By Jostle
24 min read
You likely expect your intranet to help employees stay informed and find what they need. But when people still miss important updates, struggle to locate the right policy or resource, or turn to chat threads and side conversations for answers, it means the intranet isn’t providing the support it’s meant to.
A strong intranet reduces friction by changing how information is delivered and maintained. Instead of relying on employees to navigate deep page structures, it places relevant updates and resources where people actually look. Plus, content stays easier to trust because ownership is clearer and updates don’t require rebuilding the site or coordinating heavy approval workflows just to stay current.
Traditional intranets make this harder because they’re built like internal websites. As content grows, it spreads across page trees and sections, ownership becomes unclear, and keeping information up to date turns into ongoing clean-up. Modern intranet alternatives put more emphasis on reach, relevance, and findability, which helps information reach the right people and stay useful in distributed, fast-moving workplaces.
As workplaces become more complex—opening new locations, supporting hybrid or field-based work, and integrating newly acquired teams— culture and communications can become fractured, which can create an unnecessary mult-tiered employee experience. That’s why you need a centralized hub where employees can connect with teammates, find the information they need, and stay fully in tune with company updates.
In this piece, we’ll look at why traditional intranets struggle to keep up with modern workflows, then walk through some of the best intranet alternatives organizations are turning to instead.
Most traditional intranets were set up as internal websites. They can store a lot of information, but they struggle when teams expect them to support everyday communication like operational updates, time-sensitive guidance, and culture-building community posting.
As content grows, information spreads across too many pages and sections. Employees waste time clicking around, land in the wrong place, or find something but aren’t sure it’s the current version, so they end up confirming details in chat or email instead of moving forward.
That sprawl creates a maintenance problem with no clear owner. HR may be responsible for policies that need to stay clean and current, while internal comms focuses on timely news that has a shorter shelf life. At the same time, departments publish and update their own areas independently. That’s how intranets quietly become cluttered, because no single team is looking across the whole structure to retire old pages, fix broken links, merge duplicates, or adjust navigation after teams reorganize.
Traditional intranets also don’t line up with how communication needs to work in distributed environments. People aren’t in one place and they aren’t checking at the same time, but essential updates still need to reach them inside their regular workflow.
When the intranet can’t reliably get the right information in front of the right audiences, it becomes a place people visit only when they have to. Teams then fill the gap through whatever channels are fastest, which leads to repeated messages, inconsistent answers, and more time spent tracking down what’s actually true.
That’s why many organizations move toward modern intranet alternatives built for adoption. They make it easier to reach the right people, make information easier to find and trust, and reduce the ongoing effort required to keep the hub usable as the organization changes.
Jostle works well for organizations that want an intranet alternative employees actually return to, without the page sprawl and ongoing clean-up that traditional intranet sites often create. Rather than treating the intranet as a web project to design and maintain, Jostle provides a consistent hub with clear destinations for updates, resources, and connections. That same experience carries across desktop, mobile, and shared displays through JostleTV, so employees don’t have to adjust how they use it based on where they work.
Jostle’s approach to communication is more deliberate than in many legacy setups. Teams use News for leadership messages, operational updates, and timely announcements, with targeting by role, team, and location to keep information relevant. Notify adds urgency with push notifications when needed, and sign-offs offer a simple way to acknowledge important messages. Together, these tools help reduce follow-ups and ensure that the right people receive the message in time.
Where many legacy intranets post every message in one place, Jostle separates official communication from the everyday human layer that keeps culture visible. Activity is a dedicated space for Shout-Outs, milestones, and day-to-day moments that keeps the hub feeling alive without turning important announcements into just another post in a mixed feed.
For shared knowledge and guidance, Jostle focuses on keeping information usable over time. The Library provides a maintained home for policies, how-tos, and essential resources, while still letting teams work in familiar tools. Content can sync with Google Drive or OneDrive, with access controlled in Jostle and reflected in the underlying document. This avoids the common intranet pattern where files are embedded from individual drives, permissions need to be updated every time someone joins a team, and content quietly breaks when the original owner leaves.
JostleAI’s Ask a Question builds on the Library by delivering direct answers from content that each employee is already allowed to access. Responses use employee context like role and location, which helps employees get answers that actually apply to them, instead of generic results that still require follow-up or confirmation.
Once those pieces are in place, Weekly email Digests bring the most relevant News, Library updates, Events, and Activity into a personalized recap for each employee. That makes the hub useful even for people who don’t check in every day, and reduces re-sharing the same information across email and chat just to maintain awareness.
When questions are better answered by a person, Jostle supports that too. The People directory and Teams org charts make it easier to understand how the organization is structured and who they should go to with questions or updates about policies or their projects, helping avoid costly delays.
Overall, Jostle is best suited to organizations that want a clear employee hub that stays easy to run. Its structured approach helps teams keep communication focused, resources current, and employees connected across roles and locations. And because guided onboarding and rollout support are included, most teams can get to adoption faster without a long, IT-heavy implementation.
Jostle pricing depends on user count and plan level, with options added onto higher-level plans so you can build the platform your organization needs.
For 500 users:
Every plan also includes mobile apps, free onboarding & coaching, governance controls, SSO and provisioning, integrations (including Google Workspace and Microsoft 365), AI features, and more.
G2: (4.5/5) – Based on 217 reviews
Capterra: (4.4/5) – Based on 73 reviews
Workvivo is a good fit for mid-market and enterprise organizations that want to deliver rich, multimedia internal communications across large or distributed workforces. It’s a mobile-first employee experience platform built around a central social feed, designed to bring updates, recognition, and community into a single experience for multi-location and frontline-heavy environments.
Teams generally use Workvivo as a shared communication layer rather than a traditional intranet site. Communications teams publish leadership updates and stories into the main feed, while Spaces organize content and conversation around teams, locations, or interests. Recognition lives in the same environment, so kudos, awards, and values-based moments appear alongside updates instead of being split across separate tools.
Workvivo is especially useful when teams want to go beyond simple posts and use richer formats like newsletters, video, live streams, podcasts, or translated content. That flexibility makes it easier to reach different employee groups, but it also means the main feed can get busy if publishing isn’t well coordinated.
As usage grows, the platform supports a broader range of engagement and feedback workflows. Organizations can layer in employee listening, deeper analytics, real-time chat, and digital signage to extend reach and insight across channels. This makes Workvivo a good fit for teams that want communication, engagement, and culture handled in one place instead of spread across multiple tools.
Because everything flows through the feed and Spaces, Workvivo works best when that model is the primary way employees stay informed. Teams that rely heavily on structured navigation or document-heavy intranets may need to be more intentional about how long-term resources are surfaced so they don’t fade into the background as activity increases.
Overall, Workvivo is a strong fit for organizations that prioritize reach and engagement across large, distributed teams. It’s most effective when there’s clear guidance around what belongs in the feed versus a Space, so the experience stays useful as activity grows.
Workvivo uses quote-based pricing that scales by employee count, plan level, and selected modules. Publicly, it’s most commonly packaged into two tiers, with several paid add-ons that expand scope.
G2: (4.8/5) – Based on 2,573 reviews
Capterra: (4.7/5) – Based on 134 reviews
Gartner: (4.7/5) – Based on 127 reviews
Simpplr is a good fit for mid-market and enterprise organizations that still want the intranet to act as the primary front door for employees, but expect it to feel more dynamic and useful than a traditional page-based site. It’s designed as an intranet-centered digital work hub, with communications, discovery, analytics, and employee support built around that core experience.
In everyday use, Simpplr acts as a central place for updates, resources, and navigation. Communications teams publish targeted announcements and campaigns, often using newsletter-style formats and analytics to understand what employees are actually reading. Employees use the platform to move between news, people, tools, and content without having to remember where information lives across different systems.
Simpplr’s strength lies in discovery and automation layered on top of a traditional intranet model. Its AI-powered search and agents help employees get answers faster and reduce reliance on manual support for common HR and IT questions, which can be a significant upgrade over legacy intranets. However, getting the most value from these tools depends on employees knowing how to frame their questions clearly so the AI can return the most relevant results.
Simpplr also includes employee listening capabilities that let teams collect feedback through surveys and pulse checks, then connect those insights back to communications and content. This can be useful for organizations that want to measure sentiment alongside engagement, rather than treating feedback as a separate system.
Overall, Simpplr best fits organizations that want to modernize an intranet without moving away from an intranet-first approach. It works well when teams are prepared to actively manage content, search, and integrations so the platform stays current, searchable, and useful as a daily starting point.
Simpplr doesn’t publicly list its pricing or plan details. For more information, request a quote.
G2: (4.6/5) – Based on 357 reviews
Capterra: (4.8/5) – Based on 112 reviews
Gartner: (4.6/5) – Based on 94 reviews
Microsoft Viva fits mid-market and enterprise organizations that are already standardized on Microsoft 365 and want their employee hub to live where work already happens. Rather than introducing a separate intranet destination, Viva brings communications, communities, learning, insights, and feedback into Microsoft Teams and adjacent Microsoft tools.
Day to day, many organizations treat Viva’s modules as a set of connected entry points inside Teams. Viva Connections acts as the intranet front door, typically combining a dashboard, curated resources, and SharePoint-backed news. Viva Engage covers communities and broader conversation, while Viva Learning pulls training content from Microsoft and third-party sources in the same environment employees already use for collaboration.
For communications teams, Viva Amplify adds a more structured way to run campaigns across channels like Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, and Engage, with measurement consolidated at the campaign level. On the HR and people analytics side, Viva Insights and the feedback tools (Glint and Pulse) support a mix of work-pattern insights, wellbeing nudges, and employee listening programs.
The main tradeoff is that Viva behaves more like a suite than a single, unified intranet product. Employees can experience it as several apps with different patterns, and administrators often need a clear operating model so people know where to go for what.
It’s also worth remembering that the quality of the “intranet” experience in Connections is closely tied to SharePoint information architecture and content governance, so Viva won’t automatically fix underlying sprawl if the source content isn’t maintained.
Overall, Microsoft Viva is best suited to organizations that want to modernize a legacy intranet by pulling it into Teams, while also extending into learning, analytics, and employee feedback through the Microsoft ecosystem. It tends to work best when Teams is already the daily front door and the organization is prepared to keep SharePoint content and module usage well-governed over time.
Microsoft Viva is typically licensed as per-user add-ons on top of Microsoft 365, with an annual commitment and paid yearly. Some baseline Viva capabilities are included with eligible Microsoft 365 plans, while expanded capabilities are packaged through add-on bundles or individual app licensing.
Individual app licensing:
G2: Varies based on module – Ranges from 3.6 to 4.5 stars for Engage & Insights
Capterra: (4.2/5) – Based on 11 reviews
Gartner: (4.4/5) – Based on 91 reviews
Google Workspace is a solid option for organizations that already run on Google and want to cover basic intranet needs using tools employees are familiar with. It isn’t designed as a standalone intranet platform, but many teams treat it as their internal foundation, relying on Drive, Docs, and Sites to share information and coordinate work.
Workspace tends to function as a collection of connected tools rather than a single destination. Teams store policies, guides, and templates in Shared Drives, update them directly in Docs, and rely on version history and comments to keep content current. Google Sites often serves as a simple internal landing page that points people to the right folders, links, or workflows, while Gmail, Chat, and Meet handle announcements, discussions, and live updates.
Where Workspace improves on legacy intranets is in collaboration and speed. Content is easy to update, sharing is straightforward, and employees can contribute without waiting on page owners or approval workflows. Search also works well when files and sites are reasonably organized, making it easier to locate information across documents and drives.
Its limitations show up when organizations expect the intranet itself to drive communication and engagement. Workspace can host content and internal pages, but it doesn’t naturally provide features like targeted news delivery, built-in acknowledgment, or a unified employee hub experience. Teams that rely on it as an intranet substitute often need strong governance habits to prevent content sprawl and permission confusion.
Overall, Google Workspace works best for cloud-first teams that want collaboration and content creation to be the center of their internal experience, with a lightweight site layer for navigation. It’s well-suited to helping employees create, find, and share information, and less suited to organizations looking for an intranet-led communications and engagement platform.
Google Workspace pricing scales by user count and plan level, with per-user, per-month pricing based on an annual commitment.
G2: (4.6/5) – Based on 46,945 reviews
Capterra: (4.7/5) – Based on 17,327 reviews
Gartner: (4.6/5) – Based on 1,575 reviews
Blink is usually chosen by organizations with a large frontline or distributed workforce that need a dependable way to reach employees who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. Instead of centering the experience on a traditional intranet site or corporate email, Blink is designed as a mobile-first employee app that brings communication, essential resources, and messaging into one place employees can easily access on their phones.
Once rolled out, Blink becomes the starting point for frontline work. Communications teams share updates through a central feed and tailor them by role, location, or group so employees only see what applies to them, while priority posts and acknowledgements help important messages stand out. Blink’s Hub gives employees a consistent place to reference policies, procedures, and guides, with People profiles available to add context when employees need to understand who they should reach out to with questions.
A major advantage of Blink over traditional intranets is Blink SSO. Employees can open schedules, HR tools, payslips, and other essential apps without logging in repeatedly, using the built-in app launcher as a single access point. That puts most frontline tasks just a couple of taps away, making the app easier to rely on during shifts and on the move..
The main consideration is how much structure and depth you expect from the intranet layer itself. Blink prioritizes speed, access, and reach, which works well for frontline execution but leaves less room for complex page hierarchies or deep document management. Teams usually get the best results when Blink is treated as an operational front door, with clear rules for what lives in the platform versus other systems.
Overall, Blink is best suited to organizations that need to connect and enable frontline employees at scale. It excels when the priority is fast access to information and tools, reliable reach for important updates, and an experience employees will open during their workday—rather than a traditional intranet built around desks, pages, and logins.
Blink pricing is structured around organization size, with a published starting point for smaller teams and custom pricing for larger deployments. A 14-day free trial and a nonprofit program are also available.
G2: (4.7/5) – Based on 257 reviews
Capterra: (4.7/5) – Based on 127 reviews
Gartner: (4.8/5) – Based on 48 reviews
Unily was built for large, complex organizations that want a centralized intranet platform capable of supporting global scale, multiple business units, and strict governance requirements. It’s designed for enterprises that still see the intranet as a core system, but need it to handle far more complexity than traditional page-based sites can manage.
In practice, teams use Unily to run structured internal communications across regions and roles, while keeping content consistent and controlled. Communications teams publish news, leadership updates, and campaign content with targeting and scheduling built in, so messages reach the right audiences without relying on manual distribution. Social and community features sit alongside this workflow, allowing engagement and recognition without turning the experience into an unstructured feed.
Unily also leans heavily into integration and orchestration. Many deployments use it to access content, tools, and workflows from systems like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace alongside platforms such as ServiceNow, Workday, and Salesforce. On top of that, Unily’s automation layer supports campaigns and employee journeys tied to lifecycle moments, helping comms and HR teams run repeatable experiences without rebuilding the same communications from scratch each time.
Because of its depth, Unily works best when there is clear ownership across communications, HR, and IT, and when teams are prepared to actively manage structure, integrations, and analytics. It’s less about quick setup and more about long-term orchestration, which can be a strong advantage for enterprises but unnecessary for smaller or less complex environments.
Overall, Unily is a strong option for organizations that need an enterprise-grade intranet platform with deep integrations, robust governance, and the ability to support structured communications at scale across a global workforce.
Unily pricing is quote-based and built around modular plans that teams can add based on what they need.
G2: (4.5/5) – Based on 32 reviews
Capterra: (4.6/5) – Based on 23 reviews
Gartner: (4.4/5) – Based on 3 reviews
Haiilo supports mid-market and enterprise organizations that want to run internal communications with more structure than a traditional intranet can comfortably support. It combines an intranet and employee app with communications planning, measurement, and an employee advocacy layer, so teams can plan what goes out, target it to the right audiences, and track impact over time.
In everyday use, Haiilo typically becomes a shared home for both evergreen resources and ongoing updates. Employees get a feed-style experience for news and moments, plus navigable pages and knowledge content for reference. For distributed teams, the mobile app matters as much as the desktop experience, and the platform leans into reach features like targeting and multi-language support to keep content accessible.
Where Haiilo separates itself from legacy intranets is how much it supports communications operations. Teams can work from a calendar, coordinate drafts and approvals, schedule distribution, and use formats like newsletters and digital signage to reach employees beyond the intranet home page. The measurement layer then ties back to what was published, which helps teams move beyond page views and make practical adjustments to content and targeting.
Haiilo also includes an employee advocacy module for organizations that want employees to share approved content externally and measure that reach. And for teams looking to reduce time spent writing and searching, the optional AVA AI layer is positioned to help with tasks like drafting content, conversational search across intranet content, and catch-up summaries for employees who miss updates.
While Haiilo’s breadth is an advantage when organizations want one solution across intranet, comms planning, measurement, and advocacy, it also means a clear rollout plan and governance model are required to keep the experience organized.
Overall, Haiilo is best suited to organizations that want to upgrade from a static intranet into a platform that supports planned communications, measurable engagement, and optional advocacy—especially when the workforce is distributed, multilingual, or heavily mobile.
Haiilo uses quote-based pricing with modular packaging. Most organizations choose the pillars they need, then add integrations and advanced capabilities based on how they plan to use them.
Haiilo’s plans generally start at 500 users, with volume discounts for larger organizations.
G2: (4.6/5) – Based on 289 reviews
Capterra: (4.3/5) – Based on 29 reviews
Gartner: (4.1/5) – Based on 50 reviews
Confluence works best when teams need a dependable place to document processes and project context that must stay accessible over time. It’s often used for runbooks, onboarding material, and project notes in organizations where Jira already plays a central role in planning and delivery.
Instead of acting like a traditional intranet, Confluence supports teams behind the scenes. People write and update content in shared Spaces, use templates to keep things consistent, and link pages directly to Jira issues or projects. That connection helps documentation stay tied to real work, rather than turning into pages that feel out of date as soon as a project moves on.
As usage grows, Confluence often becomes the system teams trust for context. Search, page history, and permissions make it easier to understand what’s current and who owns it, while newer cloud features like whiteboards and simple databases give teams more flexible ways to collaborate without abandoning the page-based model. For many organizations, it’s where knowledge lives long after chat threads and tickets are gone.
It’s also important to consider how the platform is deployed. Most organizations use Confluence Cloud, which Atlassian hosts and updates regularly and where new capabilities are typically introduced first. Confluence Data Center is the self-managed option, often chosen when there are specific requirements around hosting, data residency, or customization. That approach offers more control, but it also requires greater internal IT involvement to operate and maintain.
Confluence works best when employees are comfortable navigating structured spaces and treating documentation as part of their workflow. Teams that rely on it tend to invest in clear ownership, naming conventions, and templates to keep content understandable as it grows. For broader announcements, culture-building, or frontline communication, many organizations complement Confluence with a separate hub designed for reach and engagement.
Overall, Confluence works well for organizations that want a long-lived, structured system for internal knowledge that stays closely connected to delivering work in Jira. When teams commit to maintaining structure and ownership, it provides a stable foundation for capturing and preserving context as work evolves.
Confluence is offered as Cloud (per-user, per-month) with publicly listed tiers, plus Data Center (self-managed) with annual licensing.
G2: (4.1/5) – Based on 4,113 reviews
Capterra: (4.5/5) – Based on 3,637 reviews
Gartner: (4.5/5) – Based on 1,109 reviews
Most legacy intranets weren’t built for how organizations operate today. Over time, they accumulate too many pages, outdated content, and unclear ownership. Employees stop checking the intranet first, and teams fall back on email, chat, and informal workarounds. The result is a system that’s hard to maintain and easy to ignore.
Modern alternatives take a different path. Some emphasize reach and engagement through feed-based communication. Others strengthen the intranet model with better search, automation, and employee listening. Suite-based tools bring intranet access closer to everyday work, while frontline apps focus on mobile access and quick entry to essential systems. What they share is a focus on keeping information current and reducing the effort required to run the platform.
If you want to move away from intranet sprawl without replacing it with another complex system, Jostle is built for that middle ground. It favors clarity over heavy customization and helps teams give employees a reliable place to stay informed and connected—without constant redesign or cleanup.
For organizations that want an intranet alternative people actually use, Jostle offers a simpler, more sustainable way forward.
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Jostle’s employee success platform is where everyone connects, communicates, and celebrates at work. Find out more at jostle.me. © 2009–2026 Jostle Corporation. All rights reserved.
