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HCL Sametime vs Microsoft Teams comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 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 Sametime
Ranking in Virtual Meetings
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Teams
Ranking in Virtual Meetings
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
181
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Virtual Meetings category, the mindshare of HCL Sametime is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Teams is 3.8%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Teams3.8%
HCL Sametime1.5%
Other94.7%
Virtual Meetings
 

Featured Reviews

Bogdan Chechlowski - PeerSpot reviewer
Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA
Stable product, communicate very fast and allows to see who's online in the office or work environment
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily Being able to see who was online and communicate very fast was a good feature.  The security was quite good. However, when we tried to implement it for email at a high level, we had to use another solution, FortiMail Gateway. I view…
Ayush Saxena - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed daily work and supports seamless global voice communication
Microsoft Teams could be improved, especially regarding contact center solutions which have a growing need for omnichannel capabilities, integrating with external platforms such as social media and email for a unified experience. Minor improvements might include reintroducing features such as GPU options available in classic Microsoft Teams to address issues in modern Microsoft Teams related to video meetings and content sharing. Furthermore, essential information such as who started or ended recordings should be more accessible in the Microsoft Teams admin center. I rate it a nine because Microsoft Teams occasionally experiences glitches in the client, leading to missing chat history or other transient issues. The performance issues with the desktop client and the support service complexities contribute to my rating being less than perfect. I have not identified any other improvements needed for Microsoft Teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A very good communication and real-time collaboration software, it is simple, fast, reliable, keeps history and the best feature of all is its intelligence."
"I can view the status and availability of colleagues or team members, which makes it easy to approach them when they are available."
"This solution saves time and cost in communicating with team members, streamlines tasks in my organization by encouraging us to chat directly with the relevant person, and strengthens professional relationships through increased communication among peers."
"Audio and video calls provide faster communication than chat."
"The security was quite good."
"Overall, this is a very good collaboration product and the only thing stopping me from giving it a perfect grade is the heavy bandwidth usage."
"When comparing similar solutions, there aren't many differences between them, but the best feature I would highlight is the quality and stability of their platform."
"What I use the most is the plugin or the optimization feature."
"Microsoft Teams is an easy-to-use solution."
"Team sharing is really cool. It's great to have remote access, document sharing, and collaboration during calls and meetings."
"Microsoft Teams has positively impacted my organization by helping collaboration become easier and smooth, in the sense that you can put everyone in a Microsoft Teams group and share information instead of sharing it with individual users."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Teams is that it is easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Teams are scheduling a meeting and integration with other Microsoft services like SharePoint and OneDrive."
 

Cons

"Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted."
"The interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP."
"It seems that the software might in the future, support the software telephony exchange but at the current time, it is not doing that and because of that one key feature of real-time communication is missing from it."
"It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or other files."
"The webinar should be integrated into Sametime for a larger number of participants."
"There are a lot of frequent updates, which is a shortcoming of the tool."
"The solution's interface probably needs to be a bit different in terms of cloud sharing."
"I think they can improve the all those segments for channel bulking. Also, some functionalities which migrated from Skype for Business to Teams, is not supported by Teams. We had used them in Skype for Business."
"Adding and integrating more apps like SharePoint on Microsoft Teams is making the solution very slow."
"For future releases, I would like to see Microsoft Teams to make a lighter application and drop some features."
"The solution is very expensive and I won't be able to afford it personally."
"What I'd like to improve in Microsoft Teams are the calendar management and task management tools, because they're not easy to use. They're not user-friendly."
"User interface could be improved"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"You don't buy only the Teams license; you buy it as part of the Microsoft 365 bundle."
"It is expensive."
"We need to pay for Microsoft Teams' licenses on a yearly basis."
"I’m unsure about the exact cost, but I believe it’s reasonable. Using Teams for collaboration, video conferencing, and messaging helps save costs, especially for communicating with third-party companies worldwide."
"We don't have to pay for the solution."
"The pricing for Teams is very competitive."
"We are using the free version of the solutions."
"The solution's cost is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise77
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Teams?
From an organizational point of view, the pricing and setup costs for Microsoft Teams are right, especially since it integrates all the new technologies coming to market, including AI and various A...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Teams?
One issue is that now it requires the presenter to initiate the meeting. Previously, anyone could quickly become a presenter, but now I have to ask or request for the presentation. This can cause p...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Teams?
My primary use case for Microsoft Teams is day-to-day communication and collaboration with colleagues across different teams and locations. I use it for chats, virtual meetings, sharing documents a...
 

Also Known As

Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime
MS Teams
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Connect2Cloud, Superior Group, Daifuku Co. Ltd., Seaward, The City of Fort Worth, Christian Brothers Services, Berlitz, Deutsche Notes User Group, Danske Fysioterapeuter, Slumberland, La Vacanza, Rheinmetall AG
Honeywll, AIRFRANCE, AccuWeather, Lilly
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Sametime vs. Microsoft Teams and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.