HCL Notes Reviews

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.

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.

Lotus Domino is an excellent platform for making groupware applications that are natively integrated with email.

It gives you the flexibility to publish applications in the web with practically no effort if you use some of the templates provided.

The security (private key / public key) is very strong.

You have a lot of predesigned templates for doing workflow applications.

We used Lotus Domino / Lotus Notes a lot few years ago for:

• Corporate politics and procedures
• Corporate phone book
• Email
• Workflow applications for authorization (vacations, travel expenses, refunds, etc)

We created some excellent applications for managing our enterprise / corporate procedures. Before the BPMS tools were created, we created some applications to manage our corporate workflows.

Using Lotus Notes, we had to solve some issues because Lotus Notes is a document-oriented database and not a relational database. At the beginning, we had to solve some performance issues.

First, we had to develop a standard to document our corporate processes. We used Microsoft Visio to do the documentation and a proprietary standard (before the BPMN standard was established).

As soon as we solved the issue of the standard, we wanted to cover in detail the business requirements and time to market requested by the enterprise, so we developed a flexible application that let the developers to configure instead of programming the workflows.

We created a catalog for adding roles, people, activities, processes, fields by role, among other information, so we were able to configure a new workflow in days, not in weeks.

With this template, we created the main corporate processes, for example, the presales process and the installation processes for the corporate, government and IT market.

We were also able to copy the template created to use this application for other kind of workflows.

It took almost 15 years of work to have this template customized to fill the needs of the enterprise and the aggressive time to market needed in telecom companies.

The problem with Lotus Domino is that there are no new versions of the product. The last version that I know is 9.x.

20 years (since 1997)

Practically no deployment issues.

Because the Lotus Notes database is a documental database, there are some stability issues if the database grows a lot. I think that you can avoid this issue if you send the information to a database or Split the database in files no longer than 4 GB to have better performance.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.; it's a very scalable solution (as a platform).

Customer service is 8/10.

Technical support is 8/10.

We are currently using the Office 365 solution; it has the advantage that now it's in the cloud and it can be accessed from any place.

Initial setup was complex; you have to have some technical expertise to implement the solution.

An in-house team implemented it.

I am not sure if IBM is still selling this product.

Talking about the support, I think that it is average; it is not the cheapest solution.

Before choosing, we also evaluated Office 365 for businesses (Exchange).

Review the roadmap with IBM before trying to implement this solution, because I think that IBM is not investing in new versions and there's no roadmap.

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.

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.

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 primarily use this solution as a CRM. We are customers of HCL Notes. 

Security is the most valuable feature, better than you get in 365. It's a great system.

GUI, the graphic user interface, could be improved as well as replication.

The solution is stable. 

This is a scalable solution, we have 1,250 users in the company. 

I'm satisfied with the technical support. 

I rate this solution a seven out of 10.