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HCL Notes vs Zimbra Collaboration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 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

HCL Notes
Ranking in Email Applications
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zimbra Collaboration
Ranking in Email Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of HCL Notes is 3.3%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zimbra Collaboration is 6.8%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zimbra Collaboration6.8%
HCL Notes3.3%
Other89.9%
Email Applications
 

Featured Reviews

AM
RPA Developer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Challenges with efficiency and interface lead to transition while offering some useful organization features
Office 365 has advantages over HCL Notes, offering a better interface and better categorization of emails. We get different kinds of options, including mail suggestions and AI options that can help users. Meetings, calendars, everything is in one place, making it more efficient. Office 365 offers a better interface and categorization of emails, along with options such as mail suggestions and AI features. Meetings and calendars are all integrated in one place.
Muhammad Talha Baig - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Analyst and Associate Project Manager at SAMI Pharmaceuticals
One of the premium features was customized rooms tailored to the collaboration needs
Zimbra's strength lies in its individuality, and it should focus on leveraging its unique features rather than trying to emulate competitors. My organization has certified Zimbra technicians, so we believe we can utilize Zimbra certification. However, I was recently informed by Zimbra that no such certification exists. I have recently completed the test kit, and after the training, I will gain access to tickets. Therefore, if any clients are experiencing issues, we have a certified technical team available to provide support 24/7. This is how we can cater to our client's needs. I recommend Zimbra to small-scale and enterprise customers. Anyone, even those with 5 users, can opt for Zimbra. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is practical, good interface, and performs well."
"The solution is practical, good interface, and performs well."
"Lotus Domino is an excellent platform for making groupware applications that are natively integrated with email."
"People criticize Notes because its appearance is outdated, and I agree, but behind that lackluster look is an extremely substantial platform for knowledge management, information sharing, monitoring, workflow, etc."
"It offers unique capabilities, excellent security, and replication features."
"Office 365 offers a better interface and categorization of emails, along with options such as mail suggestions and AI features."
"There are two real headliners: The first one is that ongoing license cost is a fraction of its competition, and secondly: security, security, security; it is the most secure platform you will ever have."
"The tech support is good."
"Zimbra Collaboration has a good web interface."
"It has all collaboration features, such as document sharing, video conferencing, chatting, task sharing, and calendar sharing."
"One of the premium features was customized rooms tailored to the collaboration needs. Many of the clients customize features such as organization logos and scanners."
"It is the best open source collaboration suite that I know, because it provides high availability and more performance than the other solutions."
"The product is very stable."
"The solution is easy to implement."
"The configuration is simple."
"Premium features, such as auto discovery and archiving, mobile management and HSM, make life much easier."
 

Cons

"Web support is very old and needs an upgrade. We can handle a different password for the client to access the mail services, compared to the web services. We need to implement many other components to get access to the web access. There could be a feature to interpret if the web access is available from any end-user equipment."
"I would like to see integration with other solutions."
"The solution could improve by adding some more features."
"The solution could improve by adding some more features."
"The loading time can be excessive."
"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 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."
"Some people complain that they want something more modern and jazzy."
"The antispam and antivirus features are hard to understand on mobile devices."
"Zimbra must improve its solution to make it easy so that the users don't have to use webmail to connect to their accounts and log in to webmail every time. This is something that is lacking in Zimbra Collaboration. They should provide a better way to easily connect email applications on the desktop to the Zimbra server. They should also try to have more functionality for storage management, like Microsoft Exchange. Currently, the management of the email data must be done manually in Zimbra Collaboration, which we are finding very difficult. They should provide a way to save emails so that you can have more space on the server and storage. Because of the lack of this functionality, we are planning to migrate to Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft Exchange provides a better way to manage storage than Zimbra Collaboration. You cannot have a mail solution without storage management because emails will always increase. Zimbra Collaboration also needs tools for management. More back-office tools are required to manage the whole mailbox and space. You don't only manage emails but also the documents attached to the emails. Therefore, you require tools to select and decide what do you want to save or how do you want to free up space in your infrastructure."
"There are some bugs we found that could be fixed."
"The product must be more customizable."
"We had a couple of issues with stability, but nothing that I couldn't work around or fix myself. Zimbra is a powerful product, but since VMware bought it, changes and bug fixes have been very slow in coming."
"Zimbra should provide a desktop client. Right now, we are using a web browser for accessing our emails. There should also be a desktop client."
"In the next release, Zimbra Collaboration should include a security feature to allow access for mobile device administrators."
"There are some security issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"I don't remember how much we paid when we first bought the Domino license, but now, we pay only for the passport. For 30 client licenses, we pay about $1,500 per year, and we don't consider it very expensive for the quality of the product. In our case, we need 30 client licenses. So, we buy 30 client licenses independently of the server. It is very easy for us to choose and maintain this kind of license and get the passport advantage."
"We pay annually for the use of the solution."
"The solution is expensive. There are many components or features which make the price very high."
"It is far cheaper to license. It is a third of the cost of our Microsoft license for 10 times the amount of usage. Developing applications cost a fraction of anything else. There are two reasons for that. First of all, applications are very fast to build. All the security is already built into the platform, so you don't have to worry about security at all. The other thing is that because fewer people use it than, for example, Microsoft SharePoint, the salary commanded by programmers is slightly lower. So, it is not only faster; you also get cheaper programmers. So, you really win-win-win on it."
"It was reasonably priced, but the product itself was not worth the cost."
"We pay licensing fees on a yearly basis."
"There is an annual standard licensing fee to use Zimbra Collaboration and there is no other cost."
"Zimbra Collaboration is expensive, and there is no perpetual license option."
"We pay yearly licenses for Zimbra Collaboration."
"We are using perpetual licenses. We have deployed it in our local data center, and we buy perpetual licenses on a per-user basis."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the price a four"
"We do not pay for licenses to use this solution."
"The price of the solution is low."
"If you choose the network edition, it is a little pricier. They have the open-source edition too which is only community supported."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HCL Notes?
We don't use team workspace with HCL Notes; we use only Microsoft because it's incorporated with the Microsoft license. Based on my extensive experience with HCL Notes, I think HCL can make its pro...
What is your primary use case for HCL Notes?
We use HCL Notes as an email system. We currently only use it as an email application, though in the past we used it for additional applications.
What advice do you have for others considering HCL Notes?
Regarding HCL Notes supporting various business processes such as CRM, I don't use it, but if I have an issue, I contact the support and we are satisfied with that. I would rate HCL Notes 10 out of...
How does Zimbra Collaboration compare with Microsoft Exchange?
Zimbra is a free, open source collaborative software suite. The features I like best are the ease of integration and the email, calendar, and collaboration server with web interface. In addition, I...
What needs improvement with Zimbra Collaboration?
When it comes to administration tasks like configuring specific filters or group signatures, I have to dig into the configuration since there's nothing in the graphical or web interface. The soluti...
 

Also Known As

IBM Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Connect2Cloud, Hansgrohe, Sauk County, Blue Water Shipping, FDBR, ibml, Multivac, Aarhus University Hospital, Hendricks Regional Health, Asian Paints, Integra Legal, Sunplus Technology, S¾SS, The Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sports, Nicrometal, Doncasters Group, Practice Plan, Barr, RACV, Neotechnik, Deutsche Notes User Group
NEC Biglobe, City of Ventura, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Hola Publishing, BIG, Sleepwell, LaFayette College, Xmission, DNA, Ring Line, Future Group, TIGC
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Notes vs. Zimbra Collaboration and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,426 professionals have used our research since 2012.