r/sharepoint • u/kelkel825 • Sep 08 '26
SharePoint Online Sharepoint for company intranet/comms
The company I work at (approx 200 employees) are seeking out a new intranet. We currently pay for an external platform where some of the links direct back to sharepoint pages anyway and things aren't well synchronised (such as screenshotting a calendar and uploading it to the intranet). It makes sense to move to sharepoint going forward but my concern is whether its going to be user friendly.
We currently use the intranet for blogs/rewards/health & safety updates etc. And we want multiple users to be able to blog on selected sections if they wish.
My question is, has anyone successfully incorporated sharepoint as a successful intranet for communications in their business? Or from your experience, is it better to pay for an external intranet platform for ease.
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u/galamathias Sep 08 '26
Yes many times. But I do also work as a Microsoft/SharePoint consultant. You can really come far with standard SharePoint, and the things that can’t be achieved with standard can be coded as “web parts”. Expect some initial development costs and or costs for advisory, but after that no licenses are required and the intranet can (and should) be maintained by (super) users
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u/blud_13 Sep 08 '26
u/AdjonaTech has the structure right. The piece that will make or break this for you is publishing, since you want multiple people blogging in selected sections.
Home as a communication site, make it a hub, then associate the HR, H&S and department sites to it. News posted on an associated site rolls up to the hub on its own, so a department person authors on their own site and it lands on the home page without you handing them rights to the home page. Turn on page approval on the sites where drafts shouldn't go straight out. MS walks the whole flow at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/guided-walkthrough-set-up-news-with-hub-site
One thing to check, that calendar you're screenshotting. Point an Events web part at the real calendar and that problem goes away permanently.
Where SharePoint annoys people is mobile and search. Authoring is the easy part. Test both with real staff before you cancel the paid platform, because the complaints show up in after you canceled...
Can go deeper on the hub layout if it helps.
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u/ivan_in_oz Sep 09 '26
SharePoint and the other Microsoft 365 apps are ideal as an Intranet platform.
Also, check out Viva Engage for user-friendly blogging. You can set up communities for various audiences and identify people as experts in specific communities.
You can also tag individuals as Leaders to give their posts more visibility.
Viva Engage communities are now visible in Microsoft Teams and there are web parts to display content in SharePoint Online.
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u/jiraiya73 Sep 09 '26
Agree with u/AdjonaTech . I wouldn't replace SharePoint over this. At ~200 employees I'd keep the Communication Site + hub foundation and fix the parts where OOTB starts becoming painful, calendar being an obvious one.
Disclosure: I am the founder of Zenpo. We’ve built our Intranet Suite around exactly that philosophy: stay as close as possible to native SharePoint and extend the weak areas instead of introducing another CMS.
For what you're describing, I'd shop and compare products based on how much they force you to replace versus how cleanly they extend OOTB.
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u/SabbyZeh Sep 09 '26
Oh, SharePoint can very much serve your needs. Do yourselves a solid and develop a sound plan & design on how you are going to execute this. Really think about a holistic structure, comms plans and what you could use SharePoint in the future. AI gave me an assist with developing a Framework for a 250+ user SharePoint for comms/data/collaboration, while considering external collaboration/sharing/comms. Even when creating libraries and lists, give it some thought so it doesn't turn into a wasteland. Best of luck!!
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u/SensitiveBeing2130 Sep 09 '26
Yes we did this at the company that I currently work for. Make sure you set the main intranet as a hub site and set the other department sites as their own sites connected to the hub site (you’ll see this option in the admin console) that way each department has the ability to post their own news and content separate from the main landing page
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u/airsoftshowoffs Sep 09 '26
Yes, SharePoint is made for it. It integrates with the res of your Microsoft environment which is the other big win.
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u/TheWuziMu1 Sep 09 '26
Use SPO as a front-facing intranet, including pages, libraries, and forms. Make sure all info can/should be accessed by all staff. This way you won't have to deal with permissions.
Use Teams for back-facing department and project channels. Train users how to set them up and manage permissions.
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u/GregB-Sodoc Sep 09 '26
200 employees is a good size for SharePoint as intranet. Big enough to justify the setup, small enough that governance doesn't become a full-time job.
On the multi-author blogging: the hub/associated sites model u/blud_13 described handles this well, but the practical piece is training. SharePoint news pages are straightforward once you know them, but non-technical users often hit a wall with the page editor early on. Worth designating one "news champion" per department who owns the site and helps colleagues publish. It keeps quality consistent and cuts down on troubleshooting.
The one honest gap compared to dedicated intranet platforms: engagement analytics. Read tracking exists in SharePoint, but platforms like Workvivo or Staffbase are meaningfully stronger here if leadership needs to know whether people actually read what's published.
For your use case, SharePoint should cover it without the external platform, as long as you invest upfront in IA and training. The orgs where it fails are usually the ones who stood up a site and assumed people would figure it out.
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u/pkops Sep 09 '26
I like Bloom intranet. That’s built on SharePoint. So all content is maintained, protected, created in SharePoint. Users can personalize their start page while the organization keeps control over what everyone sees. https://bloomintranet.com/
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u/que_singado Sep 09 '26
We use Hubley and it’s fantastic! It’s an app natively built on SharePoint.
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u/horsethorn Sep 10 '26
SharePoint certainly can be an excellent basis for an intranet.
If you are looking to replace your external provider, ClearBox have a report on a dozen or so providers that goes into a fair amount of depth.
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u/ghimirek 28d ago
SharePoint is being Used as COmpany Intranet for while. I know I have deployed SP 2010 for Copany Intranet back on 2011. SO yes
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u/OnTheLazyRiver Sep 09 '26
Not worth the hassle in our case. Used Interact software for a few years, before switching to Workvivo. All content still stores in your Sharepoint. Maybe worth exploring before complete SP commitment.
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u/AdjonaTech Sep 08 '26
Yes, SharePoint can work very well as an intranet, particularly when the organisation is already using Microsoft 365.
From what you've described, you should actually be more concerned about the duplication in the current setup than about SharePoint itself. Screenshotting a calendar and uploading it to another platform, while other links simply point back into SharePoint, is exactly the sort of thing you should try to eliminate.
You should look at a SharePoint Communication Site as the main company home site, with separate sites where appropriate for areas such as HR, Health & Safety and departmental content. These can be connected using hub navigation rather than building one enormous site.
You can also delegate publishing so selected users can create news/posts for particular areas without giving them control of the whole intranet.
The important part is the planning: information architecture, permissions, content ownership and governance. A badly structured SharePoint intranet can become frustrating very quickly, but that is usually an implementation/governance problem rather than a limitation of SharePoint itself.
You should first map everything you're currently paying the external platform to do against native SharePoint/Microsoft 365 capabilities. You may find that most of it can already be delivered inside the Microsoft environment, with Power Automate filling some of the workflow gaps.