Should you use Box as a Document Management System?

Box is a popular cloud-based platform for file sharing and collaboration. It’s widely used across industries and has grown to include features aimed at document control. But how well does it meet the needs of organisations with more structured or regulated documentation requirements?

What is the Box CCMS (Cloud-Based Content Management System)? 

Box styles itself as a cloud‑based content management system (CCMS) because it can handle a range of digital assets, from documents and web content to media and unstructured data, all in one platform. It offers real-time collaboration, workflow automation, and integrations with over 1,500 business applications. 

Box enables organisations to securely create, store, share, and manage content to support everyday business operations. With optional licensed tools and modules, it can also be extended to support compliance objectives - including life‑science focused standards such as FDA QMSR and ISO 13485.

But is Box a document management system?

Box excels in secure file access, sharing, and collaboration, and its tiered offerings (Business, Business Plus, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus) provide varying levels of integration and automation. 

However, the core Box platform is not purpose‑built as a document management system (DMS) in the traditional sense, especially for regulated industries or structured quality processes.

What features define a true document management system?

A purpose-built DMS will:

• Enforce document lifecycles - Automatically route documents through defined stages such as Draft, Review, Approval, and Release.
• Control access and visibility - Use roles and permissions to ensure users only see or act on content relevant to them.
• Automate version control - Clearly separate drafts from approved issues, lock released versions, and prevent accidental overwrites.
• Maintain full audit trails - Track action taken on a document - who did what, when, and why.
• Support regulatory compliance - Provide built-in controls and workflows aligned with regulatory standards like ISO 13485, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, and QMSR.

These capabilities are critical when documentation is subject to regulatory scrutiny or must be tightly aligned with your product lifecycle and quality processes.

If you’re managing informal collaboration or general content sharing, Box works well. But if you’re controlling regulated documentation, building a QMS, or preparing for audits, Box’s limitations start to show.

How much does Box cost?

Box offers the following business packages:

• Business - £12 per month
• Business Plus - £20 per month
• Enterprise - £28 per month
• Enterprise Plus - £40 per month

However, advanced governance, integration, workflow automation, and compliance-oriented modules often involve additional, often unlisted, costs that can significantly increase total spend.

Access to the basic business packages can be bought on a per-seat basis (with a minimum purchase of 3 seats for each package).

Is Box robust enough for document control and compliance?

As some startups and SMEs increasingly look to use Box and other lightweight file-sharing offerings (like Dropbox) to manage quality and product development documentation, we ask if Box is really best suited to these kind of tasks.

If you’re managing design history files, controlled procedures, or documentation required for compliance with ISO 9001, ISO 13485, FDA QMSR, or MHRA expectations, it's worth asking:

• Can Box manage your project documentation from concept to launch - in a consistent, auditable way?
• Does it support proactive quality management or enforce lifecycle controls?
• Can it help you demonstrate to auditors that your document processes are structured and repeatable?

For companies with more complex or regulated document control needs, it’s important to evaluate how well Box’s core features - without additional configuration or paid modules - can meet these requirements.

To help answer that, here’s a closer look at the key pros and cons.

The pros and cons of using Box as a Document Management System

Pros

1. File security

Box includes all the security features you would expect of an enterprise-grade solution: single sign-on (on-premises or cloud-based), key storage, encryption, and mobile device protection. Role-based access controls ensure appropriate document visibility across teams.

For organisations with more advanced security needs, Box Shield (a paid add-on) provides features such as content classification, threat detection, and anomaly monitoring to help prevent data leaks.

2. Easy file sharing and global collaboration

Compared to sharing and collating documentation via email and storing it on a shared drive, Box is obviously a step up. With this tool users can upload documents, and invite others inside or outside an organisation to view and edit those files. Box has a full range of desktop and mobile apps, with good software integration options, that can make collaboration easy and seamless wherever you are in the world.

However, you should check carefully to ensure that the Box solution you’re choosing allows you to collaborate in real-time in shared workspaces with the specialist, design, and development software that is at the heart of your operations.

For more complex setups, you can pay for the Box Platform module to connect content across your business apps.

3. Basic workflow automation

Box supports simple workflow creation, and more advanced process automation is available via Box Relay (available on Business plans and above, with advanced features varying by tier).

Box Relay helps teams streamline routine document approval and publication tasks. They are typically used to automate and simplify everyday business activities, such as onboarding or contract release in a sales flow, where the review and distribution of standard documentation will follow the same sequence. However, there are some important limitations (see below).

Cons

1. Not designed as a full DMS

While Box includes document control features, it was not designed to function as a full DMS. Box does have activity logs and version history, but it doesn’t give you:

• A QMS-style document state model (Draft → Review → Approved → Effective → Obsolete)
• Enforced change control
• ‘Released-document’ controls (without significant process design, configuration and often, add-ons).

These are critical in industries where document control is subject to scrutiny (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 13485, FDA QMSR), and attempting to replicate them within Box requires manual workarounds and custom configuration.

2. Workflow limitations undermine process control

Box lets you create, name and edit any number of workflows. And while Box Relay can trigger workflows based on folder location, metadata, or file requests, it doesn’t enforce that every controlled document must enter a workflow, follow the correct process, or end up in the right 'released' location without procedural oversight. This remains a significant limitation for teams managing controlled processes.

Instead, users must decide which workflow a document follows, and where that document ultimately goes once approved.

This opens the door to inconsistency:

• Required approvers can be omitted
• Mandatory steps can be bypassed
• Final documents may be saved in incorrect or non-compliant locations

For a DMS that must support ISO 9001 and other standards, this presents a clear problem. You need to be able to prove you have clear and consistent procedures in place for issuing new iterations of quality documentation. You need to ensure they are stored in one easily accessible and unchanging location, so they can be referred to by your team and any future auditors. Without automation, you're relying on every user to apply the correct process, every time.

In practice, teams using Box to build a QMS may need to: 

• Manually run a Box Relay workflow for each document
• Ask a permissioned user to manually label and move the approved version to the correct folder
• Repeat that for every document, every time

This manual process is not scalable, particularly for growing teams or busy SMEs managing multiple products, versions, and approvals.

Similarly, in product development environments where documents trigger later phases of work, workflows need to be tightly integrated with project structure. Box Relay doesn’t offer this level of automation or phase control, and wasn’t designed to.

4. Version control depends on manual discipline

Box does store document versions, but it doesn’t automatically distinguish between drafts, reviews, and approved issues. That lack of automated status control is a critical gap for companies working in regulated environments.

While Box’s collaboration tools are highly flexible, they don’t natively support structured versioning or enforce naming conventions. Each file change creates a new version (much like Google Drive or Dropbox), but users are responsible for:

• Labelling stages of the document lifecycle manually
• Tracking which version is the final approved release
• Ensuring obsolete versions aren’t mistakenly used

This manual process can work for small teams or simple use cases, but in complex, fast-moving product development environments, it becomes difficult to maintain. Relying on individuals to consistently follow labelling rules introduces risk. Over time, this can lead to confusion, mistakes, and what some teams call ‘document anarchy’.

A purpose-built DMS eliminates this risk by:

• Automatically tagging versions by status
• Separating drafts from approved issues
• Locking down published versions
• Maintaining a clean audit trail for regulators and internal QA

For businesses needing more structured lifecycle governance, Box Governance (a paid module) offers extended versioning, archiving, and obsolescence tools. But again, this requires extra investment and setup, and still lacks the native document state control that a DMS is designed to provide.

4. Limited support without upgrades

Box’s support offering scales with price. Basic packages rely on self-service knowledge bases. Live technical support and configuration assistance are reserved for higher-tier customers or available via paid Box Consultants.

If you're trying to implement a QMSR-compliant document control system and don’t have internal technical resources, this can quickly become a blocker.

5. Total cost of ownership can escalate quickly

Box is often seen as a ‘low cost’ or even free solution. But while starter packages may appear affordable, the key features required for proper document control and compliance are not included by default.

To access lifecycle management, governance, e‑signatures, and advanced compliance support, organisations often need to purchase multiple add‑ons and higher‑tier plans, driving up total cost of ownership.

Most basic packages come with limitations on API calls and file upload sizes. Native e-signatures come built in, but the number of documents that can be sent for signature through third-party and custom integrations is capped, except for those using Enterprise Plus. 

What are the alternatives to Box for document control?

If Box isn’t quite meeting your document control, compliance, or quality management needs, there are alternatives better suited to regulated and process-driven environments.

Solutions like Cognidox are purpose-built for teams managing:

• Design and development documentation
• Quality records and standard operating procedures
• Regulatory submissions (e.g. CE marking, FDA 510(k))
• Controlled document workflows and lifecycle governance

Cognidox offers a lightweight but powerful platform that supports fast-growing SMEs as well as complex, multi-site teams. It integrates seamlessly with existing toolchains and is designed to scale with you, without the complexity or cost layering of retrofitted content platforms.

Conclusion

If you are attracted to Box and similar software packages because they seem to offer quick and relatively cheap solutions to specific document management problems, it may be worthwhile taking a step back and doing a full audit of all your requirements first. 

After all, you don’t want to commit to a solution, migrate all your documents and then discover it is missing a vital piece of functionality for which you have to pay extra or change the entire way you operate.

Big corporations like AstraZeneca are currently using Box to ensure their collaboration and sales processes are streamlined and compliant.  Clients like these, with big budgets and plenty of internal development resources will be able to use Box to set up the system in exactly the way they need.  But smaller companies may find they can’t afford the level of support they want and are constantly paying extra to add seats or the specific functionality they need.  

What to start with, might look like a simple £12 - £40 per user cost, may rapidly escalate into something much more unmanageable.

There is no doubt that Box is a popular and useful file-sharing and collaboration tool. However, businesses who attempt to use it as a Document Management System to support a sophisticated product development or compliance process will quickly butt up against its expensive shortcomings.