HCL Notes vs. Microsoft Teams

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HCL Notes
Score 3.5 out of 10
N/A
Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.N/A
Microsoft Teams
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.
$4.80
per month per user
Pricing
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Teams Essentials
$4.80
per month per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month (paid yearly) per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Basic
$7.20
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
$15
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscounts are available for non profit organizations.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Considered Both Products
HCL Notes
Chose HCL Notes
It helps in organizing work by just speaking to it, and you don't have to specifically type in the data and use it. It has a better UI and also is faster.
Chose HCL Notes
Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud …
Chose HCL Notes
It had a simple user interface. It can be altered and modified to any database.
Chose HCL Notes
Our organization used IBM Notes before I started working there and is a legacy system that some teams still use. Many others in our company have switched to Slack and Google Hangouts as well as Google calendar. Slack and Google Hangouts offer a much better chat experience that …
Chose HCL Notes
As I stated previously, mail is mail. Notes is a fantastic option as a frontend for mail. On top of that, a business can be built from the custom applications that can be developed in it. We do have gmail as an option, but the vast majority of users are on Notes. We also choose …
Chose HCL Notes
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of …
Chose HCL Notes
Exchange is too resource hungry and cumbersome to restore granular. It requires several other Microsoft Servers to integrate just to meet IBM Notes in terms of features. As someone once described, doing an apple to apple [comparison] is difficult. If Exchange were taken as an …
Chose HCL Notes
We've looked at Exchange a few times. However, for more costly licensing and about the same amount of administrative support required, Exchange only does mail, calendar and contacts.

We do all that with Notes already, plus dozens of custom applications, and for less costly …
Chose HCL Notes
We originally selected Notes for it's ease of use, and ability to be customized. As the industry has progressed we have had to move on to a more progressive path.
Chose HCL Notes
I selected IBM Notes, because of its security features.
Chose HCL Notes
We are a small IT team and always had to deal with very high expectation, faster turn around time from users. Every application we've developed has very short turn around time and less resources. In the past 15 years, we can provide more application and doing it faster than …
Chose HCL Notes
Database development capabilities. Document management orientation.
Microsoft Teams
Chose Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a complementary tool I used in my software panel. So it can cover many cases where partners are not using the same tools as the ones used in my firm. It is a complementary tool with other ones like Miro, Slack, and Jira, for example, in order to facilitate …
Chose Microsoft Teams
I suppose on some level I selected Microsoft Teams because my company has it installed on the computers automatically, but having used other programs I find the Microsoft Teams interface to be very user-friendly and you aren't forced into harder to use features unless you …
Chose Microsoft Teams
I think Microsoft Teams is much more user friendly and has more features.
Chose Microsoft Teams
I only use Teams because I am forced by my employer. I think Slack is far superior - it just works.
Chose Microsoft Teams
With Microsoft Teams you can better check each one's agenda. The background when in a meeting is better. Microsoft Teams also have more options for integrations in place.
It's also easier and more intuitive.
It also offers more options of communicating and not only video …
Chose Microsoft Teams
I had the priviledge to work with Microsoft Teams Rooms both in bring your own device mode and also connecting a device via Azure monitor. This helped a lot when we needed to do local meetings with a lot of people with external partners. This helped a lot since we were able to …
Chose Microsoft Teams
We are in the Microsoft Eco-system, so Teams integrates well with our other tools.
We also integrated our company website and IT website to contact me or our IT team.
Without a second doubt, Teams is the application we choose among others and we will continue to use Teams as our …
Chose Microsoft Teams
I prefer using Slack for text and quick video/audio calls. It is easy and has features like GIFs and other integrations built in. It's a nice one button way to communicate. We use Zoom for our more structured meetings and I use Zoom for my training sessions because I can plug …
Chose Microsoft Teams
We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. …
Chose Microsoft Teams
We selected Microsoft Teams as we were using starleaf and we had numerous issues.

But now we are also not satisfied at all. And I hope we would move to another app soon.
Chose Microsoft Teams
The Office 365 suit contains everything needed for daily use such as document editing, spreadsheet, email client. The onedrive is a great addition to that. Microsoft Teams allows the editing and access to files saved in onedrive if ther are shared to you. Therefore, Microsoft …
Chose Microsoft Teams
Teams is the best of the company message tools that I have used so far because it integrates so many functionalities. Teams goes way beyond the instant messaging or video calls features with screen-sharing. It integrated with your calendar, enables you to do task tracking (e.g. …
Chose Microsoft Teams
While we mostly use Monday.com for our CRM needs, we still use Teams for our communication needs all day every day. We couldn't function as a team without Teams! The chat and meeting setup/scheduling function is so useful and easy to use. We have found that having meetings is …
Chose Microsoft Teams
  • Microsoft Teams has a lot of features
  • it's well integrated with all other Microsoft products
  • It has a user-friendly desktop and mobile applications
Chose Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a centralized application and integrates to all O365 application suite, this allows any company to have everything at reach, applications, data stored, sharepoint and so on. You can set up meetings and record them which is an advantage because you dont need …
Chose Microsoft Teams
Teams was selected by another team in the organization to manage Instant Messaging needs.
Chose Microsoft Teams
The most noticeable thing that Microsoft Teams offers and Zoom lacks is providing the history of meeting chats. If you join a Zoom meeting late, you don't get any of the chat info (e.g. shared messages, files, contact info, weblinks) that were sent prior to you joining. With …
Chose Microsoft Teams
Zoom has better video call quality and fewer drops in voice calls.
Chose Microsoft Teams
For our particular use case, which is collaboration across teams sitting in different geographies in a fast-paced sales organization, Microsoft Teams is just the perfect platform to bring everyone together. Teams helps you keep the dialogue strictly professional which is good …
Chose Microsoft Teams
User experience is of a higher level and integrates well into Outlook. Using the tool to facilitate user testing with participants outside the company is a breeze too.
Chose Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Team is one of Microsoft's newest applications. Looking at the evolution of the Office suite, I can only imagine what Team will become with the next updates. It's a product that fills a need and has a lot of possibilities to evolve well. I would put it right in the …
Features
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
HCL Notes
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
Microsoft Teams
7.0
Ratings
10% below category average
Task Management7.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Gantt Charts6.00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Scheduling8.00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Workflow Automation5.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Mobile Access8.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Search6.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Visual planning tools8.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
HCL Notes
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Microsoft Teams
7.8
Ratings
2% below category average
Chat6.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Notifications9.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Discussions9.50 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Surveys9.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase10.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting10.00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts10.00 Ratings5.70 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook10.00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
HCL Notes
7.6
Ratings
4% below category average
Microsoft Teams
7.6
Ratings
4% below category average
Versioning9.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Video files6.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Audio files6.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Document collaboration8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Access control6.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Advanced security features8.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive10.00 Ratings5.30 Ratings
Device sync8.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.7
(0 ratings)
3.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
HCL NotesMicrosoft Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
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Microsoft Teams is ideal for organizations where employees regularly collaborate by sharing files, working on the same documents, updating the progress, etc. This is because different file formats are supported for online editing and collaboration with the help of Microsoft Teams. Additionally, for every file which is shared among the team members, emails are not sent again and again which helps in easily managing and organizing files. It is less appropriate where the team members have to instantly reply to an urgent task as sometimes the notifications are not sent properly which may lead to a delay in the work.
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Pros
  • Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
  • Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
  • Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
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  • Video calls are great with Microsoft Teams. They've made big improvements over the last year and I rarely have issue with getting on. It's nice when things just work.
  • The most used functionality is, of course, the chat feature. It does what it's supposed to do and you can create chat groups from whoever you'd like. We use it a lot when there is a special project and a team from various groups get together for a short period of time to get things done.
  • An overlooked function is the ability to search anything within Microsoft Teams. Any photo, document, or chat can be searched and found pretty easily. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me from having to rewrite something or start over.
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Cons
  • The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
  • We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
  • There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
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  • I sometimes have a hard time viewing both the meeting screen and chat window at the same time.
  • There have been times when someone in a meeting will totally lose their connection.
  • At times the sound quality is not what it should be which makes it hard to hear each other.
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Likelihood to Renew
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
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Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product
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Usability
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
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The overall functionality of the product is incredible in that it provides a one-stop solution for organization and communication. The product is also very well integrated into Microsoft Outlook and other Office apps. Visually pleasing and very easy to use interface. New features are constantly being added to enhance the user experience.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Rare, but outages do happen
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.
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Support Rating
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
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I think Microsoft Team is overall good application for communication, track Project work inter the teams and also intra teams. I have 7 out of 10 because it needs improvements in certain features like video sharing call, call drop, audio quality and connecting problems even after having good internet connection.
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Implementation Rating
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
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I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.
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Alternatives Considered
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
Read full review
We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. Although like any of there there is room for imporvement.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it
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Return on Investment
  • ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
  • Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
  • Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
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  • User experience has been much better than the previous Skype for Business app. It has an easy-to-use interface with persistent chats. The search feature is very fast and useful.
  • MS Teams has mostly focused on Collaboration and team building features which are very useful for organisational communications. This in turn has a positive impact on the overall business outcome.
  • Scheduling meetings have never been so easy in the past. We can schedule meetings on the go without any hassles
  • Since Teams is accessible from multiple platforms like Laptop, Desktop, Mobile phones, etc it has been very convenient from a Mobility perspective.
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ScreenShots