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HCL Domino Ideas Portal

Welcome to the #dominoforever Product Ideas Forum! The place where you can submit product ideas and enhancement request. We encourage you to participate by voting on, commenting on, and creating new ideas. All new ideas will be evaluated by HCL Product Management & Engineering teams, and the next steps will be communicated. While not all submitted ideas will be executed upon, community feedback will play a key role in influencing which ideas are and when they will be implemented.

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658 VOTE
Status Assessment
Workspace Domino
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 31, 2018

Make Notes/Domino free for companies with under 10 or 20 or even 50 users

with no support by default, but with the option to purchase support & maintenance. Only IBM has the numbers to gauge the cost of this but it has to be a fraction of yearly income from Notes. However it would have the potential to:
- Entice more customers/people into the Notes eco system
- Grow the number of people who understand admin and app dev in Notes
(a larger no of smaller customers will likely yield more of these people, who become DIY'ers due to cost)
- These people become available to be hired by larger customers, who face a shortage of supply
- Retain/grow business partners, who can offer run your business suites of apps and affordable bespoke apps.

  • Attach files
  • Guest
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    Mar 14, 2024

    I would appreciate this especially for Non-Profit-Organizations. To enable them to have a Business Stable and Secure Platform to host there needs.


  • Guest
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    Oct 3, 2023

    Recently watched a webinar on the new licensing model. Doesn't seem to be part of it. Still no news?

  • Guest
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    Feb 2, 2023

    Support shouldn’t be free but small business companies below 10 could be free without support. Or that the license is free if they buy the setup from a business partner that needs to register the company and monitor number of users.

  • Guest
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    Feb 1, 2023

    Suggest free for under 10 , HCL also need income to support development team of Notes/Domino.


  • Guest
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    Jan 18, 2023

    Just put a ulimit on the server to nerf performance, so you don't have to worry about legit companies abusing this.


    We have to get the software and clients in the hands of developers, students, and hobbyists.

  • Guest
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    Feb 21, 2022

    Remember, the Japanese in venturing into the luxury automobile market segment, sold Lexus vehicles at a loss for five years, just to create market share for their new vehicles. Why? Toyota knew well that when a competitor loses market share, it is very difficult to reacquire it. From that wisdom, they took a significant slice of the revenue pie to became a major player.


    HCL is looking to recapture the SMB market squandered by a previous owner's mismanagement--respectfully. Domino-I-173 helps move HCL in that direction in a major way. Thank you for the idea.

  • Guest
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    Jan 25, 2022

    For me this suggestion belongs for very, very small companies and more common to small developer teams that are sometimes very few users only. These developer teams work for bigger companies anyway and thus they can legally use a server.

  • Guest
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    Oct 28, 2021

    This was first posted July 2018. It is marked as "Likely to implement". It's been over 3 years. If you're serious about getting companies to buy into your product who currently don't use it, this is the way to do it. Get them hooked while they're small. If they grow and become successful, you will have the inside track on keeping them as a paid customer and they will be your best advocates to sell you to other people. Panagenda already does this with MarvelClient. Do it with Domino. But don't go more than 10 or so licenses. This is called a sales funnel. Want to understand this highly successful strategy? Read the book "DOTCOM Secrets" by Russell Brunson. Or just keep doing what you've always done, but don't expect different results.

    -David Hablewitz

  • Guest
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    Jul 12, 2021

    This request is open for about 3 years. Status "Likely to implement".

    Is anyone really so naive to believe that HCL will offer a small (maybe 5-100) user verion for free?


  • Guest
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    Sep 2, 2020

    Great Idea, We in the open source world, atleast provide free licenses for Lotus notes lovers to continue to work on their free time and build products and productive apps

  • Guest
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    Jul 21, 2020

    I agree, or at the very least a very cheap option under £30 per year per use for up to 50 or so users. The service must be full enterprise service notes-client and http, with e-mail, traveler, custom apps and clustering.

    I think Ad-ons such as Sametime, connections, LDAP/single sign-on etc could be charged a premium

  • Guest
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    Jun 19, 2020

    Gotta be honest. I don't think this is a good idea but I would support much lower maintenance costs for Small businesses. Can't give stuff away and still be in business.

  • Guest
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    Apr 16, 2020

    This is the best idea i have ever heard. Amazing . Thanks

  • Guest
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    Jun 3, 2019

    Yes, a free community edition much like Microsoft does with Visual studio would be very well received.

  • Guest
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    May 2, 2019

    The applications with the most market share will always be the winners in the end.  Make it cheep and get the market share then figure out how you can make money on add ons.  Total cost of ownership is a huge factor in decision making.  It would be good to consider making the base application free and then you can always make more money on add ons the same way games are making so much money on skins and in game purchases.

  • Guest
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    Mar 21, 2019

    That is supper idea.   why no one thought about this before.  

  • Guest
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    Feb 6, 2019

    The domino express license is already quiet generous and the ROI for express license users is already high IF they implement the server correctly and make use of the templates. Reducing the license cost might be an option, but the trick is in improving the overall UI and functionality. If HCL/IBM do go this route, then a cloud only based version would be more appropriate.

  • Guest
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    Dec 21, 2018

    Free is not an option, it can be free for 1 year. If company see value , they will stay and will pay

  • Guest
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    Oct 5, 2018

    I totally agree.  Only way to be back on the market is to create a good base of users / customers, that can check how powerful is and how easily can add value to their business, without having to buy an additional server for database,  add LDAP,  security,  apps engine, etc......    Customer prefers to install MongoDB Community Edition, a free LDAP Server, and a Node.js engine because they have not fees, and is easy to do (just a click away).  If you give them all of that free,  for small business (less than 100 users), they base of people knowning domino will increase,   and we will be able to introduce our products on other areas later on.

  • Guest
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    Sep 6, 2018

    Even if you have to pay for it at CA$219 up front per user license and the 20% support/year costs, it is a LOT less than a set of MS Office 365 / MS SharePoint / Exchange enterprise licenses plus all the hardware you need, plus Domino runs on RHEL very happily - don't need Windows servers...and Red Hat keeps server software up to date almost painlessly (not to mention Linux just keeps on running...!)

  • Load older comments
4 MERGED

Make a version of Domino Designer Community Edition available

Merged
Like the Visual Studio Community, IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, and many other popular IDEs, HCL should make a free version of the Domino Designer IDE available to make it better known, be able to be used in classroom learning environments, for...
almost 2 years ago in Domino 0 Assessment
62 MERGED

Think Big : Provide 50 Lotus Client License free

Merged
Provide 50 Lotus Client License free to all old Lotus Domino customers who have been not renewed their contract license. IBM/Partner/HCL employee contact to customer(Old Lotus Domino) with handshaking meeting and tell us about new Lotus Domino...
about 5 years ago in Domino 2 Assessment
13 MERGED

Free Domino, Designer and Notes for developer community

Merged
As like Domino Community Server and Designer once there were,I hope free Domino Server, Desginer and Notes (Nomad, Verse too) for personal developer and student. Not Trial edition for client (company) evaluation, but for personal developer and stu...
over 2 years ago in Domino 2 Assessment
16 MERGED

Relelase a developer edition of domino products.

Merged
Release a free or low cost developer edition with limited feature can revitalize a the third party developer ecosystem.
almost 4 years ago in Domino 0 Assessment
225 MERGED

Offer Notes & Domino free license for personal usage, education and non-profit organisations ...

Merged
...to spread the usage of Notes/Domino and get new, younger peoples "infected" by Notes/Domino ;-) This should be accompanied by additional marketing activities; introduce Notes/Domino and the benefits of RAD at high schools ! free access to trai...
over 5 years ago in Domino 8 Assessment
7 MERGED

To increase use Domino and Notes should be free issued to schools and with a substantial students discount for universities..

Merged
By the time a child is entering the work environment in programming they have been trained on free Microsoft and freeware programs. Domnio is a strange phenonom to them by then. If it is in all schools the teachers will soon see the advantage - wi...
over 2 years ago in Domino 0 Assessment
3 MERGED

Get Notes and Domino back in the market

Merged
In order to bring Domino and Notes back in the market HCL should give the licenses out for free to any small business (maybe up to 10 employess), schools, universities and any non profit organisation that wishes to use it. That would be the on...
about 1 month ago in Domino / General 1 Assessment