As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates d.velop documents 2.5/5 and DocuWare 2.5/5 in Document Management (DMS). Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick d.velop documents and 3 pick DocuWare. d.velop documents scores higher on 3 of 6 criteria (Versioning, permissions & audit trail, Audit-proof archiving & retention and Search, retrieval & exit). DocuWare scores higher on 2 of 6 criteria (Capture, OCR & indexing and European sovereignty). Provenance — d.velop documents: EU-Made; DocuWare: EU origin, foreign-owned. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
d.velop documents leads on versioning and permissions, 3.8 vs 2.8 (5 judges lean d.velop documents, 0 DocuWare, 1 tie), and on audit-proof archiving, 4.7 vs 3.7 (5, 0, 1). DocuWare leads capture and indexing, 7.3 vs 7.0 (2 leans, 0, 4 ties). Document workflows is level at 6.8 (1 lean each, 4 ties); search and portability splits 2-2 with 2 ties; sovereignty reads 4.2 vs 4.3, 2 leans to DocuWare and 3 ties; pricing transparency, weighted only for d.velop documents because published prices exist, sits at 1.8 vs 1.5 with 5 ties. Judge totals split: DocuWare ahead with the tax auditor, 5.1 vs 4.8, and the IT integrator, 5.7 vs 5.6; d.velop documents ahead with the records analyst, the data protection officer and the skeptic. Attributes: d.velop documents — jurisdiction DE, data residency unknown; DocuWare — data residency EU only, ownership unknown. No overall winner: the lean differs by judge and criterion.
Choose d.velop documents if
You need tight control over document versions and access rights — versioning and permissions leans d.velop documents 5 judges to 0, mean 3.8 vs 2.8.
Your archive must stand up in a German tax audit — audit-proof archiving leans d.velop documents 5 judges to 0, mean 4.7 vs 3.7.
You require a vendor with a German legal-entity jurisdiction — the captured attribute for d.velop documents lists jurisdiction DE.
Your buying panel mirrors the records analyst or the data protection officer — their weighted totals favor d.velop documents at 4.8 vs 4.3 and 4.5 vs 4.2.
Published prices matter to your shortlisting — pricing transparency carries a 1-to-0 lean to d.velop documents with 5 ties, and its verdicts are the only ones weighted for pricing because published prices exist.
Choose DocuWare if
High-volume document intake is your priority — capture and indexing leans DocuWare, mean 7.3 vs 7.0, with 2 judges leaning DocuWare, 0 d.velop documents and 4 ties.
You must keep document data within the EU — the captured attribute for DocuWare lists data residency EU only.
Your priorities match the tax auditor's rubric — that judge's weighted total reads 5.1 vs 4.8 for DocuWare.
Your IT integrator leads the evaluation — that judge's weighted total reads 5.7 vs 5.6 for DocuWare.
Sovereignty is a scored criterion in your evaluation — it leans DocuWare 2 judges to 1 with 3 ties, mean 4.3 vs 4.2.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Mittelstand Owner
Runs a forty-person company and wants the paper out of the office and the invoices approved without chasing anyone. Reads for e-invoice intake, an approval workflow that works without a consultant, and a price for users, storage and modules before the partner visit, not after.
d.velop documents
DocuWare
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Capture, OCR & indexing
d.velop documents
The digital inbound-mail story is documented: paper via scanner or photo, PDF, email and e-invoices over Peppol are all captured, documents are classified and distributed, and booking-relevant fields like invoice number, order number, date, creditor and line data are extracted automatically and matched against order data, with an AI-supported review step that is usually skipped for invoices with order reference. ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are handled as formats, and the mobile app scans multi-page documents straight into the archive. I found no public information on duplicate detection or on where the AI processing runs, so I hold this just under the top level.
DocuWare
AI classification, extraction with confidence scores and bank-detail verification, a trainable custom model without code, zero-shot GenAI extraction, OCR and handwriting recognition, and automatic capture of vendor, amount, due date and line items on invoices, with e-invoices received, validated and made PEPPOL-ready. Intake channels such as a mailbox or Microsoft 365, duplicate detection on intake, and where the AI processing runs — we found no public information on those.
Versioning, permissions & audit trail
d.velop documents
Versioning is explicitly documented — a version is stored for every change to a document or record — and access to the archive is governed by individual permission structures that are also said to apply in search and AI processes. I found no public information on check-in and check-out, role or group rights per document type, or an audit log of who read or changed what, which is exactly what I would want before trusting it with contracts and payroll.
DocuWare
Documents can be locked during editing and a workflow history records which user made which decision, and the archiving pages note a history viewable in the system and exportable in a common file format. Version history with restore, role or folder permissions, single sign-on, and a log of reads and changes — we found no public information on those.
Audit-proof archiving & retention
d.velop documents
GoBD-compliant, revision-safe archiving is claimed, retention policies that prevent deletion or modification are described, and the vendor goes beyond the word alone: a digital file plan that maps the Verfahrensdokumentation one-to-one, automated updates to that documentation, sample Verfahrensdokumentationen, webinars and a compliance whitepaper covering GoBD, DSGVO and ISO 27001. I found no public information on an auditor's report such as an IDW PS 880 Testat, on WORM storage, or on the Z1–Z3 tax-audit export, so the archiving claim rests on the vendor's own material.
DocuWare
Audit-proof archiving is claimed for invoice processing and in a customer reference, and the archiving pages offer real GoBD guidance: retention periods, the digital-original rule for e-invoices, and workflow tools for protecting or destroying documents at set times. How immutability is technically achieved, a sample Verfahrensdokumentation, and any auditor's report or certification with scope — we found no public information on those.
Document workflows & integrations
d.velop documents
This is the strongest area for my purposes: the invoice workflow with SAP covers automatic booking, checking and release, customizable approval steps, an automatic three-way match, due-date and early-payment-discount management, a substitution notice for absences, and approvals via an SAP Fiori app or on the mobile device. Connectors are named for SAP, SAGE, APplus, Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, a Microsoft 365 integration, a REST API and a digital signature module are all on the list. I found no public information on a graphical no-code workflow designer, escalation rules, webhooks, or DATEV.
DocuWare
Drag-and-drop workflow design without programming with triggers, escalations, substitution rules, task lists per employee or role and an overseeing controller, plus an invoice process from capture through approval to export into accounting, CSV handover to any ERP, DATEV and Varial named in customer references, an API and 500+ integrations claimed. Connector scopes, a documented REST API with webhooks, and e-signature integration — we found no public information on those.
Search, retrieval & exit
d.velop documents
Finding things again is well covered: an enterprise search that runs in real time across company applications, sources including documents, emails, file directories and wikis, AI answers with source citations under the user's access rights, search templates and favorite documents, and mobile apps for Android, iOS and iPadOS that carry documents offline. Importing existing documents from the file system is documented. I found no public information on bulk export of documents together with metadata and versions, or on the exit when the contract ends — that part I would have to ask about.
DocuWare
Full-text and index search with remote and mobile access are documented, and DocuWare Export delivers filtered, schedulable CSV export of index data and line items into any accounting or ERP system, included in nearly every cloud licence but as additional licences on-premises. Saved searches, bulk export of the documents themselves with their versions, and a documented exit path after the contract ends — we found no public information on those.
European sovereignty
d.velop documents
The contracting entity is d.velop AG in Gescher, Germany, with a commercial register number and a German VAT ID, both a cloud and an on-premises edition are offered, and the homepage claims the vendor is fully under European ownership and free of US jurisdiction risks like the CLOUD Act. The captured pages give no data-centre location for the cloud edition and no subprocessor list for hosting or AI processing; the privacy policy names only website-related recipients such as Hygraph in Berlin and Hotjar in Malta.
DocuWare
The contracting entity is DocuWare GmbH in Germering under German law with Munich venue, personal data is generally processed in Germany and Europe, dedicated data centres in the EU and the USA are mentioned, and an on-premises edition exists. A published data-processing agreement, the hosting and AI subprocessors for the product itself (only website services such as Matomo and Hubspot are named), and which data centres the cloud edition uses for documents — we found no public information on those.
Pricing transparency
d.velop documents
For a forty-person shop this is the disappointment: the captured pages state no prices for the software itself, only that the offer is directed exclusively at business customers, and the store shows prices for live trainings — "749,00 €*" for d.velop documents individualisieren (Cloud), "749,00 €*" for d.velop invoices anwenden, "290,00 €*" for the sales training. I cannot compute what users, storage or modules cost before the partner visit; the licence price stays a quote conversation.
DocuWare
No price figures appear on the captured pages: prices are agreed ex works plus VAT in the terms, everything runs through a demo request and a 30-day trial, and on-premises needs server licences plus add-on modules such as the Workflow Manager and export functions, while the cloud bundles Intelligent Indexing and Forms. The licence model is public in detail — named versus concurrent licences with conversion ratios, maintenance requirement, server licences — but a buyer cannot compute the cost of a given number of users and storage before talking to sales or a partner.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
d.velop documents
DocuWare
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates both 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick d.velop documents and 3 pick DocuWare. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is d.velop documents or DocuWare European?
d.velop documents is European (EU-Made). DocuWare is European (EU origin, foreign-owned). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.