We performed a comparison between HCL Notes and Microsoft Exchange Online based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Email Applications solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"The solution provides great security."
"It is one of the best products in the world for workflow applications. It works very well for workflows or decisional processes where a task needs to be first approved by someone. After that, the task moves to the next or final stage where another person approves it with some notes or attached documents."
"Its security is absolutely stratospheric. In an application, you can lock down to field-level security. For example, I could log in and see a field in an HR database with salaries. When you log in, you see exactly the same database, but the field with the salary just isn't there. So, you can literally have field-level security on it, and you can also have secure encryption. For example, I could give you that database allowing you to see the salary, but a calculation that shows how much they get per month in another field is encrypted. So, you won't be able to see that because you don't have the encryption key. You can implement high-level security very simply."
"The most valuable feature is the access that it provides to documents. This offers us an easy way to make changes."
"The solution is practical, good interface, and performs well."
"The most valuable feature is the UI."
"HCL Notes is stable most of the time."
"Microsoft Exchange Online is very simple and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online are the frequent updates. They upgrade and optimize the features to make them better and better. They have a very strong ecosystem and they integrate together."
"Microsoft Exchange Online has great functionality."
"It has helped us because we don't have to worry about servers crashing."
"Exchange Online plays a significant role in our business. It controls all our emails, so we'd be in a lot of trouble if we didn't have that. It's an essential product."
"It allows us to work from home, at any time or anywhere."
"It's easy to use and there is more integration."
"Exchange Online is consistent. It's easy to deploy and scale out to all of our organizations."
"I would like to see integration with other solutions."
"GUI and replication can be improved."
"The loading time can be excessive."
"The interface could be more user-friendly. Some additional trainings could be added as well."
"We had trouble connecting this solution to the database from Microsoft. We have done it, although it can be easier."
"I love this product. I have used it for many years, and I have been a developer for it. If anything, it can be faster in the client version. The client version is a little bit hard. It is not fast. This is the only problem I see. Otherwise, it is a very good product."
"The solution could improve by adding some more features."
"The only improvement that we're planning to do is that all our applications are still designed in the layout and format of Notes version 4, and our plan over the coming years is to modernize their look. One of the things they're developing or considering deploying is a program to automatically upgrade the look and feel of databases. If they deploy that, that will be revolutionary. In other words, we decide on a corporate look and feel for our database and press a button. We've probably got 50 different applications in Notes, and it would just go through the whole lot and upgrade all of them to look the same."
"We would like to have more automation with Microsoft Exchange Online."
"There is an annual enterprise subscription could improve by having more features."
"The pricing could be cheaper."
"Using this solution is initially quite complicated."
"The efficiency could improved."
"The problem with Exchange is that the attributes aren't flexible enough. I'd like to see more interaction with Office 365 and tighter integration between on-prem Exchange and Exchange Online. There's still a disconnect between mailboxes and the cloud."
"I would like to have the option to have my electronic signature posted on my emails by default. I am able to add it manually but cannot get it by default."
"What I don't like about Microsoft Exchange Online is too much integration because now it has many services connected to it. In the beginning, it was just email, and now it's also Teams and Visio, and many other services which I don't like. Microsoft Exchange Online should focus on one service. The product now lost focus, and this is its area for improvement. I would also like more freedom in choosing to use just one service, for example, just Microsoft Exchange Online, which means I don't need Teams or any other Microsoft product or service there. Right now, all services are either in the Microsoft Office suite, or there are more products or services integrated with Microsoft Exchange Online, and I'd like to just focus on one."
HCL Notes is ranked 5th in Email Applications with 9 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online is ranked 4th in Email Applications with 38 reviews. HCL Notes is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Exchange Online is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HCL Notes writes "It's a user-friendly tool for knowledge-sharing applications with good backward compatibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Exchange Online writes "Reasonably priced, reliable, easy to install, and helpful technical support". HCL Notes is most compared with HCL Verse, HCL Domino, Microsoft Exchange, Google Workspace and Zimbra Collaboration, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online is most compared with Google Workspace, Zimbra Collaboration, Amazon WorkMail, KerioConnect and ProtonMail. See our HCL Notes vs. Microsoft Exchange Online report.
See our list of best Email Applications vendors.
We monitor all Email Applications reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
