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Chatter vs HCL Connections comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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

Chatter
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
14th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HCL Connections
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Enterprise Social Software category, the mindshare of Chatter is 2.6%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 2.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Social Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HCL Connections2.7%
Chatter2.6%
Other94.7%
Enterprise Social Software
 

Featured Reviews

it_user669357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Salesforce Senior Cloud Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Contextualized collaboration on records allows you to have historical conversations that are accessible by other users.
Chatter is a great way to connect your users, especially if your team is working in multiple time zones or locations. If you're struggling with why to use collaboration tools at all, I'd suggest you watch this video. One the best examples that I've seen is a property team who were managing the entire process from leasing properties with branding to shop merges via Salesforce. All of their notifications were email-based and they were getting 100s per day. By moving these alerts to automated posts into particular groups, the users could not only access multiple updates by using digests instead of per alert, but also choose to control who (group members) and how often they get those alerts.
Hasnain Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Talent acquisition & development specialist at Software Productivity Strategists, Inc. (SPS)
A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is now possible to share information instantly with all the company without sending emails, but also looking for a topic using the search function."
"Salesforce Chatter allows for contextualized collaboration on records that allows you to have historical conversations, which are easily accessible by other users."
"The conversation function to engage different groups is the most valuable feature."
"It offers more than what you are looking for, for example, file sharing and "mentions"."
"It helped us to strengthen our digital community all over the world with a dedicated group to share project information and best practices."
"Salesforce being the number one cloud-based CRM product, I think one can recommend it in the first go."
"I love the streaming feed of information from the people that I'm following that encourages collaboration at a business level."
"All the features above improve collaboration among employees."
"It is the single quickest way for us to start consolidating all of our files together when we are going to many countries."
"This is a great set of tools that is easy to adapt to different teams."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"Some of the valuable features in this product are: Profiles – It is easy to find people with similar tech skills and reach out to them internally for a project requirement, and project managers find it easy to know who in the organization possesses a skill that matches the requirement."
"It's easy to use for both developers and end users."
"File sharing, especially within the communities, is a valuable feature."
"For us, the most valuable feature is really the threaded conversations, because we don't get a threaded conversation with other tools."
 

Cons

"I wish an organization could create a company-wide Chatter that automatically follows everyone else in the company so that widespread access was guaranteed."
"I would rate the technical support a 7/10 because Salesforce has its own way of looking at technical issues and sometimes takes its own time to implement or release changes as per their convenience."
"We would not select them again."
"Live consumption of the communication needs to be improved so that it can offer more features similar to Twitter/Slack, such as a live rolling news feed, notification bells (to avoid email alerts), ability to share multiple files or actions in one post, etc."
"The storage of documents was quite limited when we used the tool."
"Chatter invites should be possible from the UI on opportunity records."
"The mobile, Outlook, and desktop Plug-ins associated with this product need to be improved."
"I would like to have more control over the news delivery on the homepage. You now need a third-party app (we use XCC from Time To Act) for this."
"The perfect software doesn't exist, but I think Connections is really a good piece of software with few things lacking."
"Ideally, the product will increment advances from consumer social networks and file sharing tools sooner, as users expectations are formed by the software they use at home and on their devices."
"The UI and UX portions definitely need to be improved."
"The administration part of the product could be increased."
"Generally, I believe IBM are addressing all of these issues but progress seems very slow."
"Deployment can be a little complex, but a lot of this relates to the network, corporate LDAP, and security requirements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with HCL Connections?
The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...
What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?
I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca Cola Enterprise, Blue Shield of California, Stanley Black & Decker, Wells Fargo Bank, Phillips, Toyota Motors, American Red Cross, Time Warner Cable, Virgin America,Canon, and Bayer Pharmaceuticals.
Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA
Find out what your peers are saying about Chatter vs. HCL Connections and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.