The 10 Best Document Management Software for Small Business

Efficiency is key for small businesses, and document storage is no exception.

Invoices, tax documents, marketing plans — these need to be accessible to your team and, in some cases, your customers. Having documents at the ready will not only streamline your workflow, but it will also help you get things done faster.

In this post, we’ll review the best document storage solutions for small businesses. We’ll explain why you should consider each one and its key features. Finally, we’ll wrap up with some best practices for managing documents at your SMB.

10 Best Document Management Software Solutions

Below are the best document storage solutions for small businesses. We’ve divided this list into three sections: best overall, best for team collaboration, and best free solutions.

Best Document Management for Small Business

1. PandaDoc

What we like: Quick document creation & A/B testing

 PandaDoc is a very popular document management tool — and for good reason. Use it to create professional-looking documents in minutes and share them instantly with customers and coworkers.

What’s really cool about PandaDoc is its document-tracking features. It not only notifies you when an action is taken but also provides detailed reports of activity like views, link clicks, and downloads from other document viewers

You can also A/B test your documents to see which ones work best. In an A/B test, you create two documents that are almost identical but have minor differences between them. Then, you send each one to small samples of your customers to see which performs best. The one with the best performance gets sent to your larger customer base.

Price: Starts at $19/month for two seats

2. Adobe

What we like: Great for PDF documents

Adobe offers a premier document management service that’s primarily geared toward PDF docs. Its service makes it easy to edit, convert, and send PDFs to customers for their signatures.

What’s nice about this product is its integration with other Adobe products. For example, document storage is integrated with Acrobat Sign: an e-signature tool that enables digital signatures on PDFs.

Even more useful are the prebuilt integrations that allow you to access and edit your PDFs in Workday, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. This enhances your team’s workflow by saving employees time from having to track down and recall documents in various locations.

Price: Starts at $15/month per seat

3. Thryv

What we like: Do-it-all customer communication platform

Thryv is a do-it-all management platform designed for small business owners. Its document storage and sharing tools are ideal for people working in the trades, healthcare, or contractor industries.

When paired with the invoice generator and ThryvPay, Thryv is a handy tool for getting paid quickly and securely. You can spin up an invoice using a customizable template, send it to your customer, and have them use ThryvPay to complete the purchase. All of this is then tracked and secured in one user-friendly tool.

When you view your documents, you can filter results by customer, inbox, or document type. This keeps you organized and makes it easy to find individual customer accounts when you need information on the fly.

Price: Free

4. DocuPhase

What we like: Advanced storage, payment, and management features

If you’re experienced with finances and document storage, DocuPhase is the advanced storage solution you may be searching for. It’s packed with automation, workflows, and other tools designed to optimize your payment processes.

One standout feature is its “Intelligent Data” tool, which uses AI to extract insights from your documents and increase your processing rates. What’s even cooler is that this AI learns over time, so it will continuously get better at analyzing your payment processes and finding new ways to make payments convenient and easy for you and your customers.

Price: Contact their sales team to request a quote

5. FileCenter

What we like: Perfect for uploading and organizing paper documents

FileCenter is a document storage tool that’s great for small businesses because you can pick and choose what you want from this service – a la carte.

For example, if you only want a simple, PDF storage software, you can buy the FileCenter DMS (Document Management Software). If you also want access to a client portal that lets you track and monitor PDFs, you can buy that as an add-on.

FileCenter also offers scanning hardware to upload paper copies into your cloud storage tools. This saves you a ton of time as the FileCenter DMS is designed to quickly organize large quantities of PDFs.

Price: Starts at $5/month per seat or a one-time fee of $97

Best Document Management for Team Collaboration

6. Microsoft SharePoint

What we like: Reliable, proven, and trustworthy

Microsoft SharePoint is a popular storage solution for businesses, largely due to its advanced team collaboration features. (Fun fact: I am drafting this post in a Microsoft Doc that will soon be shared with my manager. She’ll review it, approve it, and then share it with other colleagues who may need to take a look — wish me luck!)

The point is – Microsoft is used by companies of all shapes and sizes. Its SharePoint tool connects your Office apps together and makes documents accessible to everyone on your team.

I’m a Mac guy, myself, but I’ll admit: SharePoint is a very reliable solution.

Price: Starts at $5/month per seat

7. Square 9

What we like: Storage solutions for any business need

Square 9 is an all-around document management solution that’s ideal for payments, taxes, legal documents, human resources, and more.

What I really like about this service is that it caters to multiple industries, like automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. Its website shows how its product can serve each of these industries with examples and quotes from real companies.

Unlike some of the other options on this list, Square 9 is a complete document storage solution. That means you can use it for customer-facing documents like invoices and contracts, as well as internal documents like tax forms and legal files. It’s a solid option if you’re not exactly sure which storage solutions your business will need.

Price: Contact their sales team to request a quote

8. Revver

What we like: Automated tools for new client onboarding

Like many of the other options on this list, Revver provides services for employee management, tax documents, HR, and more. However, two standout features justify Revver’s spot in our top 10.

First, the “New Business Onboarding” tools can save you considerable time onboarding new clients. They automate processes like gathering basic customer information, setting up security, and organizing any documents that you request from customers.

Second, the “Client Management Hub” stores all your documents in one secure place. From there, document work is automated and evaluated for compliance with government policies. This takes a good deal of stress out of your workflow because you know that each of these processes is not only being completed, but done in the right way.

Price: Contact their sales team to request a quote

Free Document Management Storage Solutions

9. Google Drive

What we like: Simple, free document storage solution

Google Drive is one of the most popular document storage solutions for both individuals and businesses. While its free tools come with limits, there’s plenty of space and useful features if you’re just starting.

Like Microsoft, Google Drive connects all its apps in one place. Your Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more are all accessible from your Google Drive account. And, with an email address, you can quickly share these files with anyone inside or outside of your organization. Once shared, users can work together in real-time to make changes to documents and add comments for other users.

If you’re not too concerned about hitting any storage limits, Google Drive is one of the most convenient and affordable solutions out there.

Price: Free

10. Dropbox

What we like: Additional features beyond document storage and management

Dropbox continues to grow each year and now has over 18 million active users storing documents within its services. It’s becoming one of the most popular free storage solutions on the market – because it’s more than just document management software.

Dropbox has backup features to secure data, screen recording functionalities, and advanced video players that let users review and approve video content.

You can also access its beta features to see what is on the horizon for Dropbox users. This helps you get the jump on the latest document storage solutions that can make your business even more efficient.

Price: Free

Now that we’ve found you some document management software, let’s dive into how to use it.

How to Manage Documents for Small Business

Here are a few best practices for managing documents at any small business.

Choose the right storage solution.

As you might have noticed, each of the solutions above offers slightly different services. If you’re not sure what to pick, I would recommend starting with a free solution. It’s a low-risk investment and you can start to get a feel for which premium features you might need.

From there, test out a few of the other options on this list via a free trial or demo. You’ll see how each product works and ask sales reps questions about the different services that each is offering.

Be sure to consider any other tools that your company is using to store documents. Make sure you can easily transfer that information into this new solution or set up an integration that can link all of your software together.

Use templates for consistency.

One of the best ways to increase your efficiency is using templates. Templates not only standardize the look and format of your documents, but they also streamline their production. You don’t have to design the same invoice over and over again when  an invoice generator can do that for you. Take advantage of free tools like these as they can save you a ton of time in the long run.

Categorize each document.

If you’re using document management software, this feature might be built into your storage solution. If not, you’ll want to categorize each document that your business creates.

Why? Because it will help you find documents that might get lost over time. If you organize your document storage by category, you can quickly find archived documents — because you’ll know exactly where to look for them.

Back up your documents often.

This is one of the biggest advantages of document management software. If your computer crashes or your accounts get hacked, you have a secure way to back up all your files.

Most management providers will offer this as part of their service. But if they don’t, consider periodically exporting your documents to another storage location to manually back up your data.

Archive outdated documents.

Outdated or irrelevant documents can clutter your storage solution. Be sure to continuously clean out your storage space so that you only are working with active documents that are relevant to current customers. Anything else can be archived in another location and saved for later use.

Getting Started With Document Management Software

It doesn’t matter if you have one customer or a million – document storage is important. Document storage solutions like the ones listed above will not only help you keep track of these efforts, but will also improve your business efficiency when communicating with clients.