No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

HCL Connections vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Connections
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (9th)
Liferay Digital Experience ...
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (6th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (3rd), AI Customer Experience Personalization (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of HCL Connections is 5.8%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Liferay Digital Experience Platform is 14.0%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Liferay Digital Experience Platform14.0%
HCL Connections5.8%
Other80.2%
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PR
E-Governance Head at Creant Technologies
Optimizing digital presence with customizable design and seamless integration
The main benefits that Liferay Digital Experience Platform brings to the table are numerous. First is rapid application development and many features. Features such as content management and document management make your life easy; workflow management is also present. Workflow can be designed and derived. Form development and everything is very smooth and easy to deliver to the end customer, and you can find many features in one box. You have blogs, wikis, and everything with out-of-box functionality. My experience with actionable insights is positive; they help in refining content strategies. The content creation is helpful. For external content creation, I use headless CMS APIs for Liferay Digital Experience Platform, and headless APIs for content creation are also available. My thoughts on the integration capabilities are that integration is seamless. You have headless APIs where you can integrate seamlessly with any other application such as LDAP or SSO, or you can also integrate with different external systems. You have an SAP connector; everything is available. Liferay Digital Experience Platform's open source flexibility has helped in customizing functionalities for the specific needs of my customers as it is a highly flexible application that can be optimized. My advice for other organizations considering Liferay Digital Experience Platform is that if it's available, we need to improve on the performance, which is currently what we are seeing. Otherwise, earlier Service Builder was acceptable. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Liferay Digital Experience Platform a 9.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Files feature has really changed the way we do business."
"This is a great set of tools that is easy to adapt to different teams."
"The most important feature of IBM Connections is that it is a Social Collaboration suite covering nearly all aspects of modern enterprise communication and collaboration."
"The platform allows in a very easy way to create community and start collaborating."
"I also know many new collaboration tools, but I can assert that the level of integration among the IBM products is unmatched nowadays."
"For me, the benefit is that I have it on my mobile device, because I work a lot on mobile."
"The most valuable features of Connections would be that it opens up communication silos that previously existed in the company, so that people have the opportunity to discover talents and interests in other areas that may not pertain to their normal job function."
"The ease of use has definitely improved the way my organization functions."
"All the portlets and widgets are plugins, which provides flexibility to add or modify in multiple ways."
"It's an enterprise-level solution that is ready to use almost immediately and users can immediately share and collaborate once they've installed the application."
"It allows us to arrange and develop new ideas, then incorporate them into the portal. We can create a one stop information center, so people can access the information from one window."
"Manageability is very good and probably the most valuable part of a tool of this type. There is a little more of a learning curve than you have with a simple tool, but a business user can learn to manage the system as an administrator very easily."
"If you are looking for a complete portal solution with security and ease of set-up, then go for it."
"As of now, the technology is up-to-date and fulfills all essential requirements."
"The product has helped our members and communities to freely connect, share knowledge, develop initiatives and share expertise in a secure environment."
"It has increased communication between the departments and their employees."
 

Cons

"For instance, when you open a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, you just get a copy of it; you can't put it up again."
"The UI and UX portions definitely need to be improved."
"Level 1 sometimes seems as if they are part of a call center."
"Initial setup was complex."
"Deployment can be a little complex, but a lot of this relates to the network, corporate LDAP, and security requirements."
"The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."
"It would be helpful to have more interfacing of all the IBM platforms."
"Development of more customized widgets as per the organization’s requirement is one area, which if improved, will attract even those employees who don't use this product often."
"It could have better built-in integration with a wider variety of extensions out-of-the-box."
"Liferay does currently lack a good integrated analytics package, automation, and filtering."
"It lacks true multi-tenant support."
"Its SSL-based client authentication support needs to be improved."
"It could be improved in terms of adding filters to some of the rules. Therefore, you can retain how long a document would need to stay in an archive."
"We found it difficult to upload documents. It seemed unnecessarily complex."
"The loading speed could be improved."
"Documentation is an issue and needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's an open-source structure. Other costs are for professional services to integrate Liferay to other existing systems."
"Their pricing model should be modified to include per user options instead of just servers/cores, etc."
"Licensing costs can be very expensive."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive. What Liferay Digital Experience Platform offers at its current price can be considered something that is worth the money."
"It is a bit expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) solutions are best for your needs.
917,181 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is the best feature of Liferay?
A tricky question because it'd depend on what your focus will be on Liferay as a digital experience platform. I mean, if for me the experience management is the best feature, for someone with diff...
Is Liferay suitable for complete beginners?
A non-developer here, and frankly, a little bit of a tech beginner in general. My company branched out into digital experience a bit later than we should have but picking Liferay as a DXP was one o...
What is Liferay’s capacity for backup?
Yes, I think you can trust the cloud feature of Liferay pretty well. It gives you the option to back up your data as well as restore it and that's pretty vital for any digital experience platform....
 

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
Liferay DXP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Adidas, Carrefour, Cisco Systems, Danone, Fujitsu, Lufthansa Flight Training, Siemens, Société Générale and the United Nations
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Connections vs. Liferay Digital Experience Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,181 professionals have used our research since 2012.