It’s a fair question. SharePoint is bundled with Microsoft 365. It’s flexible. It’s powerful. On the surface, it makes sense, but that doesn’t empower your team, or support your organization’s goals.
A well-designed intranet isn’t just a place to store documents. It’s a central hub that connects employees, encourages communication and knowledge sharing, and aligns teams on important company updates.
SharePoint can be customized into an intranet. But the reality can get messy. And expensive.
SharePoint lets you define permissions, build sites, and manage pages at a granular level. The downside? Teams create disconnected spaces, turning your intranet into a maze of silos that frustrates users.
Customization feels empowering, until every department builds its own intranet inside the intranet. The result? A patchwork of designs, navigation, and user flows.
SharePoint security is powerful but complex. It’s easy to over-grant or restrict access, leaving sensitive info exposed or critical updates buried.
When information is buried in folders or scattered across systems, employees waste valuable time searching instead of working, impacting productivity and morale.
Licence costs are just the tip of the iceberg—most companies spend over 8x more on customizations to make SharePoint intranet-ready.
ThoughtFarmer takes an all-inclusive approach. Your subscription covers everything needed to launch and maintain a powerful intranet.
No confusing pricing plans, no consultant fees, no 3rd party add-ons. Every customer gets the full ThoughtFarmer experience.
IT teams and costly consultants are stuck managing routine tasks like publishing content, updating news, and handling permissions.
With ThoughtFarmer, those tasks are handled by the people who own the content, not IT, so teams save time, reduce tickets, and focus on strategic projects instead of maintenance.
Customizations add cost and complexity while relying on experts like consultants, agencies or dedicated hires.
With ThoughtFarmer, everything you need is built in. Powerful features, flexible design options, and integrations come ready to use with no coding or outside help required.
You get a tailored intranet experience without the delays, dependencies, or mounting costs of custom development.
SharePoint might be a good fit if you have dedicated IT resources and in-house developers available to manage and maintain your intranet. It’s best suited for organizations that want deep integration with Microsoft tools, have teams capable of ongoing customization and technical upkeep, and need advanced document management with versioning, metadata tagging, and strict permission controls.
ThoughtFarmer might be a good fit if you have limited IT resources and want a platform that’s easy for anyone to manage with no expertise or coding required. It’s perfect for organizations that use Microsoft tools but want a more intuitive user experience, need predictable budgeting with no hidden costs, and value simple, secure, and user-friendly document management tools.
ThoughtFarmer integrates with Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, pairing a modern intranet alongside your existing Microsoft tools.
Use existing Microsoft IDs to provision and de-provision users, and schedule syncs of all profile fields, groups, and security memberships.
Skip multiple passwords and access your intranet seamlessly using your Microsoft credentials for easy, secure login.
SharePoint can technically function as an intranet, but doing so typically requires significant customization, IT ownership, and third-party tools to fill feature gaps. Most organizations underestimate the time and resources required to make it effective for internal communication and employee engagement.
ThoughtFarmer is a purpose-built intranet platform that can replace the communication, engagement, and knowledge-sharing features you might be trying to build on top of SharePoint. It can also work alongside SharePoint if you want to keep it as a document repository.
ThoughtFarmer integrates with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and Azure AD while offering a more intuitive and engaging user experience.
SharePoint is highly customizable, but this customization work is very costly. When factoring this in, this means SharePoint is typically much more expensive to build and maintain, with longer implementation times, and ongoing reliance on IT or consultants.
That depends on you, and how much content you have. Most ThoughtFarmer customers launch in a matter of weeks, not months or years. The platform comes fully featured out of the box, so there’s no need to build from scratch or go through a lengthy implementation process.
Unlike SharePoint, which is often IT-led, ThoughtFarmer is designed to be owned by business teams like Internal Comms, HR, or Marketing, the people who are closest to the content and communication needs of employees.
While SharePoint licensing is included in Microsoft 365, turning it into a functioning intranet can require costly add-ons, developer time, training, and maintenance. ThoughtFarmer offers transparent, user-based pricing with minimal setup costs and fewer hidden expenses.
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