8x8 Work vs. HCL Sametime

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
8x8 Work
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
8x8 Work is a collaboration hub for phone, video, and messaging. It brings secure unified communication and collaboration experiences to every employee.
$24
per month
HCL Sametime
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
HCL Sametime (formerly IBM Lotus Sametime, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in 2018) is an enterprise-level unified communications and VoIP platform. It includes features such as instant messaging, web conferencing, voice and video integration, telephony capabilities, and presence information.N/A
Pricing
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.7
342 Ratings
6% above category average
HCL Sametime
8.4
7 Ratings
2% above category average
Hosted PBX8.3194 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)10.049 Ratings9.02 Ratings
User templates8.3213 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Call reports8.3272 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Directory of employee names8.7307 Ratings8.07 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.5
389 Ratings
1% above category average
HCL Sametime
8.0
8 Ratings
5% below category average
Answering rules8.8348 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Call recording8.7300 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Call park8.8279 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Call screening7.5264 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Message alerts8.7336 Ratings8.06 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.7
283 Ratings
5% above category average
HCL Sametime
8.0
6 Ratings
3% below category average
Video conferencing8.6180 Ratings8.06 Ratings
Audio conferencing8.6245 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Video screen sharing9.0126 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Instant messaging8.8181 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
9.0
338 Ratings
8% above category average
HCL Sametime
8.0
8 Ratings
4% below category average
Mobile app for iOS8.9274 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Mobile app for Android9.1223 Ratings8.07 Ratings
Best Alternatives
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(408 ratings)
7.0
(10 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(24 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(54 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.2
(9 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(9 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(139 ratings)
8.3
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.2
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(6 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(9 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.8
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
8x8 WorkHCL Sametime
Likelihood to Recommend
8x8, Inc.
8x8 is well suited for our small private practice. Even though we are close to each other, it makes managing and transferring calls effortless. Concurrent calls are also a strong suit. Even if two people are logged into the same user account, being able to answer two lines at the same time and flip between devices is a great feature to have.
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HCL Technologies
Sametime is well suited for very quick conversations, where you know the person is an active Sametime user. It also serves as an easy way to reach out to someone you may not know when looking for an answer to a quick question, as they are likely to be a Sametime user. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to use Sametime for Audio or Video chat. The quality and reliability are horrendous.
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Pros
8x8, Inc.
  • Automatically routes incoming calls to the available agent with the appropriate skills, ensuring that customers are served promptly.
  • Integrates with email systems to provide a unified view of customer interactions.
  • Allows sales representatives to share their screens with customers and prospects, demonstrating products and services effectively.
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HCL Technologies
  • Sametime's web-based interfaces are "zero load", requiring no plug-ins to be installed to join a meeting, launch a meeting, or use chat in a browser. A plugin is required only if you want to share your screen.
  • Integration with IBM Notes is very tight. Sametime's chat status can change according to your Notes calendar. You can easily see if someone who just emailed you is available to chat. Your chat History is right inside Notes as well.
  • IBM's mobile apps are top notch. We automated the apps for our users thanks to IBM's work with third party MDMs. This made it very simple for us to deploy the Sametime mobile apps -- Chat and Meetings -- and get new capabilities such as Audio & Video mobilized quickly.
  • No down time, ever. The rock solid WebSphere back-end of Sametime means the environment is always up. Period.
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Cons
8x8, Inc.
  • 8x8's emails with billing info or auto-payments does not attach a pdf copy of the invoice for reference; you have to log in to your dashboard and navigate through several links to obtain a copy of your invoice, which is frankly just inconvenient.
  • While 8x8 is very feature rich, a lot of it appears to be oriented towards call centers and therefore may not be required or useful for small offices (like ours).
  • While 8x8 is very responsive to issues affecting its system, the frequent update alerts can become distracting.
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HCL Technologies
  • Not convenient for a large group meeting.
  • Very basic tool for internal communication only not available for third party communication
  • Very basic and limited mobile app features.
  • High speed connection is needed to connect to Sametime
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Likelihood to Renew
8x8, Inc.
All our employees love this product. No one has ever had an issue, whether it be the phone or fax. Great during the winter when employees have to work from home because of the snow. Never had an issue with the phone app. Highly recommend this product
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HCL Technologies
Sametime is now an embedded experience for our users. They know it, they like it, they use it, and they expect it to be wherever they are. Because it is pretty easy to use and NEVER goes down, users know they can rely on it and won't be frustrated by it. Sametime is right up with there with Microsoft Office in terms of user adoption and appreciation.
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Usability
8x8, Inc.
Again for a large call center with many needs, and full time people to manage this may be a good system, but for a small business needing a phone system in my opinion it is overly complicated and difficult to manage without multiple calls on support.
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HCL Technologies
Just about everything works the way you expect it would and it's relatively easy for users to figure out. Sametime was one of those things that we started with only a few people as a "test" and before the test period was done we discovered a few hundred people had figured out how to log in and most got it working all on their own. Many of our users want to use Sametime and do so regularly; we do not have to create policies enforcing its usage. Users find it practical to use Sametime to do things like chat, transfer files, share their screen, and so forth.
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Reliability and Availability
8x8, Inc.
As mentioned before, we have not had an outage with the phone system per say, There was an issue with the call center where we did have an outage, but it was quickly and promplty handled by 8x8 support, they got us up and going again within 24 hours. The 8x8 hard phone and softphone side of things have been rock solid, I couldn't ask for anything more seeing we are in health care and it's exactly what we were looking for. When and if there is an issue 99% of the time it's user error
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HCL Technologies
Typically if Sametime is not available, it's because Windows Updates were done on the servers and they were not rebooted. However, that's not a problem with Sametime -- in fact, if you have Linux you could probably run Sametime for years without any hiccups whatsoever. We have no internal Linux expertise.
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Performance
8x8, Inc.
None of the features that are available slow down the application. The reports (even the ones with hundreds of records) complete very quickly and the web interface as well as the mobile application never struggle to load or complete a task. The analytics will sometimes take some time to reflect the online status of users but it is to be expected due to connection speeds.
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HCL Technologies
Generally very good. Occasionally AV or screen-sharing will stutter and every now and then I hear of it dropping out altogether, but in all cases it was easy to re-establish
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Support Rating
8x8, Inc.
8x8 support can be phenomenal. After getting in touch with a support member, all of my problems are either solved right away or throughout a small time frame, fine-tuned to my circumstance/issue. Whether they are following up via phone call or email, I have full confidence and faith that any matter will be resolved. Trying to contact the support team is where things get a bit tricky. Raising an issue in the chat can be taxing as we are mostly referred to the general FAQ section of the site. Although it may be helpful to some, it does nothing for those of us that have very specific problems. If each account holder can receive access to a customer service line that differs from non-member account holders, I think we'd have a higher level of trust and a lower level of frustration.
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HCL Technologies
I have not needed to use the Sametime support team. Our local support team was able to configure it for me.
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In-Person Training
8x8, Inc.
The person giving the training was very engaged, He also listened and answered all the questions. He created a video for our company while he was training in case we needed to reference it again in the future. The questions he could not answer were answered within 24 hours via an email to the IT support staff here so we could share the answers with the rest of the group
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HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Online Training
8x8, Inc.
online (video) training is good. No issues.
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HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
8x8, Inc.
The implementation of 8x8 X was rather smooth. We had training prior to getting the system. The IT company did a good job on the training. The whole system is wonderful. Saves me so much time with the faxing, as i can just let it go by itself and not have to make sure pages don't get skipped, as with a regular fax machine.
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HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
8x8, Inc.
Hands down 8x8 is superior to the Spectrum Ring Central that we had tried. Interestingly, they supplied the same phone hardware but were unable to suggest an adapter for wifi for the phones. Cost wise very similar but customer experience very different. Above all else, the quality of customer service has made all the difference
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HCL Technologies
We use Jabber globally in our company and Symphony (no relevant app in able list) in some of the teams as well. All these are instant messenger tools, but Sametime is the easiest one to be used and its chat history is easy to be searched. Sametime can be used to contact almost all internal staff as it’s included in default computer package. Symphony is used to chat with front end business while Jabber is used for call.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8x8, Inc.
At this time, we’re very happy with the pricing model that we have worked out and they have provided for us. Just be sure to do your homework, and use your comparisons to work out your cost with 8x8. They will be very straightforward with you on what they can
adjust for you.
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HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Scalability
8x8, Inc.
8x8 100% suits Business needs to connect with from anywhere and everywhere. The Softphone features is very light and very easy to use also very reliable with Zero Downtime. Can also be set personal Voicemail over softphone at anytime and logs everything is very easy to find.
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HCL Technologies
Sametime is rock solid. It runs on WebSphere, DB2 and other related IBM technologies. This does mean the back-end is highly complex and very difficult to learn and get comfortable with, however.
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Professional Services
8x8, Inc.
PS had all the users etc. set up by our go-live date. All hard phones were activated and when we received them, all we had to do was set them up and punch in the activation code to activate them.
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HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
8x8, Inc.
  • It's been amazing. We used to have so many complaints about call quality, phone calls cutting in and out, tons of calls where it was dead air, dropped calls etc. Since switching back to 8x8 we have not had one complaint, which is great for business! Being able to communicate with our clients is the only way for us to have a positive ROI!
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HCL Technologies
  • Sametime keeps many of our team members in contact throughout the day which leads to increased productivity which makes everyone happy.
  • We use the team chat room feature every day. This allows a team to stay focused on the task without any extra messages that are not on topic.
  • The split between IBM Sametime, Slack and Google Hangouts has caused some issues when team members are not checking for messages on a certain app.
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ScreenShots