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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 (18th)
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%, down 0.5% compared to last year.
HCL Notes, on the other hand, focuses on Email Applications, holds 3.2% mindshare, down 3.6% 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

"They offer good support and provide a roadmap."
"We can scale it if we want to."
"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."
"For workflow applications or general applications, the rapid development capability is what we value most."
"This solution can be used for workflow application so that applications can be easily developed."
"We have been able to set up a portal using a special XPage application that gives our customers access to this system."
"The DAOS feature is the most valuable. It helps to save some of my storage."
"Notes is a perfectly adequate front end. It's clear and straightforward."
"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 most valuable feature is the UI."
"The product is very stable and scalable."
"The initial setup was easy for me."
"The most valuable feature is security. It's very easy to manage security on records, views, and tables."
"It offers unique capabilities, excellent security, and replication features."
"The software's secure communication is particularly useful when dealing with professional entities."
 

Cons

"The product's user interface is one of its shortcomings since it is outdated, making it an area for improvement."
"Designing a new template could provide a refreshed visual experience for users without significant changes to the underlying functionality."
"Scalability needs to be improved to be on the level that's required. Support could also be enhanced."
"An area for improvement in HCL Domino is security. New enhancements in the IT industry mean that security should be improved. The HCL Domino GUI also needs improvement."
"Many people are not very happy with its speed."
"For me, the one thing missing is a really good reporting engine."
"The client version of this solution could be faster and be made simpler for non-IT users. You will need to have some knowledge of Notes to correctly install this solution."
"It would be advantageous if the web server could seamlessly pick up configuration changes without the need for a complete restart."
"Notes needs a major upgrade for the UI."
"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."
"One area for improvement would be making the interface more user-friendly."
"The solution could improve by adding some more features."
"There is a chat component but it does not work properly."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Customers have to pay for a license for the Notes Client, not for the Domino database. There is a quarter license that we use."
"My company's customers need to make monthly or yearly payments towards the license charges of the product."
"I'd rate it a seven out of ten in terms of price."
"We chose to pay for our licensing fees annually."
"The pricing is subjective and contingent on the intended usage."
"We're happy with the price of our license — it's pretty standard."
"The pricing is individually determined. For us, in our current deployment, we pay $12.50 Canadian per month per user."
"We pay annually for the use of this solution and it is only a standard fee."
"It was reasonably priced, but the product itself was not worth the cost."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"We pay licensing fees on a yearly basis."
"The solution is expensive. There are many components or features which make the price very high."
"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."
"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%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
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 Domino?
The most valuable features of the solution are security and integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HCL Domino?
The pricing is individually determined. HCL has a simple pricing model: per user per year. We pay $100 US per user per year. But "guest" users are permitted without any licence requirement. And any...
What needs improvement with HCL Domino?
Scalability needs to be improved to be on the level that's required. Support could also be enhanced.
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: February 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.