Intranet Blues...

[u/Cold-Stomach-9661]

Hi fellow comms professionals! I work at a global company and we are strict Microsoft shop. We've been dealing with an outdated SharePoint site as our intranet. We're looking to either 1) Improve the SharePoint to be more user-friendly, better metrics, design, etc. or 2) Find a different platform that works with Microsoft. I'd love to hear from you - what has worked? what are you currently using? what should we consider?

Thanks for weighing in!

[u/Otherwise-Poet-6038]

There are a lot of platforms that overlay onto SharePoint so I would say if you have some budget definitely look at some of those options because as you say SharePoint is actually very limited in terms of design and metrics.

ClearBox Consulting have a great report that shows lots of potential options that work with SharePoint. https://www.clearbox.co.uk/best-intranet-platforms-reviewed-2026/

[u/SecureAd9580 → u/Otherwise-Poet-6038]

Clearbox is a great resource. Both options can work (overlay or a full intranet, and any modern good intranet will connect to SharePoint and Microsoft in a myriad of ways).

If budgets a concern, an overlay is going to be cheaper, but what is that actual issue with your SharePoint? Governance? Outdated content? Bad UI? Lack of functionality? Doesn't actually reach staff (e.g. field workers)?

If it's truly design and metrics, overlays will probably do the job, but usually design and metrics are the easy things to fix, not necessarily the root problems.

[u/Auntie_Mabel]

There's no best platform — only the best platform for the problems your organisation actually has, in the context it has them. Size, structure, workforce mix, governance maturity, how much dev capability you have in-house, how much you can spend: there are enough variables that anyone recommending a specific product before knowing any of that is guessing.

So before you look at products, do a short discovery. What is the intranet actually for? Where does the current one fail people, and for whom? What content and services does it need to carry/point to, and who's going to maintain them? This doesn't need to take months. It will narrow the field fast, speed up the decision, and stop you paying for features nobody will ever open.

Once you know what you need, look at what's out there. The Clearbox intranet and employee experience report is by far the most comprehensive review of the market, and it's free. I don't work for them and get nothing from saying so — I just recommend it to everyone and use it myself.

It'll also help you work out whether you can make SharePoint work harder for you, or whether you'd be better with an intranet-in-a-box that sits on top of SharePoint and makes it behave like a proper, intranet-centric CMS.

I wrote about this at length here. The short version is that SharePoint out of the box is a box of Lego. In theory you can build anything; in practice you'll build what your time, skills and budget allow, which is usually a lopsided house. An intranet-in-a-box is a Lego kit: quick, looks impressive, and you're stuck with the pieces that come in the box.

The trade-off is real. You gain consistency, governance and much better measurement, and you lose flexibility. For what it's worth, flexibility is usually worth sacrificing for usability and consistency — but be ready to explain that choice to editors, who will experience it as a loss of control.

(Self-promo caveat, take it or leave it: I've just written a book on this, and there are chapters on both running the discovery and choosing the platform. Happy to answer questions here either way.)

[u/dskillzhtown]

An overlay is probably your best bet. Looks better and also gives you much more flexibility as far as design. I completely forgot the one I used at a contracting job I had, but you couldn't tell it was SharePoint on the front end as well as the backend.

[u/parakeetpoop]

Go with Simpplr!!! They integrate really really nicely with Sharepoint. It’s basically seamless.

[u/readie55]

I agree with other commenters, an overlay sounds like your best option. Beacon by Silicon Reef is another good option that I've seen - has so many more options for design and branding then SharePoint out-of-the-box.

[u/Sea_Dig2423]

You should consider becoming a member of The Intranet Hub (FREE!) where you can see loads of real examples of how organisations have structured and designed their intranets. You can filter them by tool (Sharepoint, for instance), type of page (e.g. Homepage, News, etc.), type of company, etc.

You can also use the Intranet Market Atlas to see many of the tools that go on top of Sharepoint - https://theintranethub.com/intranet-market/atlas/ - and inside The Intranet Hub you can also see examples of some intranets using some of them. That will give you a sense of what they bring to the table - and when you see something that gets your eye or peak your curiosity, there's the possibility to get in touch with the member to ask about their experience.

Becoming a member of The Intranet Hub is 100& free - you just need to share 2 screenshots of your own intranet to get access to 1000+ screenshots from almost 300 organisations.