A distribution, not a competitor
Let’s say it upfront: Pristy Core does not replace Alfresco Community, it contains it.
We start from the Alfresco Community repository, published under a free/open-source licence, and add our own modules on top. So you’re not trading one product for another: you get the same proven foundation, plus what we had to build to run it day to day at our customers'.
Concretely, Pristy Core 26.0 embeds Alfresco Community 25.3.
That’s also why we contribute to the foundation rather than maintaining a diverging copy: our fixes benefit the whole Alfresco community.
What Pristy Core contains
Pristy Core is a distribution: the Alfresco Community repository, plus five modules we develop and maintain.
pristy-core — the Pristy foundation. It carries the business content models (public procurement, administrative acts, social case files), dynamic application configuration, self-service password reset and user-search restriction.
pristy-collab — real-time collaborative text editing. Several authors work on the same document, and their changes synchronise as they type.
pristy-kafka — the event bus. Any action on a document can trigger processing outside the DMS: character recognition on import, stamping a PDF, feeding the audit trail.
collabora-online — online office editing. Text documents, spreadsheets and presentations open and are edited in the browser, with no software to install.
send-mail — sending documents by email directly from the DMS.
What Pristy adds to the foundation
| Criterion | Pristy Core 26.0 | Alfresco Community 25.3 |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation and licences | ||
| Content repository | Equivalent : Alfresco Community 25.3 Pristy embeds the Alfresco Community repository, unmodified. | Equivalent : Alfresco Community 25.3 |
| Foundation licence | Equivalent : LGPLv3 | Equivalent : LGPLv3 |
| Licence of the added modules | Pristy advantage : AGPLv3 / LGPLv3 The Pristy interfaces are published under AGPLv3, the added modules derived from Alfresco under LGPLv3. | not specified |
| Dependency on a proprietary binary | Pristy advantage : None (except the optional SharePoint Protocol) Pristy replaces alfresco-pdf-renderer with a free driver built on poppler. Only the SharePoint Protocol connector, optional and reserved for machines running Microsoft Office, introduces a closed component. | Not available : alfresco-pdf-renderer (PDFium) Alfresco ships alfresco-pdf-renderer, a closed binary based on PDFium. |
| Search and indexing | ||
| Indexing engine | Equivalent : Apache Solr 6 Pristy Core 26.0 uses the foundation’s engine. The Apache Solr 9 port maintained by Jeci arrives with Pristy Core 26.1. | Equivalent : Apache Solr 6 |
| Protection against query injection | Pristy advantage : Built-in validators Validation via a configurable whitelist and value preparation before interpolation into an AFTS query. | Equivalent : Left to the developer |
| Document transformation | ||
| PDF preview generation | Pristy advantage : poppler (free/open-source) | Not available : PDFium (proprietary) |
| EML emails | Pristy advantage : Dedicated transformer | not specified |
| Video | Pristy advantage : Dedicated transformer | Partial : Third-party module to install |
| Character recognition (OCR) | Pristy advantage : Automatic on import OCR triggers automatically as soon as the document is uploaded to the repository. | Partial : Third-party module to install |
| Events and automation | ||
| Message bus | Pristy advantage : Apache Kafka | Not available : Not provided Alfresco only provides a message bus in its Enterprise edition; in Community, you have to build it yourself. |
| Triggering external processing | Pristy advantage : By topic, configurable Routing to a Kafka topic driven by a document property. | Not available : Not provided |
| Automatic PDF stamping | Pristy advantage : Available | Not available : Not provided |
| Data migration | ||
| Bulk data migration | Pristy advantage : Pristy Connect, orchestrated by Apache Airflow Every step is tracked, restartable and supervised. | Equivalent : Alfresco Bulk Import |
| Supported sources | Pristy advantage : Other DMS, network drive, business application | Equivalent : Server file system |
| Transformation during migration | Pristy advantage : Reshapeable tree and metadata Pivot format: the tree and metadata can be reproduced identically or reshaped along the way. | not specified |
| Resuming after interruption | Pristy advantage : Handled | not specified |
| Continuous sync with a business application | Pristy advantage : Available Beyond the initial migration, Pristy Connect keeps a continuous flow between your applications and the DMS. | not specified |
| Authentication | ||
| OpenID Connect / OAuth 2 | Equivalent : Native foundation support Pristy inherits native support from the Alfresco Community foundation; our interfaces connect to it (Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID). | Equivalent : Native support The Alfresco Community foundation natively supports OpenID Connect. |
| SAML 2 | not specified | not specified |
| HMAC authentication | Pristy advantage : Available For integrating third-party applications without sharing a password. | Not available : Not provided |
| Zimbra single sign-on | Pristy advantage : Available | Not available : Not provided |
| Self-service password reset | Pristy advantage : Built into the Pristy interfaces Pristy integrates the flow into its own interfaces: confirmation email, configurable message templates and rules, with separate handling for LDAP accounts. | not specified |
| User search restriction | Pristy advantage : Available Restriction by domain, to prevent a user from browsing the entire directory. | Not available : Not provided |
| Traceability and monitoring | ||
| Actionable audit trail | Pristy advantage : Pristy Audit Trail Kafka events streamed into Elastic and analysed in Kibana dashboards. | Equivalent : Audit built into the repository |
| Operational diagnostic tools | Pristy advantage : OOTBEE Support Tools (Jeci fork) Jeci maintains an adapted version: support for the Solr 9 search subsystem on the indexing tracker page, JSON responses usable by our monitoring tools, and security fixes. | Equivalent : OOTBEE Support Tools The Support Tools ship with Alfresco. |
| Editing and collaboration | ||
| Online office editing | Pristy advantage : Collabora Online Collabora Online, integrated via the WOPI protocol. | Partial : Third-party module to install |
| Real-time collaborative text editing | Pristy advantage : Available Several authors on the same document, synchronised over WebSocket. | Not available : Not provided |
| Business models | ||
| Public procurement | Pristy advantage : Dedicated model and services | Not available : To be developed |
| Administrative acts | Pristy advantage : Dedicated model and services | Not available : To be developed |
| Social case files | Pristy advantage : Dedicated model and services | Not available : To be developed |
| Archiving and transfer | Pristy advantage : Dedicated module | Not available : To be developed |
| Pastell synchronisation | Pristy advantage : Dedicated connector | Not available : Not provided |
| Operations | ||
| Dynamic application configuration | Pristy advantage : Available Single configuration entry point, with filtering of server-reserved keys. | Not available : Not provided |
- Pristy advantage
- Available
- Equivalent
- Partial
- Not available
Three differences that matter in production
No closed component
The Alfresco Community distribution ships alfresco-pdf-renderer, a proprietary
binary responsible for generating PDF previews. We replaced it with a free driver
built on poppler. A Pristy installation therefore contains no closed
component: the processing chain is auditable end to end, which removes an
obstacle on tenders requiring free/open-source software.
One reservation, and it’s your own choice: the SharePoint Protocol connector, which lets you open documents from Microsoft Office, is a proprietary binary. It is optional and only matters if your workstations run the Microsoft suite. With Collabora Online, online editing does entirely without it.
A search engine we’re upgrading
On this version, Pristy Core 26.0 uses the foundation’s engine, Apache Solr 6, whose upstream support ended long ago. We didn’t stop there: Jeci maintains Pristy Search Service, a port of Alfresco Search Services on Apache Solr 9 and Java 17, published as free/open-source software and adopted by the official Alfresco Docker installer. It arrives with Pristy Core 26.1 — the details are in our article Pristy Search Service, Pristy’s search engine on Solr 9.
That’s the subject of our Pristy Core 26.1 vs. Alfresco Community 26.2 comparison, where the search question is framed in entirely new terms.
Processing triggered by documents
The repository can signal that a document has arrived. Still, something needs to be done with it. We route these events through Kafka, which lets you plug in processing without touching the repository: character recognition on import, stamping a PDF, feeding the audit trail.
Go further
- Pristy vs. Alfresco Enterprise — the comparison with the commercial offering
- Free/open-source software: our licences and sources
- Pristy Audit Trail — traceability in detail
- Pristy Connect — bulk data migration and continuous synchronisation
- Automatic OCR — character recognition on import
Let's talk about your document foundation
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