Best Intranet Software

Intranet Software Reviews

Intranet software can be complex. That’s why our methodology includes breaking it down into constituent parts. We examined different vendors by their customer support, their intranet and collaboration features, their online brand reputation, and their overall pricing structure. And because there’s no one answer for every single option, here are the intranet offerings we found that work for specific needs.

Interact – Best Intranet Software for Small Business

When you’re a small business, the name of the game for an intranet is collaboration. Interact’s intranet software fits neatly into those needs by offering individual profiles, common-sense collaboration tools for any organization chart, and a sensible pricing plan that can scale easily as you add employees.

Interact features

• Discussions and forums. Interact makes it easy to search through and chat with different people in your organization, no matter where their office may be located.
• Activity/news feed. Keep up-to-date on the latest with a news feed that feels like a social media app—but keeps your team in the loop and up-to-date on project progress.
• Collaboration tools. Integrations with Skype and other chat tools help you collaborate and work with each other on the intranet with ease.
• Search/filter. Search and filter through company bios to see the people you need to speak to, making it a flexible way to manage contacts in your company.

What markets does Interact serve?

Interact works for businesses of all sizes, and its searching and badge features are great for organizations that are growing or already medium-sized. We included it on our list of best intranets for small businesses because it’s ideal as an intranet that can grow with your company as you expand and your projects get bigger.

Staffbase – Best for Remote Workforces

If some or all of your employees work remotely, Staffbase makes a strong argument for being your intranet home base. It’s an employee communication platform with tools to help remote workers feel connected to what’s going on in your business.

Staffbase features

• Discussions and forums. This may be the best place for remote workers to come together and get on the same page as the entire company. The discussion capabilities on Staffbase are designed to keep mobile workers in the loop.
• Activity/news feed. Employees have access to an activity feed that updates them on project progress, company announcements, and what their colleagues are doing.
• Collaboration tools. Live chat and messaging are key to ensuring that anyone on the road or at a home office can be as “present” as anyone else at the office. Staffbase incorporates live chat and emails to ensure workers never feel like they miss a key conversation.
• Search/filter. When an employee has been away for a couple of days, it can be hard to get one’s bearings. That’s where search and filter features shine most, keeping employees abreast of the latest goings on internally.
• Wiki. Working especially for onboarding new remote workers, a wiki page is a fantastic way to keep people in the loop and prepared to meet the standard of the work ahead. Staffbase offers dedicated group topics for segmenting your centralized hubs into individual projects.

What markets does Staffbase serve?

Staffbase is primarily geared to companies that have a lot of outsourcing and/or remote work going on. However, we found that the abundant features here, including the five listed above, make it appropriate for just about any office setting that needs a new intranet solution for internal collaboration.

Microsoft Sharepoint – Best for Large Companies

There’s a reason so many companies use Microsoft services and software for their business needs—they work well. Microsoft Sharepoint features plenty of offerings, software integrations, and mobile-ready additions that help unify a large team—all while doing it at a price point that makes sense if you have a lot of employees to onboard. Here’s what we liked.

Microsoft Sharepoint features

• Discussions and forums. We like the “co-authoring” feature that’s available when using Microsoft tools like Excel or Word, allowing multiple team members to work on one document with ease.
• Activity/news feed. Anyone who’s used Microsoft Teams knows how intuitive the software suite can be at keeping people “in the know” when posting the latest news and project updates employees need to check. An update to a file, for example, can automatically sync to someone else’s account. This helps people stay up-to-date on the latest edits going on within the organization.
• Collaboration tools. In addition to syncing with other Microsoft offerings—like the co-authoring features we mentioned—there are additional tools like building paired libraries so you can access common files with colleagues.
• Search/filter. Search by keyword or employee name. Microsoft’s search features are robust enough to handle multiple query types, allowing you to quickly search users who need a shout-out or to identify files that need updating.

What markets does Microsoft Sharepoint serve?

There’s really no limit to what you can do with Microsoft. You can be a solopreneur and still get a lot out of Office 365, for example. But with Sharepoint, we found that if you’re willing to pay the price for the larger business tier, it can be a tremendous way to keep your team on board with everything you’re doing on your intranet.

Zoho Connect – Best Social Intranet Software

Intranet software often comes down to one thing: how well it connects people to the right resources, tools, and teammates. And that’s where Zoho Connect shines, offering collaboration and chatting tools that won’t leave any employee feeling like they’re the ones on the outs.

Zoho Connect features

• Discussions and forums. One of the key features here is a virtual “town hall” experience, which can be great for medium to large companies wanting to replicate that experience digitally.
• Activity/news feed. It’s easy to view other peoples’ updates and see what’s going on with projects, in personal news, and across teams.
• Collaboration tools. One of the best features we found was how easy it was to move from discussion and wall posts to downloading collaborative files. This makes it a seamless way to get work done with minimal distraction and friction within the software.
• Search/filter. Want to find out the status of a project or locate a file that needs to be edited? Zoho Connect’s search and filter features offer you an avenue for browsing around.
• Wiki. Anytime an intranet software offering has a wiki feature, it’s a great way to onboard new hires, educate anyone new to the team, or simply get someone caught up to speed on a new project. We like Zoho Connect’s wiki customization options that let users choose how the wiki looks from their own portal.

What markets does Zoho Connect serve?

Zoho Connect is appropriate for companies of all sizes, especially if you have a smaller company and need a more budget-friendly option. However, you’ll find that it’s best for any company that needs to bring its people together, which may mean that the companies who get the most out of Zoho Connect are also the ones who need to collaborate more, such as large, disparate companies with remote workers.

Jostle – Best for Employee Empowerment

Jostle offers a range of communication-friendly features that make intranet life easier for employees. We found that it’s great for centralizing communications, clarifying workflows, and offering employees a pleasant experience when they come in for work—even if that means logging in from a home office.

Jostle features

• Discussions and forums. Getting employees connected sometimes requires communication beyond instant messaging. Discussions and forums through Jostle work on anyone’s timetables, which makes it easy to connect with a remote team around the world, if necessary.
• Activity/news feed. Employees can view what they’re working on and connect with each other via the news feed, similar to what you’d see on a social media site like Facebook.
• Collaboration tools. We found instant messaging on Jostle to be easy to use and always quick to pop up, reducing friction in getting people on the same page.
• Search/filter. Featuring a search option on the mobile app as well, Jostle makes it easy to identify training and onboarding videos, which is especially useful for employees who otherwise might have trouble navigating to the key learning documentation they need to see.

What markets does Jostle serve?

Like many of the offerings on this list, Jostle is great for companies of all sizes. But because of how many users loved its employee empowerment features, we decided to point out how great an experience it can be for your team.

Compare the best intranet software side-by-side

What is intranet software?

Intranet software is the program or suite of programs you use to manage documentation and other employee activity within a business. It’s like having a website or digital community space just for employees. Intranets help manage your internal communications, projects, and news and updates within an internal server that can only be accessed by authorized staff. With good intranet software in place, you can use instant messaging, onboarding wikis, and other features to get new employees on board your team culture in a hurry.

What are the different types of intranet software?

Although all intranet software serves the same basic purpose, we found that different types include employee-friendly software offerings (which can feel like an internal social media hub), as well as remote worker-friendly offerings that are great for grabbing with mobile apps on the go.

When choosing a vendor, make sure you weigh features like the availability of mobile apps to evaluate whether it’s centered around an office or hybrid work environment.

What should an intranet include?

Based on our experience, a good intranet system should include:

• Collaboration tools including instant messaging, file sharing, and mobile app readiness
• Internal wikis for onboarding and for common employee questions
• Searching and filtering for finding files, users, and other frequently-required information

Options like Staffbase have a mobile app that allows users to access the company intranet from anywhere. This is helpful for remote and hybrid workforces and for teams that use company-provided cell phones for extra security controls.

A good intranet solution should come with large (or unlimited) amounts of file storage, secure networks, and account-level user controls. This ensures only authorized users are allowed to edit and view each page.

What are the advantages of an intranet?

An intranet gives you all of the advantages of Internet-style communication but makes it company-facing. For example, you can have employees connect with each other on social media-like walls that mimic what you see on sites like Facebook. You can also use an intranet to avoid the security issues that come with frequent exposure to online apps. That’s one reason intranet software is so popular with companies like banks and financial services—but by no means is it limited to these industries.

Overall, intranets make employee collaboration much easier, smoother, and faster—which makes for a more efficient workforce.

How much does intranet software cost?

Intranet software typically costs between $2 and $10 per user per month, based on our research, although there were a lot of exceptions for custom billing based on the size of your company. For instance, Microsoft Sharepoint could cost as little as $5/user/month. Zoho Connect’s $0.84/user/month was the cheapest on our list. Don’t expect free offerings, but you may see some that are willing to share a free trial experience, such as Interact.

Intranet Software FAQ

Who uses employee intranet software?
Any company where employees primarily use computers to complete their work can use employee intranet software. It’s especially beneficial for companies that need to keep remote employees engaged, onboard new employees into a complicated process, or keep teams across different departments connected to the same collaboration tools and files.

What are the advantages of an intranet?
The advantages of an intranet include more employee and worker interaction and less security exposure for what goes on at your company. This can help keep your team tight-knit without losing the benefits of keeping everyone collaborating together on a secure server.

What should an intranet include?
Intranet software should include collaboration tools, messaging, and search or filtering features so it’s easy for anyone to log in and get to work on their current project milestones. It’s optional to have a mobile app that makes it easy to log in, but it can be highly beneficial when you have a large team spread across multiple time zones.

How we chose the best intranet software

We curated a list of dozens of intranet software offerings, ultimately whittling it down to a core list of 15 vendors. We based our analysis on factors like online reputation and product specificity. Then we rated those 15 with a points system of 1-5 for features, online brand reputation, customer support options, and pricing.

After rating them that way, we then used a variety of sources to verify our information, including

• Video / live demos
• Vendor and parent company websites
• Online commenter ratings and reviews

Using all this information, we then scored vendors based on:

• Feature variety, weighing the same features whenever possible to get a comprehensive look at each software offering
• Pricing and pricing transparency, including whether companies offered a “request a demo” pricing structure for custom enterprise-based pricing
• Customer support, including onboarding features and whether or not the companies in question offered live services like phone or chat
• Brand reputation, weighing both average ratings and the trustworthiness of the overall online presence established by the total number of online reviews