Lotus Notes and WikiSuite have some similarities. This page is to explain the differences and rationale of choices. You likely will be interested in the other alternatives to WikiSuite. Since Lotus Notes was later renamed IBM Notes, please see: WikiSuite vs IBM

Lotus Notes is interesting technology, and a little hard to explain.

Lotus Notes is an application suite that includes the following components:

  • e-mail
  • calendaring and scheduling
  • address book
  • database
  • web server
  • programming.

Unlike other application suites (like Microsoft Office) that split these pieces of functionality into separate products (like Outlook, Access, Front Page, etc.), Lotus Notes presents all of these components using a single front-end.

Source: https://www.nsftools.com/misc/WhatIsNotes.htm

Notes was Salesforce before Salesforce. It was Dropbox before Dropbox. It was SharePoint before SharePoint. It was Atlassian before Atlassian. It was Zendesk before Zendesk. It was ServiceNow before ServiceNow. It was Workday before Workday. In some implementations, it was even Github before Github.

It had web-like forms before there was a web, server apps before there were much in the way of servers, and shared distributed databases before such things had even been heard of by most IT folk. Plus, it had an intrinsic, built-in, automatic security level that protected data enterprise wide with a deep level of granularity.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/alas-poor-lotusibm-notes-we-knew-ye-well/

Similarities

  • Both are solutions which offer features for the enterprise
  • WikiSuite shares the desire to integrate the mail stack with the capacity to easily create databases, and add automation.

Differences

  • IBM Notes / Lotus Notes is proprietary software, whereas WikiSuite is Free/Libre/Open Source
  • WikiSuite offers way more features.
  • As of 2019-06, WikiSuite's email capabilities are very far behind, and we are working on them via JMAP.

Related links

Other alternatives