such as: number of folders, number of files in each folder, space captured by documents, etc. This free DMS software also lets you download documents in both PDF and ZIP format. If a documents gets deleted by you or other users accidentally, then you can recover them from Recycle Bin.

To ensure document security, this software keeps record of login, logout, date, IP address, folder name, etc. Plus, it also provides password protection feature, which protects your documents from unauthorized access.

A striking feature of this software is that it comes with an open source database, so, you don’t have to use any external database in order to run it. This database helps you store, retrieve, and manipulate your documents. But, to run this software, you must have Java and Tomcat on your computer.

The free version of Krystal DMS only lets you use 512 MB storage space to store documents. Apart from that, this software is really good at managing documents.

Alfresco

Alfresco is another free and feature rich document management software for Windows. In this software, you can easily store and manage a large number of documents. Here, you get a centralized storage facility with password protection for security. This software allows you to create users, and you can share documents with them pretty easily. You can also set different permissions for users to just view or edit documents. Another good feature that Alfresco provides is document labeling. You can label documents as “I’m editing” or “others are editing“, so that authorized users can view the status of a document.

All the important features of this DMS software are available in various tabs. Let us checkout these tabs and the features available in them:

• Home: Here, you can view recent activity, newly added documents, and various tasks performed by users.
• My Files: From here, you can create, delete, modify, and upload various documents. Plus, you can also categorically divide documents by adding them in different folders.
• Shared Files: This tab is used to share documents with authorized users. Here, you can upload documents directly to shared folder.
• Sites: It lets you create websites. For each website, you can manage related documents.
• Tasks: From here, you can view active task, completed task, pending task, etc. It also lets you assign a new task to yourself or to a user.
• Repository: It contains all the documents and folders. You can easily sort and search any document here.
• Admin Tools: In this section, passwords, security, permissions, etc. can be managed.

Despite of being free, it offers all essential document management features without any storage limitation.

LogicalDOC

LogicalDOC is another free and open source document management software for Windows. It can be used to centralize documents at a place. It creates a single point of access to ensure data security. As a result, only authorized users can access documents. Using this software is also quite easy, which makes it suitable for both organizations and individuals.

In this DMS software, you can upload documents of various formats. You can also edit and preview documents here. Here, you can create folders to store and differentiate documents according to your choice. Important documents can also be bookmarked for later use.

You can add multiple users to access documents in this free DMS. Every user can easily share and edit documents.  Document restriction features are available here to allow or deny permissions for document viewing or editing.

To look for specific documents, you can search for them according to their ID, Date, Folder name, Department, etc. This helps especially when you don’t know the exact name of document. Normal Search bar is also available to search documents directly using file name.

To avoid data loss, it automatically backups the added data at regular intervals. For convenience, a very powerful indexing is provided, which makes finding any type of document easy.

This software is a web browser based Java application which requires Java and Tomcat web container to run. You can use this application with many popular browsers like: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.

Feng Office

Feng Office is another document management freeware for Windows. It is used to manage projects, documents, notes, workspace etc. It is a perfect software to keep track of electronic documents. You can upload documents of different types without worrying about their format. But, the free version lets you upload unlimited documents with a maximum size of 2 MB/file. Apart from that, it has all important features to manage documents, which you can use without any restriction.

This software is based on PHP, so you require software like: XAMPP, WAMP, etc., to run this software.

The interface of this software is pretty easy to work with. All important options are available in various tabs. Let’s check out these tabs to know more about them:

• Overview: Here, you can make Workspaces to store and manage documents. You can mark each Workspace with different color to make them easily distinguishable. Options to add Users, Tasks, Documents, Activities, etc., are available here.
• Tasks: This tab lets you assign task to users. Plus, you can also assign duration of the task.
• Documents: Here, you can find all the documents of each Workspace. You can set document permission settings for user access. Document info, such as: document size, document creation date, and the user who created that document, can be seen here.
• Time: In this tab, you can assign time slots for users under which they have to finish assigned projects.
• Reporting: It shows the total time spent on projects by users. It also provides options to generate custom reports based on documents and users.
• Email: It works same as normal email service. From here, you can send and receive information and documents.
• Settings: This section lets you configure various settings of this software. Settings for System module, Permissions, Templates, Billing, Invoice, etc. can be changed. In addition, security options can also be set from here.

This document management software provides almost all important document management features with the only limitation on document file size.

Archimede

Archimede is another free document management software for Windows. It is not as feature rich as above mentioned software, and only does basic task of document management. Supported document formats include: DOCX, PDF, XLSX, PPT, XML, CSV, TXT, Images, and more. You can add and manage documents under various folders. Document folders can also be categorized under various collections. Security feature to password protect documents is available too.

Note: Although it has option to set user permissions, I did not find any section to add users. If you happen to find the feature, do let us know in the comments section.

To run this document management software, you have to use database software, like MySQL.

Archimede is best suited for personal document management.

OpenDocMan

OpenDocMan is a free and open source document management software for Windows. This software is good for document storage and management. This DMS software supports lots of file formats, namely, PDF, XML, DOC, TXT, etc. For each added document, you can enter document Description, Department, Author, etc. Adding these info will help you in sorting and searching.

In this DMS software, you can add and manage multiple users. Users can share documents with each other. They can also set permissions (read only, write, read/write, etc.) for their documents. Handy features to check in and check out documents are also present. These features let users control when other can edit a particular document or not.

For security of documents, you can enable or disable user sign in.

There is an administration menu, which lets you change settings related to users, departments, category, files, etc.

This software is written and based on PHP. To run this software, you will need a web server, like: Apache, IIS, etc.