Enterprise alternatives to SharePoint as an intranet

SharePoint is a web-based platform developed by Microsoft, renowned for its document management and collaboration capabilities. It’s commonly used as a tool to centralize files, enable secure access, and facilitate teamwork across departments. Some of its biggest advantages for large organizations include:

• Microsoft 365 integration – Seamlessly works with Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.
• Document management – Rich version control, permissions, and collaboration tools.
• Brand recognition - SharePoint is well-known and highly regarded amongst IT decision makers

Enterprises tend to value SharePoint’s flexibility and cost efficiency, especially where longstanding enterprise agreements with Microsoft exist. 

Why are enterprises using SharePoint as an intranet?

Sharepoint was the original intranet platform of choice, before purpose-built, out-of-the-box intranets came to market. Its ability to create large, accessible repositories of information, including content libraries, made it a go-to solution at a time when intranet requirements were more basic.

SharePoint’s intranet is also included in most enterprise Microsoft licenses. Given that IT departments are already familiar with the broader solution, this is seen as a convenient solution and procurement teams may perceive there to be a lower risk. In addition, the tight integration with existing Microsoft productivity tools makes it attractive to digital workplace strategists.

With all that in mind, it’s easy to see why some executives feel rolling out a SharePoint intranet is an easy win. 

The limitations: why SharePoint as an intranet doesn’t work

While SharePoint remains a popular choice for document management and team collaboration within the Microsoft ecosystem, its use as a modern intranet platform reveals several limitations. These issues become especially evident when organizations look through the lens of employee experience and organizational agility.

Below are the key challenges associated with using SharePoint as an intranet solution:

Limited out-of-the-box intranet capabilities

At its core, SharePoint was built to serve as a content and document management system, not a purpose-built intranet to serve today’s needs. While Microsoft has layered on intranet-like features over time, they remain secondary to its original function. Organizations often find themselves trying to retrofit SharePoint into a role it wasn’t designed to fill. This leads to usability challenges, gaps in engagement, and a fragmented user experience. It's worth noting that neither SharePoint, or any related Microsoft products, have made it into leading intranet analyst reports such as Gartner's. 

User experience gaps

SharePoint's interface can feel unintuitive when compared to newer platforms designed with employee engagement and usability in mind. It lacks things like personalized user journeys, advanced social collaboration tools, and sleek publishing capabilities that employees increasingly expect. This is a big problem for adoption  – and therefore the ability to impact engagement and productivity at scale.

Frontline worker limitations

One of SharePoint’s most significant blind spots is its limited support for frontline and deskless workers, who make up most of the workforce – 70% in the U.S alone and approximately 2.8 billion people worldwide. These employees often lack corporate email addresses or regular access to desktops, making SharePoint’s authentication and access model problematic.

Change fatigue

Many organizations have struggled with legacy SharePoint implementations that have become overly complex and difficult to maintain. As these intranets age, they often become outdated and lose relevance to employees. This leads to disengagement, governance issues, and a growing burden on internal teams to continually reorganize or re-platform. At a time of rapid change in the business world, this fatigue can become a significant barrier to success.

Complex and costly customization

Delivering a tailored intranet experience with SharePoint often demands extensive customization, which typically requires developer support, prolonged timelines, and significant investment. Even relatively minor changes – such as custom branding – can introduce technical debt and increase IT reliance.

Siloed experience

While SharePoint integrates with Microsoft tools, orchestrating non-Microsoft services and creating a seamless, unified employee experience often requires significant workarounds. This can create a siloed digital workplace, where employees must constantly switch between systems to find information or complete tasks. Interestingly, a study by Unily saw nearly 60% of employees report that digital tools add to their workplace stress.

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Ultimately, while SharePoint may be sufficient for document collaboration within certain teams, it falls short as a full-fledged intranet or employee experience platform. Organizations aiming to deliver a connected and consumer-grade internal experience should consider modern alternatives – ones that are purpose-built to serve today’s diverse and dispersed workforce.

What enterprises should look for in a replacement for SharePoint as an intranet

Enterprises seeking more than document storage and simple workflows need a replacement for SharePoint that elevates engagement, communication, and decision-making. The modern digital workplace is defined by speed and agility. No longer can businesses rely on size or strength to get ahead – the ones able to adapt and pivot at speed are the ones who have the edge.

As a result, they need an intranet platform that acts as a genuinely unifying force – a single source of truth where company news, collaboration, third-party tools, and employee services all converge. This eliminates siloes and aligns teams, no matter how large or dispersed they may be.

Unlike platforms like SharePoint that were adapted for intranet use, purpose-built intranet and EXPs are designed from the ground up to meet the evolving needs of modern organizations.

Here are some of the things a specialist intranet or EXP can bring:

Delivery of personalized content and communications

Modern intranet platforms use smart targeting and user segmentation to deliver highly personalized experiences. Employees can receive updates and resources tailored to their role, location, department, or interests – ensuring relevance and reducing information overload. Whether it’s surfacing training materials for a new hire or sending real-time updates to frontline staff during a crisis, personalization boosts engagement and productivity. Crucially, internal comms teams can do these at speed – without relying on IT for things like building audience lists. 

Capturing employee feedback in real-time

Specialist platforms enable dynamic two-way communication between employees and leadership. Built-in tools like pulse surveys, quick polls, comments, forums, and feedback widgets allow organizations to quickly capture the voice of the employee – and crucially for enterprises, this can be done at scale. This helps HR, internal comms, and business leaders stay connected to sentiment on the ground, identify pain points early, and drive a culture of transparency.

Deep integrations with more than Microsoft

Today’s digital workplace relies on a diverse mix of tools and platforms – ranging from Slack to ServiceNow, Workday to Google Workspace. Specialist intranet solutions are built to integrate seamlessly with this broader ecosystem, streamlining employee workflows. This breaks down silos, reduces app fatigue, and empowers people to access what they need – when and where they need it – without hopping between platforms.

Enabling rapid, global decision-making

In an era of hybrid work and global workforces – speed  is a competitive advantage. A modern intranet platform supports quick, informed decision-making by surfacing critical information in context. This leads to faster approvals and a more agile approach to decision-making. With mobile-first design and multilingual support, these platforms ensure that even employees who aren’t at HQ or at a desk can contribute and act in real-time.

At Unily, we work with HR and IT leaders at some of the world’s largest brands. From the conversations we have, their priorities are clear: foster engagement, break down barriers, and enable every employee to perform and contribute to business goals.

The right intranet is not just another IT system – it becomes a lever for productivity and cultural transformation.

Five options for enterprises seeking a SharePoint alternative

Below, we break down five leading SharePoint intranet alternatives, along with key pros and cons to facilitate your decision-making.

1. Unily

Unily is an award-winning, enterprise-grade employee experience platform designed from the ground up for large, complex organizations. With over 20 years’ expertise, Unily is regarded as a best-in-class intranet vendor – the only one to be consistently named as a Leader by all three major analysts.

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Unily actually began as a SharePoint consultancy. It therefore has an in-depth understanding of the challenges of SharePoint as an intranet – and deep experience in migrating organizations away from it.

It also integrates with Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, Workday, and hundreds of other enterprise applications, making it a powerful replacement for SharePoint. But Unily’s capabilities go far beyond document management. They include:

• Personalized digital experience: Deliver relevant news, resources, and communities to each employee – no matter their location or device.
• Seamless integration: Surface documents from SharePoint and other repositories – but with Unily as the cohesive digital front door.
• A groundbreaking Microsoft 365 Graph Connector and Copilot integration - one of the first of its kind and developed with Microsoft. Watch the launch video at Microsoft Build!
  
• Advanced communications and analytics: Boost engagement through broadcast channels, social features, and powerful analytics for continuous improvement.
• Frontline friendly: Mobilize deskless and frontline employees with dedicated mobile experiences, employee apps, and workflows.
• Fast deployment: Cloud-native, with proven rollout methodologies for even the biggest enterprises.

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2. Staffbase

Staffbase is a well-regarded platform for internal communications and employee engagement, focusing especially on organizations with complex communication needs and large frontline bases. Its mobile-first design and advanced campaign management allow communications teams to deliver multi-channel updates without IT dependency.

3. Workvivo

Workvivo blends the functionality of an intranet and a social network, prioritizing employee engagement, recognition, and internal culture. Enterprises looking to build a sense of community and showcase company values see Workvivo as a solid option.

4. LumApps

LumApps positions itself as a knowledge and culture hub that connects teams and surfaces tailored news. Recognized for its flexibility, LumApps offers good support to organizations with diverse structures.

5. Simpplr

Simpplr stands out for its ease of use, and strong governance automation – useful for enterprises looking for a secure intranet platform. With a simple, low-code approach, Simpplr enables business teams to own the intranet experience end to end.

SharePoint intranet alternatives: How Unily empowered frontline success at Kerzner international

Kerzner International transformed into an agile organization by centralizing communication, knowledge, and digital tools for a global 15,000-strong workforce that’s 70% frontline. This was achieved with the launch of iKonnect, a mobile-first employee experience platform built on Unily.  

iKonnect enables seamless access to news and applications – connecting chefs, housekeepers, and call center staff directly to the organization’s culture and operations for the first time. Operational processes have also been modernized, with tools like Excel spreadsheets transformed into live FAQ portals, and everything from HR access to maintenance requests being streamlined and centralized.

Through Unily’s personalization and multilingual capabilities, iKonnect delivers tailored experiences to people based on which of Kerzner’s brands they work for – as well as their location, language, and interests. This has eliminated the digital noise and fragmentation that previously slowed performance.

With a commitment to 'doing business at an emotional level', Kerzner was also keen to foster a strong sense of community and connection to the bigger picture. iKonnect has enabled them to achieve this – with frontline staff equipped and inspired to deliver the luxury service customers expect, at high speed.

Why best-in-class, specialist intranets matter

When considering SharePoint intranet alternatives, decision-makers must look at both feature lists and business impact.

Does your intranet unite the business and help it move at the speed today’s world requires? Can it facilitate all employee experiences, not just document workflows? Does it enable productivity as well as compliance?

Specialist intranets have spent decades refining the art and science of the digital employee experience – bringing together communications, knowledge, process, and community into one cohesive platform. This is the foundation for a modern, agile enterprise where change is embraced and every employee thrives.

Key considerations and practical frameworks for EX leaders

If you’re looking for a replacement for SharePoint, here are some of the key things to keep in mind.

• Map employee journeys across all roles – how will the intranet support every step, from onboarding to exit?
• Prioritize content targeting and engagement metrics – is your current solution tailored to roles, functions, and locations?
• Evaluate governance and self-service capabilities – can your stakeholders manage content without IT bottlenecks?
• Assess integration needs across your ecosystem – is the platform streamlining your tech stack, or adding another layer of complexity?
• Consider security, compliance, and data residency for global operations.
• Benchmark deployment speed and ability to adapt with business needs – choose a partner, not just a vendor.

Unifying your tech, tools, and talent – at scale

Enterprises that want to elevate the employee experience must demand more than rebranded document management or piecemeal digital hubs. As employees become used to best-in-class digital experiences as consumers – the bar for intranet technology has been raised.

Today’s platform must be able to unify your tech, tools, and talent. Crucially, it needs to do this with enterprise-grade security, and at the scale large organizations require.

If you’re assessing SharePoint intranet alternatives, start by analyzing the requirements of your business and your people. While SharePoint has its undeniable strengths in document management, organizations who are committed to driving performance know that a bolder and more specialist approach is needed for the employee experience. 

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