# Lotus Notes Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/lotus-notes/ 20 people recommended Lotus Notes in Hacker News comments, 27 had mixed feelings and 60 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 12 months, in 9 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. 11 of the 20 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch”. **Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended: critics find the client UI clunky and the email weak; those who recommend it see it as a fast, document-oriented rapid app platform with strong replication, ahead of its time. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Clunky client UI and dated design (4 comments in the sample): "neat architecture let down by client UI that did not meet the expectations of users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437536)) "It was great until everyone moved to the web, and then it got too clunky." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437443)) "it's literally the only good thing about Lotus Notes, which was the most archaic and primitive piece of commercial GUI software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47472482)) - Weak standard email support (3 comments in the sample): "in the list of terrible applications I'm including the standard email support, which was a royal PITA" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628689)) "Going SMTP (or even x.400)-native from the start might have been a better choice in the long run" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49626127)) "Notes Email was just another app, it didn’t have some of the specific polish that even Outlook had." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439701)) - Costly licences and heavy infrastructure (3 comments in the sample): "Meanwhile you still pay the full licence costs whether you have one custom app or a hundred." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624507)) "very featureful and cool but the amount of support and hardware required was quite high" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49627590)) "Notes clocking the lines, keeping dial on demand open and requiering the implementation of WAN accelarators" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723384)) - Replication failures and duplicated databases (2 comments in the sample): "it is possible for databases to be copied, mixed and matched and deployed somewhere else resulting i a pile of duplicated databases without structure" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49626493)) "Then there were those "replication failures", sometimes trivial to fix, sometimes completely impossible to debug." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49627952)) ## Why people recommend it - Fast app development for small teams (4 comments in the sample): "Notes’ core data model was really solid. As a rapid internal app dev platform it was ahead of its time in many ways." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49633113)) "It was clunky but also kind or remarkable that a very small team could develop custom apps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437677)) "It was SO fast to write things in Lotus Notes, that is crazy. I did it for 10 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445441)) - Solid document and replication data model (3 comments in the sample): "Notes turned up as a deeply sophisticated Windows application, a no-code development environment, document oriented, replicated distributed shared data system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435319)) "It is still ahead of its time when it comes to having a document database that supports merging" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322894)) "Lotus Notes actually had the design and data stored independent of one another" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49718735)) - Offline-first and easy backups (2 comments in the sample): "it was impressive how reasonably solid it's ability was to be offline-first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082143)) "I loved Notes for the simplicity of dealing with backups, to tape and over the VPN." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628477)) - Full-text search and indexing (2 comments in the sample): "It will beats outlook as a mail client in a lot of ways, such as having actual usable full text search." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320857)) "Lotus Notes had 3 different ways to look for info, the most powerfull one being indexing the database." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444892)) ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Lotus Notes", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lotus-notes/ (20 recommend, 27 mixed, 60 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 3 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.