Intranet Choice 2018

In this category, we consider vendors with strong European support hours and an established track record. We expect the products to support multiple languages with ease too.

We were impressed with Omnia as an all-rounder. Its content management environment is easy to use and the product manages to balance SharePoint compatibility without being too constrained by it. Wizdom is another comprehensive product, with a large feature set for the price. Unily is very visible, so likely to be considered by many. Although its approach is different to the majority of products, it has scored consistently well in every report we have done and is evolving to keep ahead.

An honourable mention goes to Hadron, which also scored well and is a popular choice in the UK public sector.

Intranet Choice – North America

For North America, we were looking for a strong local presence and a mature and well-rounded product.

A North-American vendor that has consistently stood out for us is Bonzai in Vancouver. Its designs are attractive, and the product is well pitched for mid- to large-sized organisations. Powell 365 is very versatile and will appeal to companies that want the flexibility to customise an intranet just how they want. Unily, with its global representation, is again worth considering.

Intranet Choice – Multinational Companies

There are many worthy contenders for this category. We put less weight on employee services and analytics because we assume that these will come from dedicated systems. However, we do look for versatility in implementation and integration, management of multiple languages and evidence that they can support large-scale customers.

Both Powell 365 and Akumina offer highly flexible platforms and a very versatile approach to going well beyond a stand-alone intranet. MatchPoint also deserves highlighting for its sophisticated vision.

Intranet Choice – Value

It’s easy to look at the ratings and forget that the price point for some of these products is a big factor. We see a very broad range of prices for what is on offer in our evaluations.

We commend products that have a simple fixed-fee model, such as Attollo, Mercury, and Mesh as these can often work out very good value indeed. For small to medium enterprises Lizard Soft and SP Intranet Portal offer many of the essential features at a good price.

Overall, we feel that Valo stands out for an impressive combination of a well-rounded product and a pricing model that should not be overlooked, especially for larger organisations.

Intranet Choice – User Experience

User experience has so long been overlooked in the intranet world, especially on SharePoint. We feel that products that go to extra lengths to get this right should be highlighted. It is such an important factor in intranet success, yet can so easily get lost as a single line in a tendering process evaluation.

Some highlights for us in the example designs we saw included Habanero Go, Injio, Unily, and Bonzai. However, intranets are not like websites and they should be friendly for site owners and content editors too. Omnia does an excellent job here, but it is Beezy that has really raised the bar. Editing in Beezy is every bit as good as a modern consumer tool like Medium, and just as it should be.

You can find out more about what impressed us with these products by reading our full report. While these intranet products offer great features, you’ll also want to consider the many different products and vendors in the marketplace and factor in your own priorities too.

The SharePoint intranets in-a-box report 2019 (launched November 2018) is our new 600-page detailed analysis, covering 56 intranet products and accelerators for SharePoint and Office 365. Our reviews are completely independent, detail the strengths and weaknesses of each product, and score them systematically, based on eight common business scenarios.

Take a look at our full report now, or request the free executive summary.

The 2018 cover. See our 2019 report now.