HCL Notes Reviews

HCL Notes is a document-oriented database application you can use for things like workflow, information sharing, etc. It's not a business application that does accounting or something like that. You use it on the knowledge side of the organization. People used to think of Lotus Notes and IBM Notes as just email products, but it's far more than that.

I have a software development kit I developed called Notes Tracker. If people purchase a license for Notes Tracker, they can then use it and merge it with their applications. For example, they can see who's contributing, using, or deleting information. It's a general-purpose tool. So I deal with a lot of people who are modifying their applications.

HCL Notes has fantastic built-in security. The email and personal communication components are excellent, but they are some applications provided by HCL that Notes previously provided when it was under IBM and Lotus. Everyone wants email, so that's just part of the product. However, more savvy users can build their own solutions for managing information, and that's the great thing about it.

It's a user-friendly tool for knowledge-sharing applications, and it has great backward compatibility. For example, I started using Notes in 1993. You can take an application from 1993, and it will run without alteration on the latest version of Notes in 2022. 

Some products from Microsoft and other vendors have to change every year. For example, the early Windows application was 16-bit and they increased that to 32 bits with Windows 95 in the mid-1990s. A decade later, they made 64-bit applications possible.

You have to get a brand-new of your application every time Microsoft changes the underlying architecture, but HCL Notes will let you install an application on the latest release, and runs without issue. You can enhance the application to make use of the new features in the latest release, but you can also run it the way it was built back in 1993. 

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 development tool uses LotusScript, and the language has improved somewhat but hasn't gotten the facelift that Microsoft did for Visual Studio. At the same time, you could probably say the same about other development tools. 

I used to work at IBM. I started there in 1970 and left after 25 years. In 1993, I started working with Lotus Notes, then IBM acquired it three or four years later and renamed it Domino. IBM sold a lot of software to HCL Technologies in 2018, and it became HCL Notes. 

I've recently started using HCL Notes again. I have a product called Notes Tracker, which people can add to their applications to see what's happening and understand their applications better. I run a small development company, but my clients range in size. My smallest customers have a few users, but I also work with large banks and insurance companies. 

HCL Notes is extremely stable. Every application from any vendor has issues, but Notes is a highly reliable and secure product. In my early days, 30 years ago, I worked in systems, networking, and communications performance. I've changed my focus to solving problems. 

I don't work in the field anymore, but people tell me HCL Notes is highly scalable. HCL has added improvements to make it more scalable and stable in the last release. One of the significant improvements is integrating more seamlessly with applications from other major vendors like Microsoft and Oracle.

In particular, they've added more capacity to interact with mobile platforms. People use smartphones for everything, and that's one area where HCL has improved in the last few releases. It works with mobile platforms, social media applications, etc. 

I've had clients with a few users or a small department within a large organization. For example, I had a client in South Africa who ran a small marketing group made up of individuals around the world. He said it was highly effective in helping them manage their workload. It also works for large banks and insurance companies.

My interactions with HCL have been good, but I haven't had many issues. I have an extensive technical background, so I don't need much support, but they've got some highly skilled people. 

We had a company here in Melbourne that sells accounting software. They had different accounting applications, and you could buy one or a suite, and they would all interact with each other. They used Notes for a lot of their work, but they primarily used Microsoft software running on Windows. 

About five or 10 years ago, the company decided to stop using Notes internally and rewrite all the internal applications to change them from notes to Microsoft tools. I worked with one project manager who said, "This is terrible. We've got some absolutely brilliant applications running in Notes that do the job perfectly." But the company decided to stop using Notes and use Microsoft products because they address the Microsoft uses. 

He said that perfectly good applications are being thrown out to transition internal applications to Microsoft. He told me that Microsoft solutions are weak compared to Notes. They had to go through a painful migration process to migrate to the Microsoft solution. I presume it was Visual Basic or something. It was a horrible process and cost them time and money.

I provide my clients with everything they need to install the product and deploy it. In the case of my Notes Tracker product, deploying means getting a Notes developer to take the client applications. It might be a knowledge-sharing or workflow application. Still, they use my Notes Tracker product to add extra functionality to their workflow or knowledge-sharing applications. 

I provide carefully designed documentation and examples. Clients rarely ask for help deploying it. They tell me it's straightforward. It's probably a bit different from some other vendors who have applications. It just depends. I've been in the IT industry since '90, so extremely aware of all the usual deployment issues. 

I designed my own Notes Tracker product to be as painless to use as possible, but many software vendors don't do that. People criticize Notes because its appearance is outdated, and I agree, but behind that lackluster look is an extremely substantial platform for knowledge management, information sharing, monitoring, workflow, etc.

Notes Tracker only takes a few weeks to learn. Once they've done that, they don't contact me anymore. They take their applications one at a time and use Notes Tracker to enhance them. I rarely, if ever, hear from them after the initial contact.

I think the pricing is reasonable for the product. It's a rock-solid solution based on the original Lotus Notes designed in the late 1980s. By the third release, it was already a stable, secure product, and it continues to improve with each release. 

The original Lotus had one license, but they changed to the IBM licensing model after the acquisition. When HCL took over, they used yet a different model. Now, you buy the base platform and tack on extra features. You only pay for what you need. That's one advantage, and it's not a bad way of doing things.

I can't give any figures, but some people hate the pricing model, and others love it. It's advantageous to their business, and they don't need to change their applications when different releases with new features. They can keep applications and upgrade Notes.

I rate HCL Notes nine out of 10. It has some issues, but HCL has done a lot of work to enhance it since they acquired the product in 2018. The weaknesses are disappearing with each new release. They continue to fix things and add new features with every release. 

I recommend it. I've been forced to use some internet-based applications that were absolutely terrible. If only they had used something like Notes, it would be much more user-friendly and offer better value for money.

Some people are fanatical and they give Notes a rating of 10 out 10. Some people say it's terrible and rate it two or three, but I'd give it a solid eight or nine in most cases. There are still a few issues that need to be worked out, but HCL has been working hard to resolve some of the long-standing problems with Notes. Most of the older issues with Notes that people complain about have been fixed in the latest releases. My advice to prospective users is to get help from an HCL business partner. 

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 consulting, focusing on software development.

HCL Notes has a non-structured database and fantastic native security, which is extremely strong, providing built-in security without needing external products. The product has unique capabilities like replication, allowing users to change data on one server, which gets propagated to others globally.

The original Notes has improved since its development in the late 1980s. Despite changes, some original concepts remain amazing. It offers unique capabilities, excellent security, and replication features. HCL has significantly enhanced Notes since acquiring it from IBM, which previously did little to improve it. HCL Notes remains a very stable and secure platform.

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.

I started working with Lotus Notes back in 1993, and I have continued to work with it through its transitions to IBM Notes and now HCL Notes.

I would give it a nine or ten out of ten for stability. It is a really very stable product, having been developed very carefully. HCL Notes remains a strong and reliable platform.

I would rate scalability at eight or nine out of ten. HCL has done significant work in improving scalability over the last ten years.

Technical support with HCL is very good, as it was with IBM as well. I would rate it with a nine or ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is quite simple. Users no longer need the desktop client; applications can be run from a web browser or on smartphones or tablets.

I would rate pricing eight or nine out of ten. It comes at a low cost, considering its significant built-in features.

Notes and Domino cover the whole range from the smallest to the largest organizations.

I have over fifty years of software experience and consider HCL Notes a very good product. Despite differences and market competition, it has some unique functionalities. 

I would rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We are an insurance broker and use HCL Domino for our customer relationship management. My team is responsible for using it to write applications for use in our company.

One of the applications that we created is used to calculate our holidays, as well as other HR-related tasks. These applications handle all of our processes. The only product we have that is provided by another vendor is our accounting system.

The most valuable feature is the access that it provides to documents. This offers us an easy way to make changes.

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.

I have been working with HCL Notes for 22 years.

We have problems with stability in cases where there is a lot of data. My colleague used replication and it caused the server to stop. It was easy to solve the problem but this happens from time to time. It's not bad but very large databases give us problems.

The scalability is such that it works well for small regions. However, very large databases are a problem that leads to instances of instability.

What it comes down to is that a very big database gives us very big problems.

We have close to 200 users in the company.

I have not personally been in contact with technical support. We only use the webpage and the forums, or newsgroups.

Prior to Domino, we used Microsoft Outlook for our email.

Twenty years ago, the user interface in Notes was better than Outlook. However, this is something that should now be much improved.

The installation is very easy.  It takes half an hour to set up and start using.

We have two specialists in our technical team, as well as two programmers.

We pay licensing fees on a yearly basis.

This is a product that I recommend for small companies.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We have an on-premise deployment. After all, it is an email client. The way you use Microsoft Outlook or any other email client it makes sense to be deployed on-premise. They do have a SaaS version. The way it works when we are working on an enterprise laptop — the laptops that the company has provided us — it is installed on our systems. Other than that, the particular tool or email client can also be accessed via web login. We often use that when we are using it from a smartphone or any other non-company device.  

Our primary use case is just what it is: an email client. It is my stable solution and the only email client that I use. Web meetings are also a part of what we use it for. They have a solution — their adjacent solution is called IBM Sametime or HCL Sametime — which is the chat functionality. But our primary use case is as the email client.  

This is the third or fourth company that I am working for in my career and I have used several different email clients over that time. What happens is that an email client is just an email client. You receive emails, you send emails, and basically all emailing stuff that you normally do — like schedule meetings — goes through that email client.  

With HCL Notes, my organization has been able to do a little more in that regard. They have built in and integrated with other systems like the leave management. Because of this integration, I do not have a separate HR portal where I have to go in and apply for leave. All of that is managed through my email client. So rather than just being an email client, Notes ends up being a dashboard of all the communications that you want to take care of from within the company.  

Another example of integration is our custom IT management system which offers specific capabilities. Suppose I have to raise a ticket. I do not have to go to a separate IT portal and do that. I can create the ticket right through HCL notes. Suppose I want to access some internal files, I do not have to go to another internal portal which is built separately by the company. Again, I can find the files directly within HCL Notes.  

We are actually in process of shifting away from this software. I can not really think of any pros to talk about when it comes to this solution that make it better than something else. All I have to mention are cons because this is pretty outdated software. As proof of how outdated it is, even IBM — the creator of this email client — sold it to HCL to get rid of it.  

It is pretty much outdated and there are no not many pros of using it. Although, if you have to count, integrations are easy. My company has integrated a lot of different systems into HCL Notes. We have systems like leave (vacation) management, we have systems like resource management, and internal files and documents. All of these have been integrated with Notes. So it is a tightly knit tool. Really there are so many integrations that there are far too many.  

We have not done any comprehensive search to see if there are other email clients that allow this type of integration. For example, I would not know if even something like Microsoft Office allows users to build integrations or your own features into their email client. HCL Notes sure does allow integrations of many kinds and that is maybe the only pro that I currently find in this solution.  

The way Notes has improved us is that we are able to do a lot of things from the single platform of Notes. While it is a good thing — I would definitely say it is a good thing — but then this software is pretty heavily outdated. So that is a pain point. We do not really want to do everything through this platform, but it is the only platform where we have those tools now. In a way, it is good that we have a lot of capabilities built into the same platform, but this platform is old and it is sluggish.  

The first thing that I would like to see in a new version of Notes is a major improvement with the UI. With HCL Notes, once you open it, it looks like you are using Windows 98. That is how basic and rudimentary it is. The UI is definitely the primary area that can see improvement.  

Also in the UI, the general sense of the user experience can be enhanced. Things are really not always where you might think they should be. If I want to recall an email, two years after using Notes, I will finally know how to recall an email. I am sure that even 80% of my colleagues do not even know how to recall an email because that option is hidden somewhere deep in the options. HCL definitely needs to prioritize what users understand about the interface, what users want, and redesign the UI accordingly. It really is too late now. You are stuck in an ancient system when you compare the other solutions that are 20 years ahead of you.  

It feels pretty primitive. If you check the smartphone interface it is pretty basic. Things that you could do with Outlook in 2006 are things that can only be done by HCL Notes in 2020. The sense you feel when using Notes on a smartphone is almost like I am using a first-generation Android phone again. HCL does not really encourage using Notes through smartphones.  

There is a chat interface and they have a software called Sametime. That enables users to chat and send files to each other in real-time, which is similar to something like Skype for Business. It is there in HCL Notes, but it also does not work properly.  

There are many different, small examples that I can use to state how Notes does not work or where it is lacking. Definitely a tighter integration is needed to check what users want, and what users do not want. A total UI overhaul would be necessary to keep the product alive.  

We have been using HCL (Hindustan Computers Limited) Notes for two years.  

No matter what I say about the product otherwise, it is a very stable solution. There are problems when some of those integrations do not work at first, but that is not from the solution side. I know about that for sure. That is from our side because we are using a primitive solution because we are a primitive company. So the problems within HCL Notes are not because of HCL Notes itself. It is because our IT infrastructure is pretty outdated. So there is no instability with the product itself. I would give Notes a 10-out-of-10 for stability.  

Notes does have the ability to scale. In that way, it is not a problem at all. With email clients, there are always some stability issues or scalability issues that can be there to get in the way of function, but one thing Notes does not have is a scalability issue.  

When it comes to scalability — I do not know if this particular parameter fits in — but it is pretty heavy software. If you were to use it with systems that were underpowered, it might crash the system. But, these days you do not have laptops that have so little computing power that they would not handle Notes. It could crash in some systems that are not powerful enough.  

For example, if you are trying to use HCL Notes in a primitive laptop, maybe something that was built in 2012 or 2010, it might take more memory than the full capacity of those machines. To run Notes, you need a machine with sufficient RAM and you need a better CPU because this is a heavy solution. An email client should not be heavy in the sense of consuming resources.  

We have between 1,500 and 2,000 users using HCL Notes in our company.  

As far as the technical support for this solution, I really have no comment. Our contact point is through our internal IT handlers. I do know that they are difficult to reach.  

Previously I used Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook. That is really all I used before. Microsoft Outlook worked with Microsoft 365 and Office 365. If you are going to bifurcate between both of them — technically they are still different — I used both Office and Office 365.  

The main difference between Office 365 email client and HCL Notes is that everything is different. Microsoft Office for once works when compared to the competition and this competing product does not.  

Microsoft Office is tightly integrated with the normal software that you normally use because everyone uses Microsoft products when it comes to office productivity. If you are using PowerPoint or you are using Word, it is easy to integrate and send a file to someone within Microsoft Office. Microsoft also connects with OneDrive — a cloud solution — so there is really built-in centralized storage and collaborative capabilities. The files are easily transferable. In HCL, they do not have their own cloud which is integrated with Notes. Competing in the market is about being updated and keeping up. It is about being up to date with other tools in 2020.  

A new user of Microsoft Office will take maybe 10 days to learn to work with Outlook. Even Microsoft support is available. You might contact your own it staff, but Microsoft support is easy to contact. That is not the case with HCL. I mean, I am not sure if HCL support can even help me with Notes because I do not have a way to contact them. I can just go to my internal team and that is what I do.  

The lack of support is an issue. Usability, user experience, and feature placement are all definitely issues. If you just look at the number and the kind of features that Office has that HCL Notes just does not have, it is very apparent how behind-the-times the product is.  

We are moving to Office 365 and getting away from HCL Notes as soon as it is practical to do so.  

This product was implemented back in 2000 and I joined the company two years back. I really do not know much about the initial setup. I hope that it was easy. The integrations are not very difficult.  

I can not be sure how many people in total are responsible for the maintenance of HCL Notes exactly. Our staff is distributed between something like 45 countries, so it is difficult to tally. I am not sure how many IT people are situated in each country, but not more than 20 that are dedicated to Notes.  

The biggest lesson I have learned from using HCL Notes patience, I must say. Other than that it becomes a much tougher question. I learned that there is not much to gain from this product, but that sometimes you can manage with inferior tools if you have to. That would be the tagline of HCL Notes if I had the opportunity to add one: "You just have to manage."  

On a scale of one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as a four-point-five out of ten. I will not be so harsh to give it the three or four that I think it deserves even though I would like to. It has worked at least somewhat to manage to be a centralized solution. I will give it a five.  

I mainly use HCL notes for email communication purposes.

The loading time can be excessive. In the next release, I would like HCL Notes to have a feature like Microsoft Teams built into the platform.

I've been using HCL Notes for three months.

HCL Notes is stable most of the time.

I would give HCL Notes a rating of eight out of ten.

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.

The solution could improve by adding some more features.

I have been using I rate HCL Notes for approximately 30 years.

I have found HCL Notes to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

In my company, we have 20 people using the solution and our customers have approximately 20,000.

The technical support is very good.

We have 10 people that do the implementation of the solution.

We pay annually for the use of the solution.

I rate HCL Notes a nine out of ten.

It is easy to manage. We have experience with HCL Notes, that is why we prefer it. I personally have 20 years of experience using it. 

The interface could be more user-friendly. Some additional trainings could be added as well. 

I have been using HCL Notes since 2004.

HCL Notes is stable. 

HCL Notes is scalable. 

The tech support is good. If we run into any issues, we contact the HCL Notes sales support and that has been OK for us so far. 

The initial setup was easy for me. 

The price tag is not small, but it is appropriate. It is reasonable. 

I would recommend this product. 

We are using this solution in our company.

The most valuable feature is the UI.

I would like to see integration with other solutions.

I have been working with HCL Notes for ten years.

We are using version 10.1.

HCL Notes is a stable product.

We have more than 10,000 people in our company who using this solution.

Technical support is good.

We did not work with similar products prior to HCL Notes.

The initial setup was straightforward. It is easy.

We have approximately 30 people to maintain this solution.

The price is reasonable.

I would recommend this product to others who are interested in implementing it.

We have been customers for more than 20 years.

In summary, this is a good product but there are always some areas for improvement.

I would rate HCL Notes an eight out of ten.