An intranet built around how your offices work
SharePoint comes with Microsoft 365, and Staffbase, Simpplr, Workvivo and Interact sell intranets to bigger firms. This page shows what each one covers, where a build would fit you better, and what it costs against what you pay now. A first release with the four core features typically costs £3,500–£4,500 and goes live within a month.
£495 for a working prototype in 5 days. It comes off the build.
Next First Gear slot: w/c 19 Oct · 2 of 3 builds booked this month
Is custom worth it for you?
Three questions, and a straight answer.
What intranet solutions do, and who sells them
These are the jobs an intranet usually does, and which of five well-known products offer each one. Press “Need it” on the ones your company needs. If SharePoint already does them for you, you may not need me; if it doesn't, the estimate follows your picks.
| Feature | SharePoint | Staffbase | Simpplr | Workvivo | Interact | Your company |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First release | ||||||
| News for each office and teamAnnouncements shown to the offices, teams or roles they're for | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Staff directoryRoles, managers and contact details, kept in step with your HR system | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Policies and documentsOne library with version history, so the current copy is the one people open | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Yes | |
| One search boxNews, documents and people found from the same place | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Read and acknowledgeStaff confirm they've read a policy, and you see who hasn't | Not listed | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Yes | |
| Request forms and approvalsIT requests, purchase sign-off and cover requests routed to the right manager | Power Automate | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | |
| Phase two | ||||||
| Shift and site staff on their phonesPeople without a desk or a work laptop sign in from their own phone | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Knowledge baseHow-to guides and procedures, kept up by the people who own them | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | |
| Office and department spacesEach office or team runs its own page, files and notices | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Readership figuresWhich announcements were opened, by office, without tracking individuals | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Shout-outsThank a colleague where the whole company can see it | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Pulse surveysShort polls, with results for each site | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
From each product's own site, checked Oct 2026: SharePoint, Staffbase, Simpplr, Workvivo, Interact. SharePoint means SharePoint in Microsoft 365, including its app in Teams; “Power Automate” means you build that part as a flow. A dash means the product's own pages don't list it.
Next: the tools it connects to ↓What I’d build first, and what waits
A first release does one job well: getting the right notice to the right people and letting them find what they need afterwards. That means news by office and team, a directory that stays current, one place for policies and documents, and a search box that covers all three. Those four are ticked already, because an intranet without them gets ignored within a month.
Read-and-acknowledge and request forms can join that first month, which matters the day an auditor asks who has read the new fire procedure. Frontline access, the knowledge base, office spaces, readership figures, shout-outs and surveys follow in a second phase, priced on its own and about a month long.
When internal communications is the main job
If the reason you’re looking is that announcements don’t reach people, the news part does more work. Audiences come from your HR or payroll system, so a notice can go to night-shift staff at two sites, or everyone who joined this year, without anyone keeping a mailing list. A notice marked urgent goes out by push and text as well as on the home page. Announcements to the whole company can need a second person’s approval before they go live, and each one has an expiry date so last month’s car park closure doesn’t sit at the top of the page.
What AI can do here
Where I’d use it on an intranet, with a person still choosing what gets published:
- Answer from your own policies. Someone asks “how many days’ compassionate leave do I get?” and gets the answer quoted from the current handbook, with a link to the page it came from.
- Draft the weekly round-up. It pulls the week’s announcements per office into a short digest for an editor to check and send.
- Spot stale pages. It flags documents nobody has opened in a year and policies that contradict a newer version, so their owners can retire or fix them.
AI never sees HR case notes or anything a page’s permissions would hide from the person asking. I’d add these after launch, once you know which questions staff ask most; expect £1.5k to £5k apiece.
Where your staff already sign in and keep files
Tick the accounts, file stores and systems the intranet should use. Each connection is priced into the first release.
Moving from what you have now
Files. Documents can stay where they are in SharePoint, OneDrive or Google Drive, with their existing permissions. The intranet indexes them for search, so nobody reorganises a shared drive before launch.
Pages and news. Everything worth keeping comes across, priced into the import: past announcements with their dates and authors, policy pages, and the structure of your current menus. Before the import I go through the old intranet with whoever owns each section and agree what to retire, because most intranets carry years of pages nobody reads.
How. Old pages land first on a staging version of the new intranet. Each section owner signs off their own pages against the old one, and I correct whatever they flag before staff are switched over. Leave the old platform readable for a month in case someone needs a page that didn’t come across, and look up your contract’s renewal date early, since intranet contracts usually run a year.
What your current intranet lets you take
From each vendor's own documentation, checked Oct 2026. Where it doesn't say, I've written what I'd ask their support.
I'm on SharePoint
- Files stay in SharePoint or OneDrive if you want them to. The intranet searches them where they are, so nothing has to move.
- News posts and pages can be read through Microsoft Graph with their text, images and author, and I bring them across that way.
- Profiles come from Microsoft Entra ID, so the directory carries on from the same source.
I'm on Staffbase
- Staffbase publishes a News API and a User API, which cover posts and staff accounts.
- Their public docs don't say how pages, files or comments come out. I'd ask support for a full export of those and how long they keep your data after the contract ends.
I'm on Simpplr
- I couldn't find public documentation on exporting from Simpplr.
- I'd ask them for pages, news, files and profiles in a machine-readable format, whether there's an API for it, and the deletion date once you leave.
I'm on Workvivo
- Workvivo's API has endpoints for users, content, spaces, events and reactions, which covers most of what I'd move.
- I'd ask whether documents and comments come out through the same API or as a separate export.
I'm on Interact
- Interact's API reads pages, sections, content items and assets, plus feeds, people profiles and blog comments.
- That's enough to bring pages and documents across with their structure. I'd ask about version history and how long data is kept after the contract ends.
What you pay per head now, and what a build would cost
Enter your headcount and offices. I've started from Microsoft's cheapest business plan for staff who don't have a licence yet; pick your own figure if you've been quoted by another vendor.
£432 a month ex VAT
Breaks even in month 17
The build is the middle of your estimate (£4,000), paid up front. The first month's hosting is free, so the plan starts in month two, and one plan covers every office. Subscription prices are list prices ex VAT and leave out set-up fees and price rises.
What intranet software costs
List prices ex VAT, from each vendor's pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
| Product | Price | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 (SharePoint) | Business Basic £5.40 a user a month on an annual commitment. Business plans cover up to 300 users. | SharePoint is in every Business plan. Most firms already pay for it with email. |
| Staffbase | Quote-based, with separate pricing for frontline staff. | Built around an employee app, email newsletters and digital signage. |
| Simpplr | Quote-based, by size and support needs. | Volume discounts from 500 employees. |
| Workvivo | Quote-based, by number of licences. | Chat and Workvivo TV are sold as add-ons. |
| Interact | Quote-based, by workforce size. | A branded mobile app is an optional add-on. |
When off-the-shelf is enough
If everyone has a desk and a Microsoft 365 licence, start with SharePoint. A home site with news, a document library and a people page covers most offices of up to a few hundred, and you’re already paying for it. A packaged platform such as Staffbase or Workvivo also makes sense when:
- a listing in the App Store and Google Play under your own brand matters to you;
- internal comms is a team of several people who need campaign tools, email newsletters and screens in the canteen;
- you have thousands of staff across countries and need the vendor’s translation and support.
A build earns its keep when many of your staff work shifts or on site without a licence, when you need forms that follow your own sign-off rules, or when the intranet should show figures from systems a packaged product won’t connect to.
Open-source software you could run instead
You can also host free software and change it yourself. These three are maintained and licence-checked, Oct 2026. Each covers part of an intranet well.
- HumHub AGPL-3.0
Good for: A social intranet: spaces for teams and offices, profiles, an activity stream, and modules for files, wikis and calendars.
Missing for you: Professional and Enterprise editions are sold separately. Approval workflows and search across Microsoft 365 or Google files would need building.
- BookStack MIT
Good for: A knowledge base of policies and procedures, with page revisions, roles and permissions, full search, and sign-in through SAML, OIDC or LDAP.
Missing for you: It's a documentation tool: no news feed by office, no staff directory, no forms.
- Liferay Portal CE LGPL-2.1
Good for: Large portals with a site per office or brand, documents and media, and detailed permissions.
Missing for you: A big Java platform. Hosting and upgrades need a developer who knows it, which is heavy for a firm of a few hundred staff.
If you'd rather go open source, I can set it up, host it, connect it to the accounts your staff already sign in with, and build the parts it's missing.
Your intranet plan, ready to keep or send
Everything you ticked, split into a first release and phase two, with a price range for each. Email it to yourself or send it to me.
First release
The first month after kickoff
- News for each office and team
- Staff directory
- Policies and documents
- One search box
Phase two
About a month, after the first release is in use
Nothing picked yet
- First release estimate
- £3,500–£4,500
- Phase two estimate
- None picked
- Break-even on Cruise
- Month 17
Estimates, not quotes: First Gear ends with a fixed price for the first release.
How the estimate works
Each phase starts at £1,500 for what every system needs: logins, hosting, backups and your data imported. Each feature and connection adds £250 to £1,000 depending on its size, and the range is 15% either side of the total. The break-even uses the middle of both phases.
A Monday, before and after
Picture a firm with a head office and four sites; the rows are made up to show the difference.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| 8am | A safety notice goes out by email. Site staff without work accounts hear about it second-hand. | The notice goes to the four sites’ staff on their phones, with a text for anyone who hasn’t opened it by noon. |
| Mid-morning | A new starter asks where the expenses policy is. Three people send three different versions. | They search “expenses” and open the current policy, which shows when it was last changed. |
| Afternoon | A site manager emails a purchase request to two directors and chases it twice. | The request form goes to the right approver by value and comes back signed off in the same thread. |
| Friday | Nobody knows whether the new procedure was read. | The read-and-acknowledge list shows who hasn’t confirmed it yet, by site. |
The rules your intranet has to follow
- UK GDPR. Names, roles and profile photos in a directory count as personal data. The ICO’s guidance on using employment records asks you to weigh sharing against staff’s reasonable expectations and share no more than you need, so I show home phone numbers and birthdays only where the person opts in.
- Monitoring. Readership figures are monitoring if they can be traced to a person. The ICO’s guidance on monitoring workers says you must tell staff about any monitoring, what you collect and why. I report by office by default, and individual read records only for the policies you’ve marked as must-read.
Is the data safe?
A page for the Leeds office is only visible to Leeds staff unless you share it wider, and files keep the permissions they had in SharePoint or Drive. Each edit to a policy keeps the previous version and the editor’s name. Your intranet’s pages and files are encrypted on UK or EU hosting, with a copy kept from every night.
Will people use it?
The home page is built from what people look for in their first week: payslips, holiday, the phone list, the policies they’re asked about. During First Gear a site manager and an office worker use the prototype on their own phones for a day, and whatever they can’t find gets a more obvious place on the home screen.
Other ways to solve it
| Option | Cost | Best for | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Included in plans you may already have | Offices where everyone has a licence | Licences for shift staff add up, and forms mean Power Automate work |
| Intranet platform (Staffbase, Simpplr, Workvivo, Interact) | Quoted per user, usually on a yearly contract | Large firms with an internal comms team | The bill follows headcount, and your own systems may not connect |
| Custom build | A £495 prototype week, a fixed build price, no per-user fee | Staff without licences, your own sign-off rules, several systems to join up | The cost lands in one go, and later pages or forms are a new piece of work |
| Open source (HumHub, BookStack) | No licence fee; a small server plus my install time | A wiki or social intranet you want to control yourself | Upgrades and security patches are yours, and Microsoft 365 or HR connections are extra work |
| Shared drive and email | Free | A single office of a dozen people | Nobody knows which copy is current or who has read what |
Four guarantees, in writing.
They're written into the terms you accept when you pay.
Every build also comes with a 30-day fix guarantee. If something I built doesn't work as the plan describes, I fix it free.
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See it first
You click through a working prototype before you commit to the build, and you keep it either way.
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Fixed price
You pay the price in the build plan. New ideas go into a later phase with its own fixed price. Nothing is billed by the hour.
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On time
If I miss the go-live date in your build plan because of a delay on my side, you get 3 months of Cruise free (£597). If your data, feedback or sign-off is late, the date moves by the same number of days.
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Yours to keep
Code, data and accounts are in your name from day one. Export your data or cancel a plan whenever you like, and ask for a full handover pack.
You'll talk to me
I've built software for over ten years and started ByteGears in 2020. The person on your kickoff call is the person who writes the code. Recent work includes quoting automation for a renewable-energy installer and a cask whisky auction platform with ID and anti-money-laundering checks.
Questions about a intranet build
Is a custom intranet cheaper than SharePoint or Staffbase?
If everyone already has a Microsoft 365 licence, SharePoint costs you nothing extra and a build won't beat it on price. The sums change when a large share of your staff work shifts or on site and would each need a licence or a seat on a per-user platform. Step 3 works it out with your headcount.
How long does it take?
First Gear is 5 days and ends with a working prototype, a fixed price and a go-live date. Most first releases (news, directory, documents and search) are live within a month of kickoff. Forms, spaces and surveys come in a second phase of about a month.
Can it sit on top of SharePoint instead of replacing it?
Yes, and that's often the cheapest route. Your files stay in SharePoint or OneDrive with their permissions, staff sign in with their Microsoft accounts, and the intranet adds the news, directory and forms SharePoint makes hard work.
We already use Teams or Slack. Why add an internal communications platform?
Chat is good for conversations inside a team and poor for announcements to the whole company, which scroll away under everything else. Keep the chat tool. The intranet handles the notices that have to reach a defined group and be provably read, and can post a link into the right Teams or Slack channel when one goes out.
Can staff without a work email use it?
Yes. They sign in on their own phone with a staff number and a code sent by text, and add the intranet to their home screen like an app. I build web apps, so there's no App Store download.
What happens after launch?
I fix anything that breaks for 30 days, and the first month's hosting is free. After that you can stay on a monthly plan (Idle £79, Cruise £199 or Overdrive £449) or host it yourself. You own the code either way.
Let's get the gears turning.
Send me your plan. If First Gear is the right start, I'll reply with a payment link that holds your slot. If an off-the-shelf product would serve you better, I'll name it.