A Lotus Notes alternative you can open right now.
If your business still runs on a Domino app, you know the shape of the problem: it was built for you by somebody specific, it keeps working when the network does not, and every replacement you have priced looks like a bigger project than the app it replaces. Bionic Forms is the same shape — documents, forms and views, with a local copy that works offline and syncs when you are back — with flat pricing, unlimited users and no per-seat licensing.
You can check that claim before talking to anybody. The button below opens Microsoft's Northwind sample rebuilt in Bionic Forms — customers, orders and line items already wired together — running in your browser with no signup and nothing to install.
Where this is up to
- Works today, on any OS, in your browser — nothing to install, and there are desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux as well.
- Windows is a download now; there is no iPhone or Android app yet. The Windows app is not code-signed yet, so the first time you run it Windows shows a blue “Windows protected your PC” box — click More info, then Run anyway. Some antivirus flags it for the same reason. A certificate is bought, not written, and we would rather ship the app and say this plainly than keep you waiting on a purchase order. The phone apps get built the moment someone needs them.
- Offline is a desktop feature. The encrypted local database ships with the desktop app — macOS, Linux and Windows. In the browser it is not true: that needs a connection, and I'd rather say so here than have you find out on a train.
- The local database file is encrypted on disk (adiantum full-file encryption), and the key lives in your operating system's own secure store rather than in the file.
- I'm not going to tell you Notes is dead. It isn't — HCL ships Domino 14.5 and supports it. What is true is that the people who maintain these applications are retiring, the apps outlive them, and the per-seat licensing keeps costing you whether anyone touches the app or not. Succession and seat economics are the problems this is built around — not a countdown clock.
- RichText does not come across as RichText. A Notes view exports to CSV, and a rich text field arrives as plain text at best. Anything embedded in it — images, attachments, OLE objects — does not arrive at all. Get those out of Notes separately before you move, and if the worth of your database is in what sits inside its rich text fields, know that before the export, not after. (Said up front on the advice of a Domino developer who has opened more NSFs than we have.)
- Calculation fields do not calculate yet. Collections, fields, links between records, screens and permissions all work. A calculated field can be created and labelled, but nothing works out the value, so it shows as empty with a note saying why. If the worth of your app is mostly in its calculations, that is worth knowing before you move anything rather than after.
What it actually looks like
Both of these are the CRM template as it ships — one click from an empty account, no setup. They are screenshots of the running product, not mockups.
A grouped list view. Fields are changed in the app’s settings, or by asking the assistant, never by accident from the list.
The same app's dashboard. The charts read live from the records above, not a separate reporting tool.
What Notes and Domino actually cost
If you searched for that, you probably wanted a number and got a contact form. HCL does not publish a list price for Domino — you go through a reseller. So here is the closest public figure I can point at, and where it comes from.
Prominic, an authorised HCL reseller, publicly lists HCL Domino Complete Collaboration, 1 Year Term License & S&S, Authorized User (SKU D1VC7LL) at $183.30 per internal user, per year, read there on 29 August 2026. Ten people is about $1,833 a year. Fifty is about $9,165.
Two things have to sit beside that number or it is an advert rather than an answer. It is one reseller's public listing, not HCL's list price, and real contracts move with volume, term and who you are talking to. And CCB buys a whole collaboration suite — mail, calendar, the web and mobile clients — not just the application platform. If Notes is still carrying your email, nothing here replaces that, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What it does replace is the other half: the departmental applications. That is where the per-user shape bites hardest, because the licence is charged for every named user whether the app is opened this year or not.
How the pricing works
Flat, by what you build — never by how many people use it. Add the whole team, the contractor, the client who needs read access: the price doesn't move.
Is HCL Notes and Domino being discontinued?
No, and I would be doing you a disservice to imply it. Most people writing pages like this one want you to believe your platform is dying. Here is what is actually true, with dates you can check.
HCL shipped Domino 14.5 in June 2025, and 14.5.1 — branded HCL Domino 2026 — on 19 March 2026, adding OIDC, AutoUpdate and the Domino IQ AI features. HCL has also confirmed that Extended Support for the old 9.0.x and 10.0.x releases runs to 30 June 2030, twelve years after version 10 shipped. That is not the behaviour of a product being wound up. (Checked 29 August 2026 against HCL’s own release notes and support notices; a vendor’s roadmap changes, so check it yourself before acting on it.)
So if you run a live, maintained Domino estate, you are not who this page is for, and moving it to us would be a bad trade: you would be swapping a supported platform with thirty years of behaviour in it for an early product from a company with no track record.
The case I think is genuinely ours is narrower and much more common. It is the single departmental application — the equipment register, the grant tracker, the case log — built fifteen years ago by somebody who has since left, in a company where nobody knows Notes any more, which is now the only reason a licence keeps being renewed. Not a migration programme. One app that outlived its author, and a renewal nobody can justify.
What happens when the person who built it leaves?
That's the question this is really built around, and it's the one I'd genuinely like to hear your answer to. A departmental Notes app usually outlives the person who wrote it, and what's left behind is often an NSF nobody can safely change.
- The app is described, not codedDoc types, fields, views and workflows are structured definitions — the next person reads what it does instead of reverse-engineering LotusScript and formula language.
- Every change is a revisionRecords keep their history, so "who changed this, and when" has an answer after the original author is gone.
- The data is a database on your machineOffline-first and encrypted, syncing when it can. If my company disappeared tomorrow, the file wouldn't.
- Roles are part of the appPermissions live in the app definition, so handing it over doesn't mean rebuilding who can see what.
Why this looks familiar
Bionic Forms is, deliberately, an attempt at what Notes got right: a document database where the application is the data, forms and views are definitions rather than code, documents carry their own history, and the whole thing works offline and replicates when it can. If you have spent years in Notes, you already understand this product — that is not a coincidence, it is the design brief.
What it does not carry over is the part people actually complain about: no Domino server to run, no designer client, no LotusScript, and no per-seat licensing. Flat price, unlimited users.
What you can do yourself, today
You don't have to wait for anyone to move your data. A Notes view exports to CSV (plain text only: a rich text field loses whatever was embedded in it), and the app reads one directly: drop it in and it builds a collection in one step — a field per column, each typed from what the column actually holds (dates as dates, amounts as numbers, a column of a few repeated values as a dropdown), named from your data, with a meter while the rows go in. Anything it typed wrong you change afterwards in the app's settings.
Where it can't tell, it asks rather than guesses. A column of dates like 03/04/2026 could be
the 3rd of April or March 4th, and the rows it would get wrong look exactly like the rows it would get
right — so it stops and asks you which, and won't import until you answer. If one value anywhere in the
file can't be read, nothing is imported at all: a half-loaded collection is worse than an empty one,
because you can't tell which records made it and running it again duplicates the ones that did.
Import your tables into the same app, one file after another and in any order, and it looks for the links between them — an order that names a customer ID gets connected to its customer, so you can open one and see the other. It only links where both the column name and every value agree; where it isn't sure, it leaves the values alone rather than guessing.
Where it stops: it moves data. It does not convert forms, views, agents or LotusScript — there is no automatic conversion of a Notes design. Rebuilding the design is still a job somebody does by hand; what this gets you is your own records in front of you, in a couple of minutes, while you decide whether the rest is worth doing.
What this is not
It isn't a Notes importer — there's no automatic conversion of an NSF, and I'm not going to pretend a rebuild is a click. It isn't a spreadsheet, it isn't a form builder, and it isn't finished software with a track record. It's an honest early product with a pricing model that doesn't punish you for adding people, and I'm looking for a handful of people willing to tell me where it falls short.
And the question you should be asking a company this small: what happens to your data if we go out of business? You have watched Notes change hands twice, so you know the answer matters. Here it is, with the limit attached.
What it costs to find out
Nothing, and there is no call to book. Open the demo, click around a real database, and decide for yourself. If you want your own, the free tier is genuinely free and takes a minute.
When you are ready to bring your own data, a Notes view exports to CSV and the app reads one directly, working out how your documents relate to each other — that is the part described above, and it is self-serve. You do not need me for it.
Or do not build it yourself. Describe the app your business runs on and we will build a working version of it and show you — no fee, no card, and the app we build fits the free plan. How that works.
Still comparing? I wrote up the Notes and Domino alternatives, including why the end-of-life story is wrong on the facts, what never migrates out of an NSF, and where my own access rules fall short of Notes reader fields.
Bionic Forms is built by Matt Bidwell (Bionics LLC). If something here reads as overclaiming, tell me and I'll fix the page — that's a promise I can actually keep at this stage. Either way you can reach me at matt@bidwellhq.com.