Jostle Blog: Explore Employee Success Insights & Ideas

The 10 best intranet software for your organization

Written by Gabe Scorgie | Sep 22, 2022 9:27:54 PM

When organizations are looking for the best intranet software, they’re often looking for a tool that will help their employees connect to their organization’s culture and values, help them get their work done, and celebrate their accomplishments.

At their best, intranets claim to do just that. They act as a central internal comms hub where people stay in touch and find the resources they need. They’re supposed to connect and engage employees, so it’s no wonder organizations want to add an intranet to their toolbox.

In this article, we’ll go through the best intranets on the market, what sets them apart from the competition, and their pros and cons. Although we are obviously biased towards our own platform, we have some expertise in the field that we feel is worth sharing. No software is perfect, and some may suit certain use cases better than others. So we’ll also be including key differentiators between products to help you decide which one best fits your organization.

Table of Contents 

The top intranet platforms for your organization

  1. Jostle
  2. Simpplr
  3. Igloo
  4. Happeo
  5. Work from Meta
  6. Staffbase
  7. Workvivo
  8. Blink
  9. Microsoft Sharepoint
  10. ThoughtFarmer

The best intranet software...might not be an intranet

 

The top intranet platforms for your organization

 

1. Jostle

 

Jostle helps people connect, communicate, and celebrate together. 

With your whole organization in a single place, employees can easily understand what matters, quickly get the information and support they need, and be recognized each step of the way. The result? Happier employees, lower turnover, and higher productivity. 

Jostle is your go-to place to get work done. You can assign tasks, collaborate together using popular apps like Google Workspace and Office 365, and keep track of who’s working on specific projects at any given time. Coming together as a team is easier than ever.

Jostle also helps employees become active participants in your organization’s culture by giving them the tools they need to shape it. Employees want to see real, meaningful values in action, and Jostle enables you to share stories, celebrate workplace successes, and come together around a common sense of purpose.

Best features:

  • Share news and event
  • A single place to grow your culture
  • Powerful employee directory to easily find the expertise you need
  • Powerful org chat to find the resources and people to get work done

Key differentiators: 

  • Not structured like an internal website, solving the clutter and noise problems intranets consistently run into
  • Deep integrations with Google Workplace and Office 365 so that document access is easy to control and stays in sync
  • Uses a simple but powerful framework to drive employee success through engagement, enablement, and celebration

Common complaints:

  • Does not work like a traditional intranet
  • Easy to configure, but cannot be deeply customized

Book a demo to see how Jostle can help your organization embrace employee success.

 

2. Simpplr

Simpplr is, well, simple. At its core, it combines a traditional page-based intranet with a digital newsroom. Employees can learn about each other via a people directory and share work progress and comments using social feeds, enhancing employee engagement. This allows teams to connect and align, no matter where they are. 

Businesses enjoy how simplistic the software can be. 

Best features:

  • Simple UI with lots of white space
  • Users can configure their own homepage
  • Promotes social interaction

Key differentiators: 

  • Deployed on top of the Salesforce CRM
  • Allows departments to have their own intranet sites

Common complaints:

  • Encourages sites within sites, leading to information silos and complex navigation
  • Hard to find information on your phone
  • Evergreen knowledge gets mixed in with passing news
  • Google Workplace and Office 365 links can get broken when employees leave
  • Page view permissions are not kept in sync with repository file permissions

 

3. Igloo


Igloo is a traditional page-based intranet that can be customized to meet your specific needs. It comes with a wide selection of widgets, as well as a good selection of templates tailored for very specific use cases. 

Best features:

  • Pre-designed page templates with the ability to customize
  • SharePoint integrations
  • Responsive customer service

Key differentiators: 

  • In-app ability to translate content when publishing
  • Bi-annual conferences that allow users to see how others are using the software
  • Content moderation workflow allows employees to seamlessly submit articles and wait for others to edit and approved the content

Common complaints:

  • The large variety of widgets results in some usability issues
  • Aggressive notifications that cause employees to tune out
  • Takes a long time to configure and launch
  • When highly customized, can be hard to maintain

 

4. Happeo

Happeo is a social intranet designed and optimized to work alongside Google Workspace. Their intranet pages use widgets as places to put information, which makes knowledge sharing easier. 

Their Google Workspace integration allows organizations to tie their intranet to their Google Directory. Employees that choose to grant Google access can share file links and access their Gmail and Google calendar directly from Happeo.

Best features:

  • Analytics (including search, influencer and engagement analytics)
  • Users can configure their own home page
  • Quick access to the user’s Google Workspace functions

Key differentiators: 

  • Designed to work alongside Google Workspace
  • Ability to view and edit Google files in-suite
  • In-platform access to Google translate
  • Multiple social feeds

Common complaints:

  • Takes time to design and setup information architecture
  • Information gets siloed on department pages and feeds
  • Navigation can get complex across many pages
  • Files are in widgets scattered across pages
  • Files are shared via links to Google Drive, such that file access and page access are not synced

 

5. Workplace from Meta

Imagine Facebook for your organization. That’s essentially what Workplace offers, with a few bonuses like a knowledge library and live chat to give it that social intranet spin. Users can also share videos, talk in groups, and post news stories to keep everyone up to speed with what’s happening within the organization.

Best features:

  • Live video chats 
  • Knowledge library 

Key differentiators:

  • Feels very similar to Facebook
  • Workplace Chat can be set to Do Not Disturb, allowing for focused work
  • Built-in video call for meetings of any size

Common complaints:

  • Expensive for what it is
  • Too many notifications
  • Hard to find what you’re looking for
  • It’s just Facebook and not a full-function intranet
  • Some employees don’t trust Meta with their data

 

6. Staffbase


Staffbase is a page-based intranet optimized for internal communications in larger organizations. It allows the internal communications department to create, publish, and analyze internal communications and push them through multiple channels. Staffbase is a mobile-first intranet and users aren’t required to provide an email address or phone number to get started.

Best features:

  • Branded mobile app
  • Easy-to-send internal communications
  • Integrated leave requests

Key differentiators:

  • Email analytics show heatmaps, open, and click through rates.
  • Newsletter tool gives users the ability to send weekly email blasts

Common complaints:

  • Too many notifications, particularly via email
  • Mobile access to knowledge documents via search only
  • Documents must be downloaded and cannot be viewed in situ
  • Information gets siloed on department pages and feeds
  • Navigation can get complex across many pages

 

7. Workvivo


Workvivo aims to engage employees by connecting them to their workplace culture. It’s a modern social intranet focused on internal communications and employee experience. Their simple onboarding and integrations make it easy to get started.

Best Features:

  • Simple onboarding
  • Modern user interface
  • Auto-translation of content

Key Differentiators:

  • Facebook-like design
  • Zoom integration for live streaming
  • Relatively easy for large companies to launch
  • Strong mobile app

Common complaints:

  • Complex navigation and too many notifications
  • Information gets siloed on department pages
  • Document library has limited functionality
  • Weak Google integrations
  • Limited ways to communicate with team members

 

8. Blink

Blink is a mobile-only intranet software focused on frontline organizations looking to better engage their staff. The software allows for content to be ghost published, meaning that people can make posts on behalf of a group. Their knowledge hub is a single place for organizations to store policies, procedures, and more. They also offer dashboards custom-tailored to specific industries. 

Best Features:

  • Industry-specific dashboards
  • Ghost publishing
  • Knowledge hub

Key differentiators:

  • Simple, mobile-only feature set
  • Main features prioritize non-desk workers
  • Built in single-sign-on (SSO)

Common complaints:

  • Hard to find updated information
  • Document library has limited functionality
  • News feed is difficult to follow
  • Search functionality is lackluster

 

9. Microsoft SharePoint


Microsoft SharePoint is one of the oldest and most well-known intranet software on the market. SharePoint is toolbox that facilitates the building of highly customized, page-based, intranets. SharePoint allows teams and departments to have their own sub-intranets to share files and resources according to their own needs and preferences.

Best features:

  • Highly customizable
  • Strong file management features
  • Ability for each department to create its own site

Key differentiators:

  • Deep integration with the rest of Microsoft’s tools and systems
  • Dedicated space for users to securely upload data and restrict access from other users

Common Complaints:

  • Expensive to setup and maintain
  • Requires expertise to configure and maintain
  • Slow when loading pages
  • Hard to navigate and find what you’re looking for
  • Information gets siloed on department pages

 

10. ThoughtFarmer

ThoughtFarmer is a classic, page-based intranet. It’s surveys, workflows, and content management system helps organizations streamline their internal communications. Organizations focused on data collection tend to get the most out of their software. And as a company with security top of mind, they provide the option to self-host their software onsite.

Best features:

  • Straightforward to use
  • Responsive customer service
  • Good at sharing images and videos

Key differentiators:

  • Built-in forms creator
  • On-prem installation available

Common complaints:

  • Difficult to integrate with other software
  • Limited ability to customize
  • Limited analytics
  • Integrations to file management systems is limited to links

 

The best intranet software... might not be an intranet

Many of the best intranets are still page-based. They’re just websites in disguise—a collection of static pages that quickly fall out of date and can’t keep up with your ever-evolving organization. Even the ones that aren’t page-based still can’t be updated fast enough. It doesn’t take long before your lean, efficient intranet becomes a cluttered mess filled with outdated pages, inconsistent designs, and a barrage of notifications. (Just look at how often people complain about how hard it is to find what they need on their organization’s intranet). 

When employees struggle to find what they’re looking for and get overwhelmed by notifications, they’ll tune out your intranet entirely. 

We’re biased towards Jostle because our software replaces intranets and becomes the single source of truth across your entire organization. We’re not page-based. You can update existing documents easily, without creating clutter. And you can tailor notifications to specific teams so people are not overwhelmed with irrelevant notifications. 

At the end of the day, you want software that engages your employees, enables them to get their work done and bring teams together to celebrate their hard work. That might require going beyond intranets and using a platform that unites your organization and focuses on employee success.