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 is stable most of the time."
"The initial setup was easy for me."
"The product is very stable and scalable."
"Notes is a perfectly adequate front end. It's clear and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the UI."
"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."
"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 most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online are spam filtering, 50 GB of email storage, good integration with Outlook, and ease of management."
"It is a reasonable solution."
"The solution is stable."
"One of the important features is the collaboration tool used in Office 365. The security and DLP mechanisms are also quite good."
"When you used to write to someone, you would often begin typing their name and their email address would appear; you would simply click and you would have the correct email address. That has been working for a while, but having the location address appear was a pleasant surprise. It was amazing."
"The reliability factor is high."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Exchange Online is if you have people that are geographically distributed from each other is good. For example, if you have people in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, having an online solution works best because then you can reach the scale of the data centers that are available by Microsoft. Additionally, if you're only going to have two to three people using the solution the cost is a lot less than having an onsite server and licensing. It is highly beneficial in these areas."
"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."
"Notes needs a major upgrade for the UI."
"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."
"We had trouble connecting this solution to the database from Microsoft. We have done it, although it can be easier."
"The interface could be more user-friendly. Some additional trainings could be added as well."
"Some people complain that they want something more modern and jazzy."
"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."
"We'd like to have the ability to recall emails on the web. I'm not sure if that is available yet."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"The mail-blocking feature is not great and could be improved."
"It will be much better if the tool is integrated with OpenAI."
"In terms of machine controls, it was very confusing, and some of the administrative parts will be done from the control, but in online writing mostly we can handle everything."
"In the next release, I would like to see more features added to the security of the solution."
"The solution’s API integrations could be improved."
"I don't like it in general. It sort of has that Microsoft flavor to it, which is just the style they use and the way they color things and lay them out."
HCL Notes is ranked 7th in Email Applications with 13 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online is ranked 2nd in Email Applications with 85 reviews. HCL Notes is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Exchange Online is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HCL Notes writes "Accessible from any device, good support, and works very well for emails, document sharing, and workflows". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Exchange Online writes "Helps reduced IT operations, scalable, and simple setup". HCL Notes is most compared with HCL Verse, Microsoft Exchange, HCL Domino, Google Workspace and Zimbra Collaboration, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online is most compared with Google Workspace, Amazon WorkMail, ProtonMail, Zoho Mail and OpenText GroupWise. See our HCL Notes vs. Microsoft Exchange Online report.
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