SeedDMS is a free, open-source document management system for self-hosting. See its features, requirements, pricing (it is free), and how it compares to paid…
SeedDMS is a free, open-source document management system written in PHP that organizations self-host to store, organize, and control access to their documents. It was forked from the LetoDMS project in February 2013 by developer Uwe Steinmann, who has led its development since, building on a lineage that traces back to the myDMS project started around 2002.
The software runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows and works with MySQL, SQLite3, or PostgreSQL, giving administrators flexibility in how and where they deploy it. As open-source software licensed under GPL v2, there is no cost to download, install, or run SeedDMS at any scale.
SeedDMS centers on document version control, so every edit is preserved and can be rolled back, paired with granular user and group permissions for controlling who can view, edit, or approve documents. A built-in workflow engine supports custom review and approval chains, which is useful for teams that need an audit trail on document sign-off.
Beyond the basics, SeedDMS offers fulltext search, custom metadata fields, WebDAV access for mounting the document store like a network drive, and integrations with tools like Collabora Online, OnlyOffice, Tesseract OCR, and Paperless-ngx for editing and text extraction directly from the DMS.
SeedDMS has no pricing plans because it is entirely free and open source under the GPL v2 license. There are no per-user fees, storage limits, or premium tiers to unlock additional features. The only real cost is the infrastructure and technical time required to self-host, secure, back up, and maintain the server it runs on, since there is no official paid support or hosting offering from the project.
Yes. SeedDMS is free and open-source software released under the GPL v2 license, so there are no license fees for any number of users or documents.
Yes. SeedDMS does not offer an official hosted or cloud version; it must be installed on your own server, VPS, or hosting environment.
SeedDMS supports MySQL, SQLite3, and PostgreSQL as its database backend.
Yes, SeedDMS integrates with Tesseract OCR to extract text from scanned documents and images.
SeedDMS has been primarily maintained by developer Uwe Steinmann since he forked it from the LetoDMS project in February 2013.
Yes, it includes a configurable workflow engine for document review, approval, and revision processes.
SeedDMS markets itself as enterprise-ready for small and mid-sized organizations, though it lacks some enterprise conveniences like official support contracts and built-in SSO.
SeedDMS is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPL v2).