Theme 1: Legacy lock‑in makes migration costly and slow
Many commenters note that Lotus Notes stayed in use long after it was disliked because of deep‑built custom applications and the effort required to replace them.
- “I used Lotus Notes until 2022… I am almost certain they're still using it, because they weren't close to migrating off the last few use cases.” – rm445
- “I was at a big European company that was also somehow still on Lotus Notes in 2015… Moving back to Outlook after my 5 years there was a breath of fresh air.” – steveBK123
- “Once you're locked in… it's a slog to get off. Meanwhile you still pay the full licence costs whether you have one internal app or a hundred.” – cube00
- “Our company has now migrated its Lotus applications to web applications written in Java, but it took us quite a few years.” – andrea76
Theme 2: Powerful, flexible capabilities hidden behind a clunky UI
While the interface is often called outdated, users praise the platform’s ability to expose all document data, build custom forms quickly, and serve as an all‑in‑one tool.
- “Lotus Notes allows you to right‑click on a 'document' and see absolutely all data attached to it… This can be immensely useful.” – p2detar
- “Yes, the UI was clunky, but it was quick… The mail client was never a barrier between you and your emails.” – orthoxerox
- “Lotus Notes was underrated… We used it as a combo Helpdesk ticketing, email, wiki/doc tool and it worked so well.” – VagabundoP
Theme 3: Frustration with incessant, unnecessary UI changes
Several participants compare Lotus Notes’ fate to modern products (Outlook, Apple apps) that keep altering the user experience despite core functionality being “solved.”
- “Microsoft has spent the last decade 'upgrading' their product to be a similarly painful experience… pushing webview 'new Outlook' which isn't feature complete.” – cube00
- “This goes to my same complaint re: some Apple products… Keep upgrading the backends… but you do not need to change the UX annually. We're done. Just stop.” – steveBK123
- “It's fine, email / photos app / texting apps are solved problems.” – steveBK123 (continuation)