HCL Connections vs Yammer comparison

HCLSoftware and Microsoft are both solutions in the Enterprise Social Software category. HCLSoftware is ranked #15, while Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.5. HCLSoftware holds a 2.4% mindshare in ESS, compared to Microsoft’s 5.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of HCLSoftware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 77% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

HCL Connections

Read 55 HCL Connections reviews

2,304 Views
1,175 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Yammer

Read 64 Yammer reviews

2,484 Views
2,136 Comparison Views

77% willing to recommend

HCL Connections

Yammer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Yammer and HCL Connections are competing in the workplace communication and collaboration space. Yammer has the upper hand with its pricing and customer support, while HCL Connections offers a wider range of features.

Features: Yammer provides seamless team communication through Microsoft's ecosystem, integrates with Office 365, and supports mobile use. HCL Connections offers enterprise social networking, advanced collaboration tools like file sharing and wikis, and strong community support.

Room for Improvement: Yammer can improve in user adoption and expanding its functionality beyond being just a communication tool. HCL Connections could work on making the user interface more intuitive, reducing complexity in its application, and enhancing mobile app capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Yammer's cloud-based model eases deployment and benefits from Microsoft's robust customer service. HCL Connections allows for on-premise or hybrid models offering customization, but this can require more complex support and deployment effort.

Pricing and ROI: Yammer presents a cost-effective option with clear pricing, often included with Microsoft subscriptions enhancing ROI. HCL Connections may involve higher initial costs due to its extensive features, potentially yielding higher long-term ROI for businesses needing comprehensive collaboration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed HCL Connections vs. Yammer Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCL Connections vs. Yammer

April 2026

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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

15th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Enterprise Social Software category, the mindshare of HCL Connections is 2.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yammer is 5.3%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Social Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Yammer	5.3%
HCL Connections	2.4%
Other	92.3%

Enterprise Social Software

Q&A Highlights

it_user120486

Works

Jul 10, 2014

How do Sharepoint and Yammer match up to IBM’s connection solution?

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 those products the following way: - Do you plan for onpremises or a Cloud-based solution? - Do you plan for 100% out of the box or should you be able to customize the product? - Do you plan to use *only* the Social piece of Connections or do you plan to also store your documents in it? If yes, what kind of documents, Office (integration isn't as in SharePoint).? - Are you already working with SameTime or with Lync? Clearly, I'd choose Connections if : - I'm already using Sametime and/or other IBM products since you'd have an SSO for free using the LTPA tokens - I don't plan to customize the product heavily. - I don't plan to have a real document management system in it (Files+CCM) or only with PDF and non Office Documents If I'd need more than what's listed above, I'd go for SharePoint which doesn't only offer Social Capabilities but also other workfloads such as an extensive Search Engine, LOB integration, WCM, Collaboration, Social and three development/deployment models (Full Trust Solutions, Sandboxed, Apps). My experience now with Connections is that it's a nice product but it's harder to customize than SharePoint. It doesn't offer many APIs and it's rather hard to find valuable technical documentation on the product. It's also way harder to find non-IBM people working on the product. With SharePoint, you can really have an industrialization & full ALM of your devleopments and it's quite easy to find .NET/SharePoint developers all around without the need to involve Microsoft. In conclusion, for pure Social related stuff, Connections is better than SharePoint and maybe even better than Yammer but don't try to do anything else with the product nor to interoperate with other products, especially if these are not IBM ones or headaches will start :)

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Featured Reviews

Hasnain Zahid

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.

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Deep Bhowmik

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For me, the benefit is that I have it on my mobile device, because I work a lot on mobile."

"Having all features and tools together in one environment is great and gives the users a lot of possibilities to work in the way that they want to."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"Communities are a popular way of combining blogs, wikis, files, and activities centered on a common objective or subject which proves popular and increases collaboration across people and teams."

"With IBM connections cloud you are able to get the users active in the solution from day one and start developing Social Solutions that deliver real business outcomes!"

"I also know many new collaboration tools, but I can assert that the level of integration among the IBM products is unmatched nowadays."

"The platform allows in a very easy way to create community and start collaborating."

"It is the single source of truth that can be shared anywhere."

More HCL Connections pros

"The user interface and the way we can share and search information are the most valuable, and it is very easy to use."

"Yammer provides a simple to use, intuitive platform for enterprise collaboration within the social networking information model."

"Yammer allows collaboration anywhere, anytime, on any device."

"Its most valuable features are the storyline and communities."

"The tool allows us to post and keep track of company buzz and events without relying on email."

"The integration with Teams is the biggest value for us. In fact, it has only become more valuable now that it has integration with Teams. Teams allows you to stream, so that's good."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to reach all parts of the organisation to share ideas and best practices."

"Enables internal communication between different countries and locations."

More Yammer pros

Cons

"It's a complicated setup, but then again it's built for enterprise and volumes."

"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)."

"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."

"I was involved in the setup process to an extent. It was quite complex."

"I have found the wiki to be lacking in functionality."

"We've had a few issues, but overall the stability has been pretty good."

"When your activity becomes really big, it can become unreliable and very slow."

"Most Connections functionality must be customized and personalized but it is more expensive to customize this product, and the product does necessarily provide the widespread coverage that a customer may seek."

More HCL Connections cons

"The only con was that it did not share the same transition speed between apps as SAP StreamWork, another platform that I reviewed in the CODIE Awards collaborative category."

"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!"

"If you are using other applications that are tough to integrate into the environment, that can cause limitations."

"The way you want to control the communication could be an issue. It depends on what kind of company you are. We are a public company, and there are some regulations that we need to comply with. Its ease of use can be an issue for a company because anybody can subscribe and use it. There are many competitors that are overlapping. Since Microsoft bought Yammer, it tends to be in the shadow. It is not put in the front from the service perspective."

"Integration with other Office 365 products is still weak, because Yammer initially wasn't a Microsoft product."

"Yammer has very limited features."

More Yammer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I don't know about the pricing. Now that Microsoft has bought Yammer, it should be a part of our subscriptions for Office 365."

"Its cost is included in the license bundle for Microsoft."

"Yammer is a pretty cheap solution, and it's included in multiple subscriptions."

"I think that there is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution."

"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."

"Compared to other products like Amazon, Yammer's pricing is fine."

"The pricing is not bad."

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Answers from the Community

it_user120486

Works

Jul 10, 2014

How do Sharepoint and Yammer match up to IBM’s connection solution?

2 out of 9 answers

it_user128490

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

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it_user131589

Works

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

Read full answer

See all 9 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Performing Arts

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

12%

Marketing Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	31

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 ...

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Yammer?

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Teams vs HCL Connections

Compared 14% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs HCL Connections

Compared 13% of the time

SharePoint vs HCL Connections

Compared 12% of the time

Jive vs HCL Connections

Compared 6% of the time

More HCL Connections Competitors

SAP Build Work Zone vs Yammer

Compared 11% of the time

Chatter vs Yammer

Compared 11% of the time

Slack Business - Enterprise vs Yammer

Compared 9% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Yammer

Compared 8% of the time

TIBCO tibbr vs Yammer

Compared 4% of the time

More Yammer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HCL Connections

May 2026

Download HCL Connections product report

Buyer's Guide

Yammer

April 2026

Download Yammer product report

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections

No data available

Overview

HCL Connections offers a powerful collaboration platform designed for modern businesses, facilitating seamless communication and productivity enhancements.

HCL Connections helps organizations streamline internal communications with an array of tools that promote engagement and collaboration. Its ease of use enables teams to effectively manage projects, share knowledge, and foster innovation. This platform serves as a bridge for integrating social interactions with business processes, ensuring smooth workflows and increased productivity.

What are the critical features of HCL Connections?

Communities: Create and manage groups to collaborate on specific projects or topics.
Files: Share and manage documents securely, ensuring quick access for all team members.
Wikis: Collaboratively write and edit content for team reference and knowledge sharing.
Blogs: Allow individuals to express ideas, insights, and updates within the organization.
Activities: Organize tasks and discussions, enhancing project tracking and completion.

What benefits can HCL Connections bring?

Improved Collaboration: Enhances teamwork through centralized communication and resource sharing.
Increased Productivity: Streamlines workflows by aligning tools and processes.
Knowledge Sharing: Facilitates easy dissemination and accessibility of information.
Enhanced Engagement: Boosts employee involvement with interactive and accessible features.

In industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, HCL Connections is implemented to improve internal and external collaboration, drive competitive advantage, and meet compliance requirements. Its adaptable framework makes it suitable for different sectors, supporting better decision-making and strategic planning.

HCLSoftware

Yammer enhances organizational communication and collaboration. It offers intuitive tools for group interaction, integration with Microsoft apps, and secure information sharing. It supports large-scale discussions and cross-functional collaboration without overwhelming email systems.

Yammer provides a robust platform for effective business communication, serving as a hub for social networking and company announcements. It integrates with Microsoft Office and Teams, facilitating seamless content posting and reducing email dependency. Its design encourages knowledge sharing and adaptable workflows. While Yammer is powerful, users have noted areas for improvement, such as integration with Microsoft Office 365 and search functionality. Enhancements in document collaboration, third-party support, and analytics could make it even more valuable, particularly for large multilingual teams. Improvements in editing, navigation, and user experience could enhance its utility further, along with better onboarding support.

What are Yammer's most valuable features?

Simple Group Creation: Allows quick setup of groups for projects and discussions.
Microsoft Integration: Seamless use with Microsoft Office and Teams enhances productivity.
Mobile Apps: Access Yammer on-the-go with robust mobile applications.
Tagging and Crowdsourcing: Facilitates easy content organization and community input.
Secure Sharing: Protects information while enabling open collaboration.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Communication: Streamlines internal and external communication processes.
Improved Collaboration: Supports team interactions and project management.
Cross-Functional Reach: Breaks down silos, encouraging organizational connectivity.
Increased Engagement: Fosters active participation and feedback loops within the company.
Reduced Email Overload: Decreases dependency on email for announcements and discussions.

Yammer is widely adopted across various industries for its communication capabilities. Companies use it for creating channels and managing team interactions, making it ideal for sectors that rely on internal announcements and communication. Its integration with Microsoft tools makes it particularly appealing to those already using Microsoft subscriptions, offering a cohesive platform for corporate communication, knowledge sharing, and team engagement. As a digital workspace hub, it serves industries looking to enhance collaboration and streamline communication.

Microsoft

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.

Buyer's Guide

HCL Connections vs. Yammer

April 2026

Free Report: HCL Connections vs. Yammer

Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Connections vs. Yammer and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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