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HCL Connections vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (11th)
Liferay Digital Experience ...
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (4th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of HCL Connections is 3.1%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Liferay Digital Experience Platform is 22.6%, up from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

Hasnain Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Bhavin Panchani - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers integration capabilities that are very easy to use
My company has 20 people who work on the product. I know that my company has around seven customers who use the tool. I recommend the product depending on the use cases of the person who wants to buy it. If your use case is to develop a public site, customer portal, self-service, or intranet, I would say that you should go for the Liferay Digital Experience Platform. If your use cases are related to e-commerce, you need to evaluate your use cases against Liferay Digital Experience Platform, and you can use it if you find it to be a good fit. Otherwise, you should search for other platforms.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities."
"The web/mobile/portal integration was one of the features that we found most valuable, primarily because it reduced our development time."
"We chose Liferay because it is open-source and that we can make any number of users apply, register into the system and use the system, as opposed to other solutions where the cost is based on user licenses. This is one of the most attractive features."
"The integration capabilities of the product are super easy to use."
"I think that it could be interesting to expand the eCommerce capabilities to the B2C sector."
"It allows us to arrange and develop new ideas, then incorporate them into the portal. We can create a one stop information center, so people can access the information from one window."
"Manageability is very good and probably the most valuable part of a tool of this type. There is a little more of a learning curve than you have with a simple tool, but a business user can learn to manage the system as an administrator very easily."
"The solution is easy to install."
"The look and feel and the user interface are great."
 

Cons

"The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."
"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday."
"The integration and configuration need to be simplified."
"The plugins should be more affordable."
"It could have better built-in integration with a wider variety of extensions out-of-the-box."
"The documentation provided needs to be more detailed. It's sometimes hard to develop things because the documentation is so sparse."
"Social area and capabilities need improvement."
"It could be improved in terms of adding filters to some of the rules. Therefore, you can retain how long a document would need to stay in an archive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Licensing costs can be very expensive."
"It's an open-source structure. Other costs are for professional services to integrate Liferay to other existing systems."
"It is a bit expensive."
"Their pricing model should be modified to include per user options instead of just servers/cores, etc."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive. What Liferay Digital Experience Platform offers at its current price can be considered something that is worth the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HCL Connections?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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 is the best feature of Liferay?
A tricky question because it'd depend on what your focus will be on Liferay as a digital experience platform. I mean, if for me the experience management is the best feature, for someone with diff...
Is Liferay suitable for complete beginners?
A non-developer here, and frankly, a little bit of a tech beginner in general. My company branched out into digital experience a bit later than we should have but picking Liferay as a DXP was one o...
What is Liferay’s capacity for backup?
Yes, I think you can trust the cloud feature of Liferay pretty well. It gives you the option to back up your data as well as restore it and that's pretty vital for any digital experience platform....
 

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
Liferay DXP
 

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
Adidas, Carrefour, Cisco Systems, Danone, Fujitsu, Lufthansa Flight Training, Siemens, Société Générale and the United Nations
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Connections vs. Liferay Digital Experience Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.