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HCL Verse vs Office 365 comparison

 

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 Verse
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Email Applications (13th)
Office 365
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
143
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. HCL Verse is designed for Email Applications and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, up 1.4% compared to last year.
Office 365, on the other hand, focuses on Content Collaboration Platforms, holds 6.9% mindshare, up 5.9% since last year.
Email Applications
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

MR
Stable, scalable, and good interface
HCL Verse has a nice interface and it is a practical email solution. There are a diverse set of features, such as the search bar on top of the screens. The usability from the old applications to the new version has been very good. It was great that we were able to migrate applications from the older version to the new one.
Gary Cook - PeerSpot reviewer
Access to advanced features boosts productivity despite pricing concerns in developing regions
I need to do maintenance for Office 365 very seldom, once a year. In the maintenance process for Office 365, we have about 12 people involved. For the maintenance side of Office 365, only one person is involved. Looking at Office 365's pricing, I would give it a 4 on a scale from 1 to 10. My overall rating for Office 365 is an 8 out of 10, but for the product itself, I would give it a 10. I would definitely recommend Office 365 to other businesses, probably a 9 out of 10 for recommendation. This is only because of its price and the fact that they do not take into account developing countries such as South Africa, where they should give us more favorable prices or local prices. We do not have a partnership with Microsoft, which is a sore point for us. We have reached out to Microsoft South Africa, and they are very hard to contact and largely uncooperative. We are a B-Level 2 and a B-Level 1, which are local affirmative action ratings that companies get. Level 1 is the highest, and Level 8 is the lowest. We hold amongst the highest BEE ratings, but we have not found Microsoft South Africa to be forthcoming or very open. We should have a partnership with them, and we run Power BI as we are a Power BI shop now. I strongly would want to see a box within Office 365 for our team to have ChatGPT through OpenAI as well. We use Excel as a data source for many tasks and find that it integrates really well with Python. We write a lot of Python code and use Excel as a data sheet many times, and we operate through SQL and other zero elements as well. From an Office 365 viewpoint, we find that with Copilot and Python and Excel's provision for Python, it is very useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"HCL Verse has a nice interface and it is a practical email solution. There are a diverse set of features, such as the search bar on top of the screens."
"The most valuable feature is the mail server."
"I love all of the applications being interlinked. I do not have to separately work on an independent system when it comes to file storage, email, and other tools."
"Using Office 365 has allowed us to go digital and onboard people seamlessly for working at home during the COVID pandemic."
"The integration with other applications is pretty good."
"The most valuable feature of Office 365 is that it has many solutions bundled together."
"The most valuable feature of Office 365 is automatic saving. If something happens on the computer your work is saved."
"We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints."
"It is stable."
"There's a lot there in terms of apps and features."
 

Cons

"Security is very important to us, so improvements to this functionality are welcome."
"The solution could improve by allowing us to use a color that we want in the editing boxes."
"Using Office 365 is not that flexible on some mobile devices, like Android."
"Improvements can be made to the products generic offering. It's not customized for health care. It doesn't understand the meaning of health care related concepts. Providing a greater degree of industry specificity would make the tool much more unique and valuable."
"The security should be improved."
"I would like to see the macro functionality in Excel made simpler."
"I rate the support of Office 365 a four out of five."
"The feature to convert PDF file to a Word document needs improvement as well as the feature to save the file automatically when typing, without using the save command."
"As a private user, I do not appreciate the cloud features, but I doubt that this is something Microsoft would consider a feature request."
"We have found that, with Teams, if you are including one more person who is not in the company ecosystem, supposedly I'm inviting them as a guest in the chat. However, when I do that, I can't share files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"This is an affordable solution but the price could be improved."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
21%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
46%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
For pricing, I think it's fairly priced, I would rate it 8.
What needs improvement with Office 365?
The areas of Office 365 that have room for improvement are what should be better in this solution.
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
A typical use case for Office 365 is how I primarily use this solution.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Verse, IBM Verse
Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canon Marketing Japan Inc., Australian Trade Commission, BTC, Havas, Canal Barge Co.Inc., RAVInvest, Elemental Path, WDR mediagroup
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