An ELO Alternative for Small Businesses

ELO, from ELO Digital Office in Stuttgart, is one of the most established DMS and ECM systems in Germany. The ELO ECM Suite covers a lot: archive, workflows, contract and invoice management, ERP and Microsoft integrations. It is sold and implemented through a network of partners.

For a business with a handful of employees that’s often a big package. Papermerge is a simple, affordable ELO alternative: a digital archive for invoices, receipts and contracts that supports GoBD-compliant archiving, with the price on the website and no implementation project.

Comparison

As of November 2026, based on the vendors’ public information.

	ELO ECM Suite	Papermerge
Price	on request through partners	public: €39/month for up to 3 users, +€9 per additional user
Buying and setup	through ELO partners, usually a project	online, setup wizard
Hosting	own server or cloud	cloud, hosted in Frankfurt
Audit-proof archiving	yes	yes
Workflows, industry solutions	yes	no
OCR, full-text search	yes	no
ERP and Office integrations	yes	no
Email import	yes	yes, an address per cabinet
Retention, deletion only after approval	yes	yes
Support	through the partner	directly from the developer

When ELO is the better choice

• You need workflows and industry solutions, such as invoice approval or contract management.
• The DMS must be tightly connected to ERP or industry software.
• You want a local partner to handle rollout and support.

When Papermerge fits better

• Your team has 2 to 20 people and no IT department.
• You want an archive that stands up to a tax audit, not an ECM project.
• You want to know the price upfront, cancel monthly and start today.

ELO is a trademark of ELO Digital Office GmbH. Papermerge is not affiliated with ELO. Information based on public sources (November 2026).