Benefits of Lotus Notes over Exchange

Speaking big picture, what are the benefits of Lotus Notes over exchange. Is exchange meant for smaller companies who don't want to spend a lot of time maintaining their systems... but not as scalable? Is lotus notes more secure?

Solution 1:

Lotus Domino and Exchange are completely different products.

What do you want? Do you only want email/calendaring? If so, I would avoid Domino.

Domino provides a 'database infrastructure' of sorts. Databases can be webpages, email, calendar info, address books, CRM systems, configuration pages, everything. It's a way of life, not an email platform.

Email using the Notes client is simply painful.

If you're simply looking for an email system, go with something else.

Why single out these two products? Do you happen to be looking for simply an email/calendaring solution compatible with BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server)? If so, I'd suggest considering either Zimbra or Exchange.

Solution 2:

Domino/Notes is a world of pain, hurt, suffering, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. Period, end of story.

...okay, now that I got that off of my chest, I'll continue :)

Speaking from the experience of maintaining Domino environments at two different mid-sized companies, the only think that Domino has going for it is a superior system for deploying multi-user database apps. Beyond that, it has nothing on exchange in my opinion.