ELO Office, Professional, Enterprise: which ELO is right for you?

For many small businesses and self-employed people, ELOoffice was the entry point into digital filing. But sales were discontinued long ago, and support ends on 31 December 2026. If you are still working with ELOoffice today, you only have a few weeks left to plan the switch.

At the same time, many people find the product family confusing: what is the difference between ELOprofessional and ELOenterprise? What does ELO ECM Suite mean? Which version is current, and is ELO also available from the cloud?

In this guide you get the complete overview: which ELO products exist and who they are intended for, what the official successor to ELOoffice is, how you take your data with you, how ELOprofessional and ELOenterprise differ, which operating models there are and what the costs depend on.

As DOCSHERO®, we are a certified ELO Business Partner and have been implementing ELO in companies of every size and industry for more than 20 years – from ten workstations to large corporate groups.

Information as of: 3 November 2026.

• ELOoffice has been discontinued: sales ended in 2024, and support ends on 31 December 2026. There are already no more feature updates.
• Official successor: ELOprofessional for Small Business – a cloud solution for 3, 5 or 10 users, on subscription, only for existing ELOoffice 11 customers based in Germany. Alternatively, you can switch to ELOprofessional.
• ELOprofessional and ELOenterprise are the two editions of the ELO ECM Suite: Professional for mid-sized companies on Windows, Enterprise for large, distributed and multi-tenant environments.
• The current version is ELO ECM Suite 25.0 LTS. Since ELO 21, there have been feature releases over the course of the year and a version with long-term support every two years.
• ELO is available through certified Business Partners. The costs depend on edition, users, modules and operating model.

ELO originally stands for “Elektronischer Leitz Ordner” (electronic Leitz binder). The brand was created within the Louis Leitz group of companies, and in 1998 ELO Digital Office GmbH, based in Stuttgart, became independent. Today, around 1,030 people work for ELO, about 500 of them in Germany. ELO is one of the leading vendors of enterprise content management and sells its software exclusively through partners.

ELO is often described as a “DMS”. That falls short. A document management system is the foundation: filing, finding and versioning documents. But ELO covers all the levels above it. With workflows, files, email archiving and interfaces, it becomes ECM (enterprise content management). When information from all systems is connected and analysed, this is called EIM (enterprise information management). And with AI on several levels supporting processes and employees, the next level is added: AI knowledge management.

That is why ELO today is a complete digitalisation platform. Incoming invoices, contract management, personnel files, email archiving, workflows and AI assistance all run on the same foundation.

For a long time, ELO consisted of three product lines: ELOoffice for small businesses, ELOprofessional for mid-sized companies and ELOenterprise for large corporate groups. ELOoffice has since been discontinued. Professional and Enterprise are still available, and both are editions of the ELO ECM Suite. So the ECM Suite is not another product alongside them, but the name of the software they belong to.

The ELO Business Solutions build on this: ready-made specialist solutions for typical processes that can be adapted to your own company. And if you do not want to run ELO yourself, you use a cloud model – either from ELO itself or from a Business Partner.

ELOoffice was ELO’s entry-level solution: an archive for up to ten users on the network, with up to 200,000 documents per archive in a maximum of four archives. The last version was ELOoffice 11.02. In September 2024, ELO discontinued sales. The online shop closed at the end of October 2024, and the last licences and updates were available from specialist resellers until 31 December 2024.

Since then, there have been no new features, only security updates. Support by phone, ticket and online is available until 31 December 2026. After that, you are running software without manufacturer support.

What does that mean in practice? If problems arise after a Windows update, with new requirements such as e-invoicing or when you change computers, nobody will be able to help you any more. At the same time, ELOoffice often holds a company’s entire archive: invoices, contracts, correspondence – exactly the records you have to keep for years to come. Now at the latest is the right time to plan the switch.

The official successor is called ELOprofessional for Small Business. ELO introduced it in May 2025 for existing ELOoffice 11 customers. The key facts:

• Cloud only: the solution runs as a cloud service; a perpetual licence version is not planned.
• Three sizes: for 3, 5 or 10 users, on a subscription model.
• For ELOoffice 11 customers in Germany: when ordering, you need proof of purchase for ELOoffice 11.
• Sold through partners: orders are placed exclusively through authorised ELO Cloud Partners.
• With a migration tool: data from ELOoffice 11 can be transferred, including user rights.
• Features: including an e-invoice viewer, form designer, ad hoc workflows, text recognition, full-text search and workspaces.

If that does not suit you, for example because you have more than ten users, want to run ELO on your own servers or need specialist solutions such as an invoice workflow, switching to ELOprofessional is the second route. It offers the full functionality of the ELO ECM Suite and can be run on your own servers or in a partner’s cloud.

With every switch, the same applies: retention obligations continue. You have to keep invoices and accounting vouchers for eight years, and books and annual financial statements for ten years – complete, unalterable and evaluable. A clean migration therefore transfers not only files, but also metadata, annotations and references into the ELO standard.

For most mid-sized companies, ELOprofessional is the right choice. It runs on Windows servers, all server processes sit on one host, and workflows, files, email archive, Business Solutions and AI are available in full.

ELOenterprise plays to its strengths when things get big and demanding: many locations, high availability, load balancing across several servers, Linux servers or several tenants in one system, for example for a group of companies or a service provider running ELO for several customers.

Because both editions share the same functional core, the decision is above all a question of architecture. So the key question is less “What do we need today?” than “Where do we want to be in five years?”. That is exactly what we clarify in an analysis such as HEROscope before a licence is purchased.

The current version is ELO ECM Suite 25.0 LTS. The documentation also still lists the previous version 23.0 LTS.

Since ELO 21, there have been two kinds of versions: feature releases, which bring new features over the course of the year, and LTS versions (long-term support), which are released every two years and supported for a particularly long time. For companies that value stability more than every new feature, the LTS versions are the first choice. If you use ELO in the cloud, you receive updates automatically and always work with the latest version. If you run ELO yourself, you plan updates, monitoring and backups on your own or with your partner.

ELO 25 focuses above all on low-code and AI: processes can be connected with ELO Flows without programming, and the ELO Assistant summarises content, answers questions and analyses documents – with the permissions of the filing system. Both are standard components of the ELO server, not additional Business Solutions or integrations. ELO AI can be run with your own language models or an AI provider of your choice.

Depending on their role, people work in different interfaces: in the ELO Java Client, in the ELO Web Client in the browser, in the ELO Desktop Client with Microsoft Office integration or on the move in the ELO App for Android and iOS.

• Cloud (software as a service): ELO runs in a data centre and is operated by the manufacturer or by a Business Partner. You use the software on subscription, updates arrive automatically, and you do not need your own servers. At DOCSHERO®, this is our HEROcloud.
• Managed service: a Business Partner runs ELO for you, on a server or virtual machine that it monitors, updates and backs up.
• In-house: ELO runs on your own servers or in your private cloud. You have full control, but you also take care of operation, updates, monitoring and backups yourself.

Which model is right depends on your IT. If you do not want to maintain your own server landscape, you are usually better off with the cloud. If you connect many local systems or have strict internal requirements, you will tend to opt for your own servers.

Our own cloud offering is called HEROcloud: ELO on our infrastructure in German data centres, with a Kubernetes architecture, monitoring and automatic backups. We also run ELO as VM hosting or support operation on your own servers.

On top of that, there are further solutions such as ELO HR Recruiting, ELO Visitor, ELO Meeting, ELO Learning or ELO eRecords, as well as integrations with other systems. Almost any third-party system can be connected – via a standard integration from the vendor or a custom integration built for that specific system. With ELO for SAP ERP, you link documents to transactions in SAP, based on our SAP integration. With ELO for DATEV, you connect ELO to your accounting, and Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce can be connected too.

The big advantage: all solutions run on the same platform and use the same audit-proof archive. You can start with one area, such as incoming invoices, and later add contracts, personnel files or email archiving without introducing a new system. The ELO Business Solutions are the fastest way to get started.

The price of ELO depends on several factors:

• Edition: ELOprofessional, ELOenterprise or the Small Business variant.
• Number of users: how many employees work with ELO.
• Modules: which Business Solutions and integrations you need.
• Operating model: cloud on subscription, managed service or your own servers. All operating models are also available on subscription; ELO significantly expanded the monthly subscription model with version 25.
• Implementation: analysis, setup, migration, training and ongoing support from the partner.

Licence costs are often the smaller part. How much the implementation costs depends above all on how many processes you want to map and how much legacy data you want to transfer. Overall ELO costs are therefore made up of licences or subscription, implementation, training and ongoing maintenance. For a concrete quote, it is best for us to look together at what you really need.

Information as of: 3 November 2026. Product names, versions and dates may change – the current information from ELO Digital Office is authoritative. DOCSHERO® is a certified ELO Business Partner.

• ELOoffice: important information about ELOoffice (end of sales, support until 31.12.2026, German)
• ELOoffice: alternative product ELOprofessional for Small Business (German)
• ELO documentation: difference between ELOprofessional and ELOenterprise
• ELO ECM Suite: operating models and solutions
• ELO documentation (current versions, German)