SharePoint intranet-in-a-box products compared
Please see our current version for download details.
We’ve reviewed Unily, Bonzai, Wizdom, ElevatePoint, Attini, and Hadron
Microsoft SharePoint is the most popular technology for building a corporate intranet, but it has never been marketed as such. Instead, SharePoint has been positioned as a platform on which organisations could build an intranet if they wished.
Many organisations have done just that, only to find it more expensive and risky than they expected. SharePoint, while feature rich, is not easy to use by people expecting a website-like experience.
Content owners and end-users alike usually find that SharePoint alone does not offer an ideal way to manage and publish internal communications, nor does it offer an easy, attractive, user experience. The idea of buying an intranet ‘out-of-the-box’ and quickly installing it on top of SharePoint is very appealing, and several agencies have produced capable solutions.
We’ve put together an assessment of several of the solutions on offer, using eight common scenarios based on our years of experience in SharePoint consulting. Because we focus on the business side of SharePoint and don’t sell any products, we are able to give you a genuinely independent evaluation. Our free report assesses the following SharePoint add-ons:
- Attini News by Rapid Circle
- Bonzai by Dynamic Owl
- ElevatePoint News by Goldwater Software
- Hadron8020 by Cloud2
- Unily by BrightStarr
- Wizdom by Webtop
These intranet tools for SharePoint help you develop and deploy your intranet in a matter of weeks, rather than months. By relying on a third party solution, you can simplify the overhead of customising SharePoint, allowing for easier upgrades. However, the convenience can also mean a trade-off with flexibility. The scope of what the products cover varies widely too, so we hope this guide will help you find the best value match for your needs.
While Microsoft continues to improve SharePoint Online and Office 365, rolling out new features, apps, and better design, there’s no indication that they will create anything intranet-like any time soon. So if you need to improve your current SharePoint intranet, the ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions in our report are well worth considering.
