iManage

Document and email management for law firms and professional services

As of 31 August 2026, iManage's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The document and email management system most large corporate firms run. Softwr lists it under Legal. iManage is available on Windows, Web, macOS, iOS.

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Overview

What iManage does

iManage is a document and email management system for organisations whose work product is documents and correspondence. iManage Work stores documents and email against matters with version control and full text search, surrounded by Security Policy Manager for need-to-know access, Records Manager for retention and disposition, and threat and analytics products. The differentiator is email rather than documents. Most of the record of a legal matter is generated in Outlook, and a document system that does not capture email leaves the file incomplete in exactly the place a later dispute will focus on. iManage files email against matters, which is why it became standard in corporate firms despite being an additional system to buy and administer. Its ownership history is relevant to roadmap risk and is unusually well documented: in July 2015 the management team bought the complete business, brand and products from Hewlett-Packard, ending a period when its direction was set by a hardware company, and in April 2023 Bain Capital Tech Opportunities made a minority growth investment with management retaining control. It is bought across the size range, though the economics favour mid-size and large firms, and increasingly by non-legal customers in financial services, accounting and government with the same matter-centric problem. The vendor claims 81 per cent of the Am Law 200 as customers, a figure it publishes but nobody audits. The trade-off is scope: it does not do practice management, billing or accounting, so it sits alongside a system such as Aderant rather than replacing one.

What people use it for

Corporate firms whose matter record lives largely in email and must be filed and searchable
Firms with client confidentiality obligations requiring need-to-know access per matter
Practices with records retention obligations spanning electronic and physical files
Financial services, accounting and government teams with the same matter-centric document problem

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about iManage.

It manages documents and email but not matters, billing or accounting, so it is an addition to a practice management system rather than a replacement for one.
Administration requires specialist skills, and organisations without a dedicated document management administrator tend to run it badly configured.
Its value depends on fee earners filing email consistently, which is a behaviour change firms routinely fail to enforce.
Nothing about pricing is published and the surrounding modules are licensed separately, so the gap between the core product and a working configuration is discovered late.
The market-share figures it cites, such as 81 per cent of the Am Law 200, are vendor published and not independently audited.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of iManage

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

iManagevs
NetDocuments
NetDocuments: Cloud-native document management for firms that would rather not run or host the platform themselves
iManagevs
Relativity
Relativity: Solves e-discovery review rather than day to day document management, despite overlapping on document handling
iManagevs
Clio
Clio: Includes basic document management inside practice management, which is sufficient for small firms

Pricing

What iManage costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

iManage Work

On request

Per user licensing quoted per organisation
Cloud or on-premises deployment
Security, records and analytics modules licensed separately

Capabilities

Features

iManage Work
Matter-centric document and email storage with version control
Outlook email filing
Email filed against matters, with automated filing suggestions
Security Policy Manager
Need-to-know access controls enforced per matter or client
Records Manager
Retention and disposition across electronic and physical records
Full text and metadata search
Search across matter documents and filed email

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does iManage replace practice management software?

No. It handles documents and email. Firms run it alongside a practice management and billing system such as Aderant or Elite 3E.

Who owns iManage?

It has been independent since a management buyout from Hewlett-Packard completed in July 2015. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities made a minority growth investment in April 2023, with management retaining control.

Is iManage worth it for a small firm?

It is sold to small firms as well as large ones, but the licensing and administrative overhead usually outweighs the benefit over a well organised document store below roughly twenty fee earners.

Keep looking

Where to go from iManage

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for iManage, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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