Comment by codingdave

That is kind of how it went, but there was more than email in its early days. Email existed, but Lotus also sold a separate email product. The rumors at the time ('94) were that Lotus was going to remove email from Notes and focus on apps. But instead IBM bought both and merged them. It got kinda lost from there, while also getting way bigger, but that is a different story.

Even so, it did have some app templates that came with it back in those early days - a helpdesk ticketing system, a sales CRM, discussions. I forget what they all were, but there was definitely a base of examples aside from email for people to start with.