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HCL Domino vs HCL Notes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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 Domino
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Rapid Application Development Software (19th)
HCL Notes
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Email Applications (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

HCL Domino and HCL Notes aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. HCL Domino is designed for Rapid Application Development Software and holds a mindshare of 0.5%, up 0.5% compared to last year.
HCL Notes, on the other hand, focuses on Email Applications, holds 3.3% mindshare, down 3.5% since last year.
Rapid Application Development Software
Email Applications
 

Featured Reviews

FrederickLim - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides mobile email systems with solid stability and easy deployment
The initial setup is easy. You need to sign up. It depends on the scope. It will take longer if there are more than one or more applications. The project usually includes infrastructure and deployment may take anywhere from one month to six months. I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
Chiheb Charmiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Accessible from any device, good support, and works very well for emails, document sharing, and workflows
What I like about this solution is that you can use it for mailing, as a client for email, and you can also use it for workflows. So, you can easily develop applications. Even people who haven't got great IT skills can develop some basic applications to use in the company, especially a workflow application. So, it is for mailing and for applications, which is a great thing about HCL Notes. It is very good for managing and sharing documents on the network or inside the company. It works very well for sharing documents. It is one of the best products in the world for workflow applications. It works very well for workflows or decisional processes where a task needs to be first approved by someone. After that, the task moves to the next or final stage where another person approves it with some notes or attached documents. People who are on the move outside the company but need to interact with the database of the company can do some tasks in the HCL Notes application offline. When they have connectivity, the information is updated or replicated in real-time. They can install the application on different devices. They can use it on mobile phones or iPad.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can scale it if we want to."
"We have been able to set up a portal using a special XPage application that gives our customers access to this system."
"The pricing is excellent."
"It serves as a centralized solution that fulfills all my requirements from operating my email server to managing various aspects of my operations."
"Overall, I would rate HCL Domino as eight out of ten. I would recommend HCL Domino and Notes applications for small and medium-sized companies since it offers a good return on investment."
"Domino's dual functionality as both a messaging and application solution is a standout feature compared to Exchange, which solely focuses on messaging."
"I like that HCL Domino is stable. It's a great product. I also like that HCL Domino is a mature product under IBM, which is why many companies use it."
"The email system is the most valuable feature."
"Its security is absolutely stratospheric. In an application, you can lock down to field-level security. For example, I could log in and see a field in an HR database with salaries. When you log in, you see exactly the same database, but the field with the salary just isn't there. So, you can literally have field-level security on it, and you can also have secure encryption. For example, I could give you that database allowing you to see the salary, but a calculation that shows how much they get per month in another field is encrypted. So, you won't be able to see that because you don't have the encryption key. You can implement high-level security very simply."
"The solution is practical, good interface, and performs well."
"The product is very stable and scalable."
"It offers unique capabilities, excellent security, and replication features."
"The initial setup was easy for me."
"The most valuable feature is the access that it provides to documents. This offers us an easy way to make changes."
"HCL Notes is stable most of the time."
"Notes is a perfectly adequate front end. It's clear and straightforward."
 

Cons

"The solution is expensive."
"HCL Domino could have a better interface."
"They should provide its integration with other AI applications."
"The product's user interface is one of its shortcomings since it is outdated, making it an area for improvement."
"It would be advantageous if the web server could seamlessly pick up configuration changes without the need for a complete restart."
"Designing a new template could provide a refreshed visual experience for users without significant changes to the underlying functionality."
"The speed of the Notes client is an area that could be improved."
"HCL Domino needs to be more user-friendly."
"I would like to HCL update Notes' development tool and make it more attractive like Microsoft Visual Studio and similar products. For example, there's a programming language that I used for my product Woodpecker called LotusScript. LotusScript has been available since around 1995. When LotusScript was released, it was like the original Visual Basic, but it has improved since then."
"The interface could be more user-friendly. Some additional trainings could be added as well."
"I love this product. I have used it for many years, and I have been a developer for it. If anything, it can be faster in the client version. The client version is a little bit hard. It is not fast. This is the only problem I see. Otherwise, it is a very good product."
"The only improvement that we're planning to do is that all our applications are still designed in the layout and format of Notes version 4, and our plan over the coming years is to modernize their look. One of the things they're developing or considering deploying is a program to automatically upgrade the look and feel of databases. If they deploy that, that will be revolutionary. In other words, we decide on a corporate look and feel for our database and press a button. We've probably got 50 different applications in Notes, and it would just go through the whole lot and upgrade all of them to look the same."
"The performance was terrible because we have a very large database with around three million records, including attachments and scanned comments. It was slow, and integrating new technologies or designs was also slow."
"One area for improvement would be making the interface more user-friendly."
"I would like to see integration with other solutions."
"Notes needs a major upgrade for the UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"HCL Domino is costly, but it still depends on how your organization views it price-wise."
"For 30 licenses, we pay $1,500 every year. It is not an expensive product."
"We chose to pay for our licensing fees annually."
"The pricing is individually determined. For us, in our current deployment, we pay $12.50 Canadian per month per user."
"HCL Domino has reasonable pricing. It's not expensive."
"We pay annually for the use of this solution and it is only a standard fee."
"Price is reasonable compared to the other solutions."
"HCL Domino's pricing depends on the number of users, but its license is not cheap."
"We pay licensing fees on a yearly basis."
"The price is reasonable."
"It was reasonably priced, but the product itself was not worth the cost."
"It is far cheaper to license. It is a third of the cost of our Microsoft license for 10 times the amount of usage. Developing applications cost a fraction of anything else. There are two reasons for that. First of all, applications are very fast to build. All the security is already built into the platform, so you don't have to worry about security at all. The other thing is that because fewer people use it than, for example, Microsoft SharePoint, the salary commanded by programmers is slightly lower. So, it is not only faster; you also get cheaper programmers. So, you really win-win-win on it."
"I don't remember how much we paid when we first bought the Domino license, but now, we pay only for the passport. For 30 client licenses, we pay about $1,500 per year, and we don't consider it very expensive for the quality of the product. In our case, we need 30 client licenses. So, we buy 30 client licenses independently of the server. It is very easy for us to choose and maintain this kind of license and get the passport advantage."
"The solution is expensive. There are many components or features which make the price very high."
"We pay annually for the use of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HCL Domino?
The most valuable features of the solution are security and integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HCL Domino?
The Notes client is very expensive, costing around $105 per client. Overall, HCL Domino is a costly product.
What needs improvement with HCL Domino?
The speed of the Notes client is an area that could be improved. Many people are not very happy with its speed. Additionally, in-line editing of documents and a document viewer are functionalities ...
What do you like most about HCL Notes?
The security and performance of the solution are good even though our platform is variable, except for the mail services.
What needs improvement with HCL Notes?
While HCL has made significant advances in the user interface and diverse platform compatibility, some improvements could be made in user-friendliness and graphical interface enhancements.
What is your primary use case for HCL Notes?
I am a technician and software developer with a unique product called NotesTracker, a software product for users of HCL Notes and Domino. I started my company, Asia Pacific Computer Services, to do...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM Lotus Domino, Lotus Domino
IBM Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

A1 Telekom, Acubiz, Afrisam, E. A. Juffali & Brothers, Fiducia & GAD, and Pakistan State Oil
Connect2Cloud, Hansgrohe, Sauk County, Blue Water Shipping, FDBR, ibml, Multivac, Aarhus University Hospital, Hendricks Regional Health, Asian Paints, Integra Legal, Sunplus Technology, S¾SS, The Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sports, Nicrometal, Doncasters Group, Practice Plan, Barr, RACV, Neotechnik, Deutsche Notes User Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, ServiceNow, OutSystems and others in Rapid Application Development Software. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.