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HCL Sametime vs Office 365 comparison

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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 Sametime
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Meetings (25th)
Office 365
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. HCL Sametime is designed for Virtual Meetings and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Office 365, on the other hand, focuses on Content Collaboration Platforms, holds 7.2% mindshare, down 9.6% since last year.
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HCL Sametime1.5%
Zoom Workplace Business5.9%
Webex5.1%
Other87.5%
Virtual Meetings
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3657.2%
Box - Intelligent Content Management8.1%
Google Workspace7.1%
Other77.6%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

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…
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed how our teams work and Copilot now drives faster daily decisions
The interface for the security and compliance center could be simplified. It changes frequently, which can make it somewhat difficult for admins to stay up-to-date on where specific settings are located. The compliance center modification or improvement of Office 365 needs to be introduced. The rest of the features feel acceptable to me. The reason it is not a ten is because of the complexity of managing the vast array of admin settings, which requires a specialized IT team. Even though it meets industry standards for decent security compliance such as SOC and HIPAA, the complexity of managing the admin settings needs to improve.

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."
"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."
"Audio and video calls provide faster communication than chat."
"The security was quite good."
"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."
"The return on investment with Office 365 is quite good, especially with the transcription solution embedded in the product."
"I can recommend Office 365 to people because it allows them to concentrate on their core job while Microsoft handles any problems from the cloud."
"Quarantine email alerts to users to allow the email to their inbox (tricky but handy) - tricky if one doesn't have third-party email security, handy if one has got good third party email security)."
"Office 365 is a stable product, and I find it very useful for collaboration, especially when I use Excel to elaborate data that I later use with Power BI."
"It's very stable."
"The most valuable and useful tool for us is Teams because we can make video calls and share data in a simple way."
"The features of Office 365 that have significantly enhanced my workflow productivity include Excel, which is a very good product that helps assist me with my work."
"Office 365 helps me do my job, I'm very happy with the products."
 

Cons

"Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted."
"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 interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP."
"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."
"Office 365 is not cheap for individual users."
"I would rate Microsoft support for this product as eight out of ten. I give it this rating because the protocol is very much the same even when you have an emergency, and you don't have the specific expertise at the first call."
"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."
"Office 365 should improve data synchronization, especially when data is accessed through the web interface and SharePoint portal."
"There is no direct return on investment as IT is a cost center."
"Performance-wise, Office 365 needs a lot of bandwidth. The problem is, the solution requires very high bandwidth and internet usage. Meaning, the desktop application consumes a lot of internet data. Sometimes, when the connection is slow, it won't work and it won't load. This is an area for improvement for Office 365."
"I started working a lot on Microsoft Teams and I find it a bit vast."
"As soon as I leave the school though, I'll lose access to Office 365, most of the work I've saved on the system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Office 365 is that it is moderate.
What needs improvement with Office 365?
Office 365 could be improved or enhanced in some ways. It would be better if it were more simple to find the points, or sometimes there are so many possible configurations that it makes you confuse...
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
Teams and Outlook are important for us, and Teams is central to our operations. I utilize Power Automate for streamlining repetitive tasks in our organization, but not for large tasks. For tasks su...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime
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

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
Me & the Bees Lemonade
Find out what your peers are saying about Zoom Video Communications, TeamViewer, Microsoft and others in Virtual Meetings. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.