Coda by Grammarly vs. HCL Notes

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Coda by Grammarly
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Coda, acquired by Grammarly in early 2025, is a template-based document creation and collaboration solution, supporting a variety of use cases.
$0
per month
HCL Notes
Score 3.5 out of 10
N/A
Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.N/A
Pricing
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Editions & Modules
Free
$0.00
per month
Pro
$10.00
per month per doc maker; unlimited editors (paid annually)
Team
$30.00
per month per doc maker; unlimited editors (paid annually)
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsWith Coda, you only pay for Doc Makers. Often one person creates a doc, others edit it, and some simply observe from afar. Instead of charging for everyone, we only charge for the people who create docs. Interested in enterprise pricing? Visit coda.io/enterprise
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Features
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Coda by Grammarly
-
Ratings
HCL Notes
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
Task Management00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Search00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Visual planning tools00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Coda by Grammarly
-
Ratings
HCL Notes
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Chat00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Notifications00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Discussions00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Surveys00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Coda by Grammarly
-
Ratings
HCL Notes
7.6
Ratings
3% below category average
Versioning00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Video files00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Device sync00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Small Businesses
Stackby
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Stackby
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
1.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Coda by GrammarlyHCL Notes
Likelihood to Recommend
Coda is great to build a place for your users to go to and see information. It is easy to navigate through and the variety of content creation is great. However, it is not always easy to create what you want and there is a lot of playing around and learning. Coda also sometimes misses some functionality which is expected. For example, downloading a list of users that have access to the platform. Being able to send push notifications when a new page has been created etc. Overall it is a good tool to use just be prepared to invest time!
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I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
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Pros
  • One source of truth: It's incredibly easy to keep everything organized and easy to find.
  • Being able to show different views of the same information throughout your doc makes it really easy to customize the information.
  • In general, I love the "coding" aspect of it, and being able to do advanced functions has helped us create some really interesting automation and streamline our process.
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  • Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
  • Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
  • Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
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Cons
  • "Barrier of entry" is a little high for those who do not have any database experience.
  • More out-of-the-box integrations with other applications would be nice.
  • Performance for very heavy loaded/traffic documents could be improved.
  • Scalability for enterprise level customers and doc loads could be improved.
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  • The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
  • We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
  • There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
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Likelihood to Renew
Coda is definitely something that has been proven to drive positive impact in our organization. We have many divisions that can benefit from this that we have yet to explore. It would definitely be worth renewing.
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Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
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Usability
There is a little bit of a learning curve on where to point and click to add in different elements and make edits. But it is still very manageable once you get the hang of it. I do still have some issues with some of my connected pages updating each other when I don't want them to sync. So I'll end up editing one page, and it will make the same edits on another page.
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Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
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Reliability and Availability
So far in the past year, we haven't had situations that Coda has gone down for us which is great.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
We haven't done any integrations - the initial part of our experience we found that for docs with complex formulas, the page tends to load slowly but in recent months, Coda has improved and optimized the loading times in general and we generally don't find any problems in terms of speed anymore.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Mainly due to timezone differences. I think Coda's support in general is well implemented and executed. They know their stuff and are helpful. But since I'm not in the same timezone, solution rates are slower for me, and that's not something I prefer. I work in customer service, too, and more often than not, time is important. Shortening the solution time would be a much greater experience.
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I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
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Implementation Rating
I'm relatively inexperienced but this experience is meaningful. It would have been nice to have some guidance from Coda so that we understood more on Coda's purpose and potential.
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Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
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Alternatives Considered
For general use cases, Google Docs or Airtable are often a better starting place. But if things get complex or you're constantly pairing the two together, consider graduating to Coda to save yourself long-term headaches. Notion is great for personal use, but the powerful automation and collaboration features in Coda make it a better fit for teams in my experience so far.
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I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
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Scalability
I think scalability is definitely good here since it's based on number of doc makers. Implementation into each dept becomes simpler. That being said, due to the nature of our work, we find it easier that we have a "super user" and then a team of other doc makers. This would make the doc creation and management more efficient.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Increased insight for all stakeholders involved--both in terms of overview and details
  • Better grip on issues and escalations--reduced friction, confusion, and higher clarity on status, next actions, and ownership.
  • Reduced time required by those who need to maintain all information. Record (a detail) once and use multiple times.
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  • ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
  • Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
  • Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
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ScreenShots

Coda by Grammarly Screenshots

Screenshot of One unified surface means ideas aren’t limited to a file type. A project doesn’t have to be split across tabs of documents, spreadsheets, and apps.Screenshot of Packs are a version of integrations or plug-ins. They connect the  doc to the apps in use every day, so as to pull live data in or push updates out automatically.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop templates provide a quick-start shortcut to commonly used templates like Upvote/Downvote, To-Do List, and Team Sentiment Tracker.Screenshot of Slice, dice, and chop data using Views. A View is a mirror of data that can be tailored to unique needs, all while staying connected to the source.Screenshot of When accessing the doc from a mobile device, it should feel like an app. Doc pages become tabs, buttons become swipe actions and doc notifications become push notifications.Screenshot of The Doc Gallery contains docs self-published by the Coda community. These published docs have a webpage-like interface and have varying levels of interactivity like view, play or edit. Find and share tools, templates, tiny apps, interactive handbooks, and anything else that can be built in Coda.