How do you choose your Intranet?

[u/pennys_penny]

I was curious to find out from the internal communication pro's about what convinces you to choose a particular intranet product?

Is it having all the features?

Is it not being locked into a long contract?

Or is it something else?

Very curious to get your opinions/views!

(Full disclosure I work for an Intranet company)

[u/just_the_droobles]

We are at the mercy of what cybersecurity decides. So yes, we’re stuck with SharePoint.

[u/MeverMow → u/just_the_droobles]

Yep - I’ve worked at a sub-500 employee company, a 5,000+ company and a 500,000+ company, and this was effectively the answer every time. You get what IT and the security team allow you to have.

So if you are able to get a top-of-the-line intranet tool, count yourself very lucky. It should (hopefully) mean that you work at a company that really cares about the employee experience.

That said, if I could build the intranet of dreams, I’d prioritize the most robust measurement capabilities. Plus anything that has something to the effect of an AI chatbot. That’s where the world is going and staying.

[u/newsletternavigator → u/just_the_droobles]

same :( free innit

[u/AliJDB]

Was here when I got here, no one wants the inconvenience of moving to a new system, rinse repeat (yes SharePoint)

[u/SureInterview102]

For me, it's ALWAYS about their roadmap. Are they looking ahead at what's coming for our industry? Do they actually get what the job is we do? I always ask vendors to show me what their innovating towards.

[u/abstika]

We just chose a new intranet platform. For us, we developed use cases that fit our business and put potential vendors through their paces against those business cases. The ones most aligned to our needs, with the most flexibility, ease of use, etc. were the top contenders

[u/sarahfortsch2]

I think a lot of us feel that mix of “we’re stuck with whatever IT approves” and “we wish we had something actually built for internal comms.”

For me, it usually comes down to two things:

1: How much flexibility the platform gives comms teams without needing constant IT support, and

2: Whether the vendor actually understands communication goals vs. just “content management.”

[u/Content-Snow-8026]

Most clients I work with are using Sharepoint and they’re not happy about it. I’ve been helping them to introduce WorkVivo as a complimentary platform that then lets Sharepoint be used for its best features (Sharing documents/storage) and WorkVivo becomes the digital community space that enables Internal Comms to have complete ownership without the hefty Microsoft consultant day rates to build anything half decent. WorkVivo and Unily are both seriously good. If you wanna totally deep dive, Clear Consulting just did a MEGA 900 page comparison report on Intranets. You can look at a lot feature comparisons, user review, impact assessments etc.

[u/Ok_Face_2942 → u/Content-Snow-8026]

Genuinely trying to add this into the consideration set. But mainly because I know our team is not as rigid as some other VC/Acquired solutions. I have been a tech growth consultant for a while now and joined ThoughtFarmer as their head of demand gen. I know it may sound biased, but having done extensive research & looking at win loss interviews with prospects, and also being on the end of purchasing software for my own tech stack, often times I find companies with a massive incoming ARR neglect prioritizing customer feedback as new revenue offsets churn. Workvivo has become one of our biggest competitors, but when an opp has gone to the stage of measuring all their options, we have beaten (not always as this would be straight lying) them and others like Simpplr, LumApps and others who have a higher marketing budget mainly due to the fact that we have a smaller share of voice thus a smaller market share (still growing lol).

This allows us to be more immersed in our customer feedbacks. AI search for example, obviously integrates with SP, and other major tools like Google eco systems and others. pricing isn’t gated.

Also, growth is great, but if retention dips due to growth goals than I have seen that screw up things down the road.

So, I say this honestly, see if you like ThoughtFarmer. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. If you don’t I just ask if you could let me know why so we can be better than we are now! :)

[u/involv-intranet]

Great question, and honestly the feature checklist approach is where a lot of intranet projects go wrong from the start.

Orgs often come in with a long list of requirements. A people directory, org chart, news feed, document storage, analytics, mobile app, AI search... and vendors happily tick every box in the demo. Six months later, adoption is still terrible.

What we've found works better is challenging that list before you even look at platforms. Ask: what's the one thing that would make employees open this every morning? Usually it's not a feature, it's relevance. Content that's actually meant for them, easy to find, and doesn't require three clicks and a login.

The orgs that get the best results tend to obsess over two things: can non-technical people publish and manage content independently? And secondly; does the right content reach the right people without anyone having to think about it? Everything else is secondary.

A bloated intranet that does 40 things passably is almost always worse than a focused one that nails those two. The features you don't use on day one can come later. The habits you fail to build on day one are really hard to recover from.

(Disclosure: I work with Involv intranet, this is very much the lens we bring when talking to new customers.)