If you have accepted that your business needs to move off Lotus Notes or HCL Domino, the next question is not "how do we do it" but "which route makes sense for us." This page is the decision hub for exactly that. It lays out your three realistic options, what each typically costs, how long each takes, and where each one tends to go wrong, so you can walk into a provider conversation already knowing what you are looking for and what questions to ask.
Where our complete migration guide explains the migration process itself in depth, this page is about choosing the right path before you commit a budget or a timeline. Get this decision right and the rest of the project becomes far more predictable. Get it wrong and you can end up paying twice, once for a route that does not fit and again to put it right.
Before comparing routes, it helps to be clear about the scope, because it drives everything that follows. A Lotus Notes to Office 365 migration is rarely just email. Most Domino estates contain several distinct things:
Email is usually the simplest element. Archives and custom applications are where the real effort, cost, and risk live. Any route you choose has to account for all four, and the biggest mistake businesses make is scoping the project as a mail move and then discovering the rest halfway through.
There are three routes to a Lotus Notes to Office 365 migration. They differ less in the underlying technology and more in who carries the work and, crucially, who is left holding the new environment once the project ends.
Your internal team runs the migration using native or third-party tools.
You bring in a specialist to move the data, then they hand it back to you.
A managed IT partner handles the migration and then keeps running the environment.
The honest summary is this. DIY can reduce upfront cost but shifts the load and the risk onto your own team. A specialist moves the data cleanly but may leave once the project ends. A managed migration gives you both the move and the support model needed to actually run the new environment well. Which is right depends on your internal capacity, your appetite for risk, and how much you value predictability over the lowest possible sticker price.
A few practical questions usually make the decision clear:
Not sure which route fits? Contact Cortavo to scope your options, costs, and timeline.
Nobody can quote a Lotus Notes migration accurately without knowing your environment, and you should be wary of anyone who tries before asking questions. What you can do is size it in bands. Cost scales with a consistent set of drivers:
As a rough guide, projects tend to fall into one of three bands:
Across all three, custom applications and day-two support are almost always the largest and most variable parts of the budget, not the email itself. If a quote treats the whole project as a simple per-mailbox mail move, that is a warning sign that the applications and archives have not been properly considered. A scoped assessment turns these bands into a real number for your specific business.
Regardless of the route you choose, a sound migration follows the same practical sequence: assess, plan, pilot, cut over, drive adoption, and operate. Skipping or rushing any of these stages is where projects come unstuck.
The four things that stretch a timeline most are the number of custom applications, the state of your data, your compliance and archive requirements, and how much change your staff can absorb at once. You can migrate to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and the destination genuinely matters for how your team will work day to day. But the decision that shapes the long-term outcome, more than platform or route, is who manages the environment on day two.
This page is the starting point for the wider Lotus Notes and Domino cluster. Depending on where you are in your thinking, read on:
If you would rather talk it through than read further, contact Cortavo and we will help you pick the right route for your business, your budget, and your timeline.
There is no single price, because cost scales with the number of users and mailboxes, the volume of archives, how many custom applications need rebuilding, the amount of training required, and whether you want ongoing support afterwards. Email migration is the smallest part. Custom applications and day-two management are the larger, more variable costs. The most reliable way to get a real figure is a scoped assessment that maps your specific environment against these drivers, rather than a per-mailbox estimate that ignores everything sitting behind the inbox.
A basic, mail-only move can take a few weeks. A typical SMB migration runs about eight to twelve weeks end to end, and application-heavy environments can take several months because applications are rebuilt on a parallel track. The main timeline drivers are the number of custom applications, data cleanliness, compliance requirements, and how much change your staff can absorb. Running a pilot early gives you a much more reliable estimate for the full project than any upfront guess.
Yes. Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are valid destinations, and the same assessment, planning, and coexistence logic applies to either. The right choice depends on how your team works, which tools you already use, your security needs, and how your custom applications will be replaced. A partner who supports both platforms can recommend based on genuine fit rather than on whichever product they happen to sell, which is worth looking for when you choose who to work with.
Each application should be assessed and placed into one of three buckets. Retire it if it is no longer needed, replace it with a modern tool if a standard product now does the job, or rebuild it if it supports a critical process and cannot be replaced safely. This is usually the hardest and most underestimated part of the project, because the applications are more entangled than email and often have no clear owner. Scoping them early is what keeps the overall timeline and budget honest, and it is the work that lets you finally switch off the old servers.
It depends on your exact version. Some newer releases remain supported while several older versions have already passed their support dates. Either way, "supported" is not the same as "safe to leave alone," because the pool of expertise keeps shrinking and unsupported software is harder to defend on security and insurance reviews. Confirming your version is a sensible first step in scoping a move and in understanding how urgent that move really is.
No, and usually you should not. Email typically moves first because it is the most straightforward and highest-impact part, while custom applications are handled on a parallel or later track since they take longer to retire, replace, or rebuild. What matters is that the applications are planned from the start, so they do not get forgotten and quietly keep your old Domino servers running after the mailboxes have moved. A good plan sequences the two so that neither holds the other up unnecessarily.
DIY has the lowest sticker price but the highest hidden cost and risk, especially if your team lacks migration experience or spare capacity. A specialist is predictable for the move itself but leaves you to cover everything afterwards. A managed migration costs more up front and adds a monthly fee, but it is the most predictable and usually the lowest total cost once you account for downtime risk, rework, and the ongoing management every environment needs. The cheapest option on day one is not always the cheapest by the end of the year.