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HCL Sametime vs Webex comparison

 

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
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Webex
Ranking in Virtual Meetings
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Virtual Meetings category, the mindshare of HCL Sametime is 1.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Webex is 5.5%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Webex5.5%
HCL Sametime1.6%
Other92.9%
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…
Akhil Viswam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Collaborating in hybrid incident calls has become faster while the meeting interface still needs fixes
The best features are the ability to schedule meetings and launch ad hoc meetings. Additionally, we can create breakout rooms within the meeting itself, which is another excellent feature. Whenever we have production issues, many teams join a single Webex call. Sometimes we need to group together as separate smaller groups and work in parallel to identify the production issues. In those cases, we create Webex breakout rooms and each member joins the corresponding breakout session to progress on their task. Webex helps significantly in the hybrid environment. When we are working from home, it is very easy for us to meet with other team members and the management to get in touch and progress. Webex improves communication because even if we are working from home, we can connect with people and talk to them on a video call. It has improved the incident resolution time by getting into a call in Webex rooms and remediating the issues together as soon as possible. Audio and video quality is excellent for Webex. It has saved considerable time in terms of incident remediation. Whenever we have issues, we jump on a call and work together in parallel. This approach saves time and improves efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security was quite good."
"I can view the status and availability of colleagues or team members, which makes it easy to approach them when they are available."
"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."
"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 stability, as well as the performance of the solution, are very good."
"The stability of the solution is the most important thing, as I've used Teams previously and we had a lot of issues with stability."
"The implementation of Webex is simple and does not take a lot of time."
"Webex is a good product; when you have other Cisco products onboarded, it gives you the full configurations that you want and lets you jump seamlessly from your Cisco telephone system to Webex, which is very useful."
"The transcripts from Webex calls get delivered to the inbox five minutes after the call. However, out of 20 people on a call, maybe only one person bothers to read through the entire transcript, which can be lengthy for an hour-long call."
"I am completely satisfied with the tech support."
"This is the best everyone knows about, but there are plenty other players."
"It is a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"The interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP."
"The webinar should be integrated into Sametime for a larger number of participants."
"It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or other files."
"Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted."
"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."
"There were some latency issues that could have been addressed if they had a data center in our location, e.g. the African region."
"The solution could improve by having more dashboards and enhancing the processing speed."
"The charges for US and Asia vary greatly. It costs more to subscribe to WebEx in Asia."
"Everybody these days uses virtual meeting solutions because we're all remote working. It would be a benefit if there were permanent collaboration spaces for projects. For example, the way Teams has its teams folders and shared locations. Webex is missing that feature, or maybe it has it and I'm not aware of it. However, it needs a permanent sharing location for when projects can get stored and can be a collaboration space as opposed to only a meeting space."
"I would like to see the addition of new features that will add value to the product."
"Webex can be improved in terms of better user experience."
"There is a small bug when it comes to connecting my Webex with my Outlook Calendar."
"Currently, I'm unable to find any loophole in Webex, but in terms of areas for improvement, it would be better if a user is informed about any new updates or new features added to the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This is an expensive product compared to Teams and it should be cheaper."
"There is a need to pay the licensing charges to use Webex Enterprise Edition."
"The solution is low-cost for a hybrid model."
"Features matter more than the price for us. As long as we get all the features we want and it fits our budget, then the price doesn't matter. I can't speak for other companies. We have tried other applications, and we run into some problems that we don't see in Webex."
"The price should be improved significantly."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"I am using the free version of Webex."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Meetings solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Religious Institution
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HCL Sametime?
I view it as part of HCL Notes and Domino, and my opinion is similar to those products. It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or oth...
What is your primary use case for HCL Sametime?
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily.
What advice do you have for others considering HCL Sametime?
Overall, it was quite good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's a better product than some others from HCL, but overall, I wouldn't recommend it, given the availability of superior alternatives.
What do you like most about Webex?
Webex improved our overall team collaboration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Webex?
From when I last implemented it, I found the price to be expensive. The licensing model doesn't work because if I want to implement it for an organization, I need to pay a per-user license, which m...
What needs improvement with Webex?
Webex can be simplified in terms of user interface, where many features should be displayed in a compact view, with similar features grouped together and a minimalistic design helping users underst...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime
Cisco Spark
 

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
Seagate Technology, Kohn Pedersen Fox, World Vision International, Glen Raven, University of Notre Dame, CEV Multimedia, The Food Group, LUMEDX, California Baptist University, and Georgetown University Law Center.
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Sametime vs. Webex and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.