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HCL Sametime vs Microsoft Teams comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 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 Sametime
Ranking in Virtual Meetings
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Teams
Ranking in Virtual Meetings
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
181
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Virtual Meetings category, the mindshare of HCL Sametime is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Teams is 3.9%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Teams3.9%
HCL Sametime1.5%
Other94.6%
Virtual Meetings
 

Featured Reviews

Bogdan Chechlowski - PeerSpot reviewer
Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA
Stable product, communicate very fast and allows to see who's online in the office or work environment
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily Being able to see who was online and communicate very fast was a good feature.  The security was quite good. However, when we tried to implement it for email at a high level, we had to use another solution, FortiMail Gateway. I view…
Ayush Saxena - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed daily work and supports seamless global voice communication
Microsoft Teams could be improved, especially regarding contact center solutions which have a growing need for omnichannel capabilities, integrating with external platforms such as social media and email for a unified experience. Minor improvements might include reintroducing features such as GPU options available in classic Microsoft Teams to address issues in modern Microsoft Teams related to video meetings and content sharing. Furthermore, essential information such as who started or ended recordings should be more accessible in the Microsoft Teams admin center. I rate it a nine because Microsoft Teams occasionally experiences glitches in the client, leading to missing chat history or other transient issues. The performance issues with the desktop client and the support service complexities contribute to my rating being less than perfect. I have not identified any other improvements needed for Microsoft Teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can view the status and availability of colleagues or team members, which makes it easy to approach them when they are available."
"Audio and video calls provide faster communication than chat."
"The security was quite good."
"A very good communication and real-time collaboration software, it is simple, fast, reliable, keeps history and the best feature of all is its intelligence."
"This solution saves time and cost in communicating with team members, streamlines tasks in my organization by encouraging us to chat directly with the relevant person, and strengthens professional relationships through increased communication among peers."
"I believe there has been a return on investment because Teams has seamlessly allowed us to continue to do our work over the lockdown period."
"Our company is moving from their Skype for Business to Teams, and I've seen it, looked at it, used it, and somewhat enjoyed the UI; Teams has been very friendly, and I have no qualms about going to Teams from Skype."
"Microsoft Teams combines most of the Office 365 products in one very convenient product."
"It is software that many people are familiar with, and if you have someone who needs to communicate with Teams, they will have the necessary software."
"Microsoft Teams has impacted us in positive terms, as we have worked with multiple teams and the team collaboration is very good."
"Using the solution's screen-sharing feature, we can go through a document together and take control."
"Teams' most valuable feature is the ability to choose from multiple numbers to show when calling."
"The initial setup process is straightforward for technical executives."
 

Cons

"It seems that the software might in the future, support the software telephony exchange but at the current time, it is not doing that and because of that one key feature of real-time communication is missing from it."
"The webinar should be integrated into Sametime for a larger number of participants."
"It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or other files."
"The interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP."
"Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted."
"Microsoft Teams can start being more interactive and intuitive by implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning."
"One time the product was basically freezing. I couldn't send a message to my colleague for some reason."
"SharePoint was more robust and customizable earlier."
"Whiteboard tool not embedded in the solution."
"The solution should offer a way for people to virtually raise their hands in a meeting so that everyone can speak. There's a user voice for this already, but it would help if there was some sort of visual cue as well."
"In terms of functionality, I would like to see support for multi-user or multiple windows for the File structure."
"The software could be optimized for Mac systems because sometimes it is slow and consumes a lot of memory."
"Microsoft Teams withdrew the Wiki function, which was quite a good and useful feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool comes as part of the Office 365 bundle and you don't have to pay anything extra."
"Microsoft Teams’s pricing is low."
"The product's pro accounts are cheap."
"Microsoft Teams is a cheap solution."
"The product is expensive."
"Microsoft Teams is expensive compared to other solutions."
"My understanding is that there are licensing fees, but I'm not sure how much they might be."
"We need to pay for Microsoft Teams' licenses on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise76
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Teams?
Pricing for Microsoft Teams has been good so far. My team does not manage Microsoft Teams pricing or how the licensing is being done, but I know there is a Microsoft E3 license that gives you acces...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Teams?
The only thing that frustrates me using Microsoft Teams is where I'm not able to properly integrate some applications, such as some chatbots, to Microsoft Teams. Apart from that, Microsoft Teams ha...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Teams?
My main use case for Microsoft Teams is for chats and meetings, majorly to schedule meetings, and those are the major things for chat and to schedule meetings. A recent scenario where I typically u...
 

Also Known As

Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime
MS Teams
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Connect2Cloud, Superior Group, Daifuku Co. Ltd., Seaward, The City of Fort Worth, Christian Brothers Services, Berlitz, Deutsche Notes User Group, Danske Fysioterapeuter, Slumberland, La Vacanza, Rheinmetall AG
Honeywll, AIRFRANCE, AccuWeather, Lilly
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Sametime vs. Microsoft Teams and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.