I am looking for a web based solution that allows me to run a web based database for (mostly) PDF documents (plus maybe a few MS Office documents). I've googled for "document management" (and for lack of a better tag tagged this question accordingly) but that's not it, as I do not need most of the features that are usually implied by the term document management system - to wit there is no need for collaboration, calendars, versioning, workflows etc. Rather I need something that builds a very good search index from the documents to allow authenticated users to find and download relevant information.
To give a short list of what I'm looking for:
- completely web based solution
- something with long term support
- integrated user management (access only for authenticated users)
- must support 1000+ users ("users" means people who search the database, plus maybe a few dozen people who upload documents)
- commercial software/licence costs is okay (budget for running expenses is in the upper thousands/year. We're aware that there will be additional cost for implementation )
- we start with some 1000 documents (as archives will not be migrated from the current database), documents will be added a rate of about 1000 per year
- some of the documents contain sensitive information, so we are looking for something with a good record regarding security
- software must be able to index pdf documents as well as allow manually added metadata
- we must be able to sort documents into topics and give access rights based on topic (search should return only documents which the user has permission to access/download)
- should use a template system that allows our frontend developers to integrate our CI (plus should allow for a responsive/mobile-friendly layout)
- users should be able to save their searches and should be notified if a newly indexed document matches a saved search
- simply structured search result page with a very good fulltext search that displays title and excerpt from the documents
The last bullet point is rather important to us - we run a survey in the current incarnation of the database and received endless variations of "I want a simple Google-like interface with a single text field, additional search filters should be a last resort and not something I have to use regularly". However it seems that pre-built packages usually offer more of a portal-like / intranet structure. In the past we have build similar solutions on top of open source packages (Drupal etc.) but our experience w/r/t security and long term support have been mixed a least so we'd prefer to buy something with a proven track record (if that is the right expression).