IT Infrastructure

The Top 10 Intranet Solutions

Discover the Top Intranet Solutions designed to enhance internal communication and collaboration within organizations. Explore features such as collaboration tools, document management, customization options, and mobile accessibility.

Last updated on Jun 24, 2024

Written by Caitlin Harris

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 10 Intranet Solutions include:

1. Guru Employee Intranet
2. Igloo
3. Interact
4. LumApps
5. MangoApps
6. Microsoft SharePoint
7. Simpplr
8. Staffbase Intranet
9. Unily
10. Workvivo Employee Experience Platform (EXP)

Intranet solutions are the backbone of internal communications within businesses. They provide a private, secure network where employees can access information, collaborate, and communicate more effectively, promoting a connected workplace culture and streamlining various business operations. Intranet solutions include interface components like databases, applications, user or group profiles, and social interaction platforms—all vital for the successful operation of any corporation.

Leveraging intranet systems, organizations can centralize their digital resources, creating a one-stop shop for all internal needs, including HR resources, business applications, workflow management, and company news. An effective intranet improves productivity, collaboration, and engagement among employees by providing a platform for two-way communication, reducing email traffic, and eliminating information silos that slow down operations.

There is a wide array of intranet solutions available on the market today, each with diverse functionality and features. Capabilities commonly include document management, project collaboration, employee directories, knowledge sharing, varied integration options, content creation and management, and analytics tools. The solutions range from off-the-shelf software to customized, enterprise-wide platforms, serving businesses of all sizes and types.

In this article, we’ll explore the top intranet solutions designed to facilitate a secure, connected workplace. We’ll highlight the key use cases and features of each solution, including collaboration and communication tools, document management, task management and workflow automation, integrations, and accessibility.

Guru Employee Intranet

Guru Employee Intranet is an AI-enhanced intranet solution that combines an employee engagement hub, a knowledge base, and an intuitive search tool to provide employees with centralized information and instant answers, wherever they’re working. Guru links to applications, chats, and documents, effortlessly integrating information from various sources into a customizable, company-wide base.

The key feature of Guru Employee Intranet is its AI-powered search, which facilitates quick access to information, without the need to switch contexts, by searching across all integrated sources for answers—including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Salesforce Knowledge. Users can save and clean up chat threads for future access, all while staying in their current workspace.

In addition to its powerful search functionality, Guru Employee Intranet offers an announcement feature that helps disseminate must-know information to teams or individuals efficiently. It also offers enhanced governance measures to help you ensure your company’s information stays secure—these include admin controls, permissions, announcement tracking, and HRIS syncs.

The platform is highly customizable, enabling organizations to offer their users a personalized digital workplace that promotes continuous learning based on individual reading and search habits. Finally, to help keep your intranet organized, Guru’s AI also intelligently detects duplicate content.

Guru Employee Intranet is an intuitive, user-friendly platform that integrates various information sources into one accessible tool. It combines powerful AI capabilities with customization to make it easy for employees to search for and retrieve information.

Igloo

Igloo is a comprehensive intranet platform that aims to bridge the gap in employee experience for both remote and desk-based workers. With the goal of simplifying operations, decreasing costs, and enhancing work experiences, Igloo integrates well-known business tools to create a centralized, personalized workspace for each employee, centered around their engagement, performance, training, and retention.

One of Igloo’s key features is its ability to cater to both office-based and remote workers. Those in the office are presented with an intuitive, modern desktop interface, while remote employees can access the intranet via the Igloo Flex Mobile app. This app is packed with features such as streamlined communications, native integrations, policy compliance measures, effective search options, and a recommendation engine. This enables organizations to deliver a flexible user experience to each employee, whilst ensuring a unified digital experience both inside and out of the office.

Overall, Igloo provides easy access to resources, enhancing productivity and engagement. The platform offers high levels of administrative control, making it easy for admins to manage the platform and gain insights into their employees’ performance and engagement. We recommend Igloo as a versatile intranet solution that enables better connectivity and productivity, particularly for organizations with a combination of on-site and remote employees.

Interact

Interact is an employee experience platform that is designed to improve workplace productivity and internal communications. The platform integrates with the entire tech stack, creating a unified hub that contains all the critical information and tools your employees need to be productive.

Interact supports multichannel communication amongst employees, with a centralized people directory for collaboration, integrated features for company forums and social networking, as well as decentralized communication using persona groups. The software uses AI to personalize the intranet for each user, which helps to improve employee engagement, search results, and overall communication throughout the organization. The platform’s usability is further improved by its digital signage, which makes it straightforward to navigate and find content. This, in turn, helps improve user adoption.

As well as improving employees’ experiences, Interact offers a robust suite of features for admins and managers. It delivers an intranet analytics feature that provides insight into intranet performance, as well as a comprehensive content management system, broadcast communication tools, and pulse surveys for regular evaluation of employee sentiment and engagement. It also offers customizable workflows and forms to help automate repetitive tasks.

Interact is a secure, scalable cloud platform that promotes better employee engagement and communication. By making it easy for everyone in an organization to interact and contribute, Interact helps organizations to cultivate a more efficient and productive work environment.

LumApps

LumApps is an intranet solution designed to foster employee engagement and alignment. The platform offers a suite of tools to promote effective communication, create supportive working environments, and enhance user experiences. LumApps is accessible from anywhere and is compatible with a wide variety of devices, making it well-suited to remote teams.

LumApps offers a range of features to support unique departmental needs. For IT teams, LumApps simplifies secure access to company resources, data, and applications, and encourages autonomy amongst managers and authors, making resources less complex. For HR departments, it helps create a consistent company culture amongst on-site and remote employees, provides teams with a more intuitive interface for onboarding new talent, and enables employees to access a wide variety of tools and guidance to support their preferred way of working and improve productivity. LumApps also utilizes machine learning and natural language understanding to customize content and automate repetitive tasks.

LumApps also enhances employee experience with automated onboarding, a personalized news feed for communication and collaboration, knowledge sharing features, and tools for recognizing employee achievements and building company culture. Employees can contribute content, ask questions, and collaborate on the platform, reinforcing a two-way communication system.

In conclusion, LumApps is an adaptable intranet solution that leverages modern technologies to create an inclusive company culture, streamline communication, and promote employee engagement and productivity. The platform’s mobile app enables organizations to deliver a unified digital experience to all employees, irrespective of their location, thereby fostering better engagement and a sense of belonging.

MangoApps

MangoApps is a centralized intranet platform that streamlines workflows and promotes real-time collaboration. Organizations can easily create their intranet site and migrate all their data, with flexible page designs supported by over 75 widgets. The platform also incorporates privacy controls and automatic organization so that, once deployed, organizations can efficiently manage their data without requiring IT involvement.

One of MangoApps’ key features is its AI-assisted search functionality, which optimizes information retrieval and provides personalized search results in real-time. MangoApps also allows users to create specialized AI assistants trained on your specific data to enhance efficiency.

In addition to its AI-powered capabilities, MangoApps offers an integrated Learning Management System for streamlined employee training and development, along with comprehensive tracking capabilities. It also offers robust content governance to keep intranet information relevant and up-to-date, and tools to enhance employee connection and collaboration. MangoApps also supports extensive customization to align with unique brand image, as well as offering seamless integrations with other platforms and services to help create a cohesive digital ecosystem.

Overall, MangoApps’ blend of AI-driven functionalities, integration capabilities, and customization options make it a versatile, unified platform that streamlines information management and fosters efficient collaboration.

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is a versatile collaboration tool designed to enable the sharing and management of content, knowledge, and applications across an organization. The software efficiently facilitates teamwork by creating dynamic team sites for different departments, helping to streamline file sharing, data exchange, and resource allocation processes.

The SharePoint intranet provides a platform for sharing common resources and applications, with powerful search functionalities and intelligent discovery tools. It blends content management capabilities—including SharePoint lists, libraries, and the integration of Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps—with the valuable collaboration and conversation features found in Microsoft Viva Engage, making it much easier for employees to access and share information. It also provides targeted news updates that help keep employees informed, and offers notifications and approvals for complex workflows. This helps promote productivity by eliminating bottlenecks.

Overall, Microsoft SharePoint is an effective tool for fostering real-time collaboration and improving content management within any sized organization. It is available as a standalone product or as part of a Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription. Standalone SharePoint users benefit from real-time file sharing, content management libraries with versioning and access controls, and search tools. M365 Business Standard users can access all the above, plus Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook, reporting tools, video editing tools, and collaborative workspaces.

Simpplr

Simpplr is an AI-powered intranet solution designed to enhance employee communication and experience. Its visual and user-friendly interface integrates with customary workplace applications for improved workflow and more streamlined data management across the organization.

Key features of Simpplr include precise audience targeting, content moderation using AI, and the ability to ensure critical information reach through “Must Read” digital read receipts. The solution also includes an interactive employee directory, Page Templates for easy, consistent content creation, and a unique Auto-Governance Engine for automated detection and elimination of obsolete content.

Simpplr comes with a convenient Apps Launchpad for single click access to SSO-enabled apps directly from the intranet. It also offers language translation abilities and approval workflows, enabling organizations to manage multiple intranets. This makes it a particularly strong tool for multi-brand organizations.

Simpplr is designed to streamline employee communication, increase collaboration, improve internal campaigns, and generally optimize the digital work environment. Thanks to its AI-powered content management features and multi-intranet support, we recommend Simpplr as a strong intranet solution for larger enterprises seeking to improve employee experience and productivity.

Staffbase Intranet

Staffbase Intranet is a comprehensive intranet solution that delivers content across multiple platforms, including Microsoft 365. The system promotes organization and connectivity, replacing disjointed communications with a seamless, intuitive intranet experience that engages and connects employees.

Key functions of Staffbase Intranet include its no-code templates for page design and content planning, an AI-powered content creation feature, and robust integrations with other third-party tools—including SharePoint and Google Drive—that help deliver a seamless digital experience. To foster more effective collaboration, its Staffbase Companion platform facilitates content brainstorming and optimization, backed by secure hosting from Microsoft. The platform also offers a shared editorial calendar, with permissions management to prevent unauthorized access to private data.

Staffbase Intranet supplements its core functions with automated content refresh alerts, comment moderation, advanced analytics, and integrations with business intelligence tools like PowerBI and Tableau. In addition, it personalizes user experiences with targeted content, automated journeys, multilingual support, and social walls.

Overall, Staffbase Intranet is a powerful tool for enhancing employee engagement and optimizing internal communication. Its AI-powered tools, secure infrastructure, advanced analytics, and integrations with everyday tools make it an efficient and robust intranet solution.

Unily

Unily is an employee experience platform designed to enrich workplace communication, engagement, and efficiency. It operates as a hub where employees can access personalized content, join social channels, and collaborate with colleagues—regardless of their location.

Unily offers a range of knowledge management features, including a user-friendly CMS for internal content creation, an AI-powered intranet that generates content and provides valuable translations, cross-content search functionality, peer-to-peer recognition, and in-built feedback forms. To further enhance productivity, Unily offers a collaborative environment with dedicated project channels, ideation portals, and an integrated productivity suite.

Users can access the platform via desktop or Unily’s thoughtfully designed employee app, which is available on both iOS and Android. To further streamline usability, Unily offers integrations with popular productivity platforms such as Google, Microsoft, and Slack. It also offers a comprehensive onboarding system that allows new hires to integrate smoothly into the organization, with automatic training delivery and progress tracking.

Overall, Unily provides a seamless platform to foster a connected, engaged, and productive workforce, irrespective of geographical barriers.

Workvivo Employee Experience Platform (EXP)

The Workvivo Employee Experience Platform (EXP) is a comprehensive employee app designed to streamline communication and engagement within organizations. The platform combines functionality from various essential areas including internal communications, engagement, recognition, intranet, and analytics, and converts the corporate intranet into a mobile application accessible from anywhere on a smartphone.

Employees can access their intranet via Workvivo’s inclusive mobile application, which incorporates public recognition tools for individual and team achievements, pulse surveys for gathering employee feedback, a centralized news feed for company communications, and document management functionality. Workvivo also easily integrates with various tools such as productivity suites, content management systems, HR systems, single sign-on solutions, social channels, and livestreaming platforms. For management teams, Workvivo also offers a sophisticated analytics engine, which offers insights into employee engagement, retention, and referral rates.

In addition to providing a consolidated work environment, Workvivo has a strong focus on security. The platform is ISO 27001 certified and generates an annual SOC 2 Type 2 report, demonstrating its commitment to securing users’ data.

The Workvivo platform is relatively straightforward to deploy, thanks to support from Workvivo’s dedicated customer success team, who assist in personalizing the platform and onboarding the organization. Overall, Workvivo’s comprehensive platform serves as an effective hub for enhancing workplace communication, engagement, and productivity.

Everything You Need to Know About Intranet Solutions (FAQs)

What Are Intranet Solutions?

In days gone by, an intranet was a simple repository of links to corporate resources. But this definition has evolved. Today, an intranet solution is a private, internal network that contains communication and collaboration tools, employee directories, operational systems, and other computing services. Some modern intranets even utilize artificial intelligence to help automate workflows and manage tasks. Usually accessed via a web-based application, intranets enable employees to share information, manage tasks, and communicate more effectively and securely, acting as a central hub for all user needs.

How Do Intranet Solutions Work?

Intranet solutions provide a centralized, digital hub where employees can access and share relevant company resources and tools, without exposing those resources to anyone outside the organization. Typically, intranet solutions are made up of three main parts: the intranet platform, the applications within the intranet, and the server upon which the intranet is built.

The intranet platform itself is a piece of software to which all the applications and tools within the intranet connect. The applications within the intranet are the different computing tools available to users, such as document management tools, instant messaging, discussion forums, and directories. They’re the tools that employees use every day to do their work. The platform brings these tools together, integrating them so that users can easily access them and share data across them.

The intranet platform—including all the data and applications within it—resides upon a server, which can be on-premises, cloud-based, or a hybrid combination of the two. This server usually enables users to access the intranet by entering their login credentials into a portal.

All these elements need to work together seamlessly for the intranet solution to be effective.

What Are The Benefits Of Intranet Solutions?

There are numerous benefits to implementing intranet solution:

Improve employee collaboration: Intranet solutions facilitate internal communication through various channels like chat, news feeds, and forums. They also provide a centralized system in which employees can store documents and other types of content. With these tools, employees can work together more efficiently, sharing resources and contributing to collective tasks or projects—even when they’re not in the office.
Centralize your information: With all resources and documents centrally stored and easily searchable, you can provide your users with a single, central gateway from which they can access everything they need to do their job. This can help cultivate a culture of knowledge sharing, as well as minimize the time your users are spending on information retrieval.
Streamline your workflows: Task assignments, deadline tracking, and progress visualization can help streamline workflows and increase productivity.
Increase employee engagement: Intranets also serve as a platform for engagement initiatives, such as employee recognition, surveys and feedback, and corporate announcements.
Secure your data: Advanced security measures such as encryption and role-based access controls can help you protect sensitive business data from unauthorized access or breach. They can also help you comply with compliance requirements pertaining to data privacy.

What Features Should You Look For In An Intranet Solution?

Here are the top features you should look for when comparing intranet solutions:

User-Friendly Interface: An intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface is crucial for user adoption. Look for a solution with customizable layouts and user-friendly design elements.
Content Management System (CMS): A robust CMS allows you to easily create, edit, and manage content such as news, documents, policies, and announcements.
Document Management: Your users need to be able to upload, store, organize, and share documents easily and securely. Look for features like version control, permissions management, and document collaboration. The intranet should also offer an effective search tool to help you locate documents quickly.
Communication Tools: Integration with communication tools like instant messaging, forums, discussion boards, and email helps facilitate real-time communication and collaboration among employees.
Employee Directory: A searchable employee directory with profiles can help employees find and connect with colleagues, fostering collaboration, and networking.
Customization and Personalization: To enhance user experience and engagement, you should be able to customize the intranet to match your organization’s branding and tailor content based on user roles and preferences.
Mobile Accessibility: Make sure the intranet solution is mobile-responsive or has dedicated mobile apps that allow employees to access information and collaborate on the go.
Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with existing software and systems such as CRM, ERP, HRIS, and productivity tools can extend your intranet’s functionality, as well as help streamline workflows and increase productivity.
Security Features: Look for in-built security measures such as role-based access control, data encryption, Single Sign-On (SSO), and audit trails. These will help you protect sensitive information and ensure compliance with data privacy regulations.
Analytics and Reporting: Built-in analytics tools provide insights into intranet usage, user engagement, popular content, and other metrics, enabling you to optimize the platform and measure its effectiveness.
Task Management and Workflow Automation: To help you streamline processes and improve productivity, look out for task assignment features, reminders, notifications, and workflow automation.
Employee Engagement: Features like polls, surveys, employee recognition, and social features help promote employee engagement and foster a sense of community within the organization.

Caitlin Harris

Deputy Head Of Content

Caitlin Harris is Deputy Head of Content at Expert Insights. Caitlin is an experienced writer and journalist, with years of experience producing award-winning technical training materials and journalistic content. Caitlin holds a First Class BA in English Literature and German, and provides our content team with strategic editorial guidance as well as carrying out detailed research to create articles that are accurate, engaging and relevant. Caitlin co-hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, where she interviews world-leading B2B tech experts.

Laura Iannini

Cybersecurity Analyst

Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.