HCL Notes Reviews

Name: HCL Notes
Brand: HCLSoftware
Rating: 4 (14 reviews)

3.8 out of 5

14 reviews
80% willing to recommend

630 followers

What is HCL Notes?

HCL Notes is a secure on-premises email client that allows teams access to email, calendar, and contact management capabilities. The solution integrates other collaboration tools seamlessly along with HCL Domino business applications, into a single workspace. HCL Notes is most commonly used in corporate environments for email, but can also be used to create websites, custom applications and business workflows, discussion groups, and document libraries. In addition, the solution enhances user experiences, helps internal teams collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, and streamline communication management operations.

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HCL Notes is the #9 ranked solution in top Email Applications. PeerSpot users give HCL Notes an average rating of 7.6 out of 10. HCL Notes is most commonly compared to Google Workspace: HCL Notes vs Google Workspace. HCL Notes is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 54% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 15% of all views.

Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

Chiheb Charmiti

IS Manager & Consultant HCL Domino at JACOB & ASSOCIATES

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.

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Bogdan Chechlowski

Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA

We use it for email and as a full CRM tool to manage customer contacts. It's not just for email; we also use it for paper documents, insurance processes, and other things. All processes in our company have been recorded in Domino databases, although we're in the process of migrating to another…

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Bogdan Chechlowski

Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA

The user interface is very old, and there are a lot of small things that make me angry when using this solution. Our users call the interface old-fashioned. One of the problems is that we have trouble with setting meetings within 24 hours. We have a problem using Polish letters. We had trouble connecting this solution to the database from Microsoft. We have done it, although it can be easier. We have problems with making changes, especially when we need to modify the main document for customer relationship management. As a workaround, we have created special agents to make these changes and populate other documents. This solution is not specifically this type of database but this is related to the solutions that we want to create.

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HCL Notes mindshare

As of November 2024, the mindshare of HCL Notes in the Email Applications category stands at 3.1%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Applications

Key learnings from peers

Valuable Features

"The most valuable feature is security. It's very easy to manage security on records, views, and tables."
"Notes is a perfectly adequate front end. It's clear and straightforward."
"The security and performance of the solution are good even though our platform is variable, except for the mail services."

Room for Improvement

"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."
"Some people complain that they want something more modern and jazzy."
"Web support is very old and needs an upgrade. We can handle a different password for the client to access the mail services, compared to the web services. We need to implement many other components to get access to the web access.There could be a feature to interpret if the web access is available from any end-user equipment."

Pricing

"It was reasonably priced, but the product itself was not worth the cost."
"The solution is expensive. There are many components or features which make the price very high."
"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."

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our HCL Notes Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Insurance Company

Construction Company

Healthcare Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

University

Media Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Hospitality Company

Transportation Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Non Profit

Real Estate/Law Firm

Outsourcing Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Aerospace/Defense Firm

Logistics Company

Wireless Company

Consumer Goods Company

Venture Capital & Private Equity Firm

Legal Firm

Compare HCL Notes with alternative products

Learn more about HCL Notes

HCL Notes is available for Windows, Apple iOS, and Android.

HCL Notes Features

HCL Notes has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Instant Messaging with HCL Sametime.
Unified Inbox: This HCL Notes feature helps you consolidate multiple email accounts into one viewable platform.
Filters: The HCL Notes filters allow users to filter their emails by sender, date received, opened/unopened, and more.
Reminders: With the reminders feature, users are prompted with reminders to send or reply to emails.
Notifications: HCL Notes notifications feature pings users, notifying them when they receive new emails.
Task Management: HCL Notes has built-in task creation and assignment functionality.
Reporting & Statistics.

HCL Notes Benefits

Some of the benefits of using HCL Notes include:

Mobility and accessibility: HCL Notes provides users with access to their mail and calendar wherever and whenever they are doing work.

Easy integration: With HCL Notes, you can interact with files directly from your email messages — preview, download, follow, comment, or share them with your team.

Better access capabilities: HCL Notes makes it possible for you to access profiles, roles, skill sets, and areas of responsibility for all your contacts. It also allows you to view related blogs and collaboration histories of shared work.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by HCL Notes users.

An Administration & Technical Director at a tech services company says, "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."

PeerSpot user Bogdan C., Kierownik Biura Informatyki at an insurance company, mentions, “The most valuable feature is the access that it provides to documents. This offers us an easy way to make changes.”

Marcos S., Diretor at MASTERDOM, comments, “The solution is practical, good interface, and performs well. The usability of the old applications to the new version of the client is very good. The migration is very good for some legacy applications.”

HCL Notes was previously known as IBM Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes.

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HCL Notes customers

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