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HCL Connections vs Yammer comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HCL Connections
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (5th)
Yammer
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
5th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Enterprise Social Software category, the mindshare of HCL Connections is 2.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yammer is 5.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Social Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Yammer5.4%
HCL Connections2.8%
Other91.8%
Enterprise Social Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Jul 10, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

Hasnain Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Talent acquisition & development specialist at Software Productivity Strategists, Inc. (SPS)
A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.
DB
Senior Technical Product Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Creates user groups and streamlines communication
I think we should have some improvements in Yammer, similar to what we have in Facebook and others, where we can have targeted communications, so that we can filter some communications to go to a specific subset of that group, not to everybody. We would love to have some AI technologies included in Yammer, but I do not have a specific use case in mind right now.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"File sharing, especially within the communities, is a valuable feature."
"IBM Connections Cloud gives us the opportunity to put files in one location for the people to get access to."
"The ease of use has definitely improved the way my organization functions."
"We used lots of products like wordpress to blog, docuwiki as wiki, bugtracker, todo apps and so on, but Connections delivers all of it integrated in one solution."
"All the features above improve collaboration among employees."
"The Files feature has really changed the way we do business."
"Licensing price was very competitive compared to Jive or SharePoint, and we went from zero to pilot with business within eight weeks, making this a very cost efficient offering."
"Marketing has created a community open to all internal employees where it has centralized all marketing content (brochures, presentations, communications)."
"It is good, it works, it is reasonably easy to use."
"This product is very easy to use, and has been widely and easily adopted."
"Lean process improvements and quality control are built into Yammer."
"Increased collaboration between geographically distributed teams."
"Yammer shows the post’s actions, comments, and how people react. We can quickly see what's going on."
"Yammer was an outstanding performer in the collaborative platform category."
"The technical support is outstanding, and the Yammer team is open and responsive on issues, feedback, and suggestions."
"I have found it to be a good tool for building communities and for improving communication."
 

Cons

"While connection supports @named.user messaging and #tag.labels, the collaborative interaction UXP could be updated to a more streamlined approach for posts, file-share and threaded conversations such as that which is provided by newer teamwork offerings (e.g., Slack)."
"I understand this is about IBM making money. But I want all the features/capabilities in the base package."
"It would be helpful to have more interfacing of all the IBM platforms."
"I would like to have more control over the news delivery on the homepage. You now need a third-party app (we use XCC from Time To Act) for this."
"With the Connections desktop plugin, right now, when we copy files over, we have to do it individually and create our folder structure; we can't just copy our folders over and have them all exist."
"Deployment can be a little complex, but a lot of this relates to the network, corporate LDAP, and security requirements."
"I have found the wiki to be lacking in functionality."
"The wiki is the weakest part of Connections, compared to standalone wiki solutions."
"Yammer has very limited features."
"They need to somehow enable better document sharing features. They need to provide joint drafting of documents."
"Users need to be in the Acting Directory to exploit the features."
"Yammer can improve the effectiveness of its usage by addressing the metrics that measure user trust and perception."
"I think that improvements could be seen in the delayed messaging, but other than, it's great!"
"There's always going to be room for improvement, because it's not the answer for everything."
"Navigation to different Yammer Groups could be improved."
"MS made us plenty of promises for Yammer and have not delivered."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is not bad."
"I don't know about the pricing. Now that Microsoft has bought Yammer, it should be a part of our subscriptions for Office 365."
"I think that there is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution."
"Its cost is included in the license bundle for Microsoft."
"Yammer is a pretty cheap solution, and it's included in multiple subscriptions."
"Compared to other products like Amazon, Yammer's pricing is fine."
"We get it as part of our Office 365 subscriptions, so I don't think we pay any additional cost for Yammer. It's included in the Office 365 subscriptions."
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920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014
Hello, Looking at my referrers, I noticed that this question pointed out to my comparison between SharePoint & Connections (see previous discussions for the link). I didn't compare Connections and SharePoint/Yammer yet but just Connections & SharePoint Social. Now that I have a little bit more experience with Connections & IBM Products in general, I'd consider choosing either of ...
2 out of 9 answers
it_user128490 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 1, 2014
I have experience using Yammer, Sharepoint, IBM -Sametime, Cisco-webex as a social platform. I liked Cisco - webex for various reason - Easy to use, online conferencing, blog, message broadcast, desktop share, meeting scheduler and seamless integration with MS office calendar. I found webex connect to be feature rich and meets most of our Orgs social needs. Many Thanks Pratyush
Jul 1, 2014
IBM Connections Integrates well with SharePoint. Post the integration configuration, most of the time, we should be able to get our SharePoint Libraries and Mysite integrated with connections. By having Microsoft Windows Authentication, we would be able to see the teamsitres, contents etf through SharePoint APIs on Conections page.Availability of Uploading docs are also single click away.Its visa versa from SharePoint as well. Questions regarding MS Yammer or IBM Connections would be subject to business decision however it would also be dependent on wheather we have Connections in the system or Yammer. if its a fresh new set up planning then in long run SharePoint with Yammer negates the need to have IBM connection and have more cost effective solutions. Best regards, Kumar
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HCL Connections?
The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...
What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?
I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.
What needs improvement with Yammer?
I think we should have some improvements in Yammer, similar to what we have in Facebook and others, where we can have targeted communications, so that we can filter some communications to go to a s...
What is your primary use case for Yammer?
We create user groups in Yammer, so we use it mainly for communications and engagement. The features in Yammer that I find most beneficial for team collaboration, communication, and engagement are ...
What advice do you have for others considering Yammer?
I would recommend Yammer to others if someone wants to communicate with a big team and needs a good communication platform. I cannot think of any advice or recommendation to share with users who wo...
 

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA
Verizon, Rakuten,Nationwide, DHL, Westfield, Telefonica, 7-Eleven, Red Robin, Intuit, eBay,Darden, Suncorp, Tyco, Xerox, and ModCloth.
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Connections vs. Yammer and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.