Feature
Intranets have an image problem. They’re unglamorous and at times considered a throwback or an anachronism. Employees rarely love them and they aren’t even particularly popular with key stakeholders such as internal communicators.
And yet most mid-sized or large organizations have one (or an equivalent employee portal). Enterprises spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. And the intranet software market itself is an estimated $17.4 billion global industry.
Yet they still can't shake off the nagging doubt about how much longer they'll stick around.
Table of Contents
- Rumors of Intranets' Demise ...
- What Do Analysts Say About the Intranet Software Industry?
- What Do Recent Patterns of Investment Show?
- Intranet Software Mergers and Acquisitions
- Could Microsoft SharePoint Own the Industry?
- Intranets Are Alive and Kicking
Rumors of Intranets' Demise ...
Over the years, the arrival of new workplace technology, such as enterprise social networks, has precipitated predictions of the intranet’s imminent demise. But three decades later, intranets remain a part of the digital workplace technology landscape — in part because of their ability to adapt and evolve by incorporating new features, such as social and engagement features.
With the advent of generative AI, there’s once again a potential question mark over the future of the intranet.
The future of any industry is always important. Livelihoods are at stake. Moreover, senior leaders in some business signing off any investment in an intranet need to be confident that the intranet software and the company behind it are still going to be around in five years’ time.
So, what does the future hold for the intranet industry?
This two-part article explores the question from two angles: first, the prospects for the industry based on recent investment patterns, and second, from the current evolution of product roadmaps.
What Do Analysts Say About the Intranet Software Industry?
The intranet software market is mature, with many products to choose from. At a high level, it’s divided into the following product types:
- SharePoint intranets, the most popular intranet technology for well over a decade.
- “In-a-box” products that provides a standalone intranet, usually cloud-based.
- SharePoint “in-a-box” products that sit on top of or alongside SharePoint and add value to it.
- A range of standalone products and add-ons that provide specific intranet tools and features and integrate with SharePoint or other in-a-box products.
The industry has a well-established set of market leaders such as Unily, LumApps, Interact and Staffbase profiled by the big houses in flagship reports such as Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Intranet Package Solutions and Forrester’s Wave for Intranet Platforms.
Analysts are generally positive about the prospects for the intranet industry. Forrester intranet analyst Cheryl McKinnon has reported a growth in the overall user satisfaction of intranets revealed through Forrester’s own research, rising from 66% in 2019 to 84% in 2024.
Other market reports also forecast growth. For example, Verified Market Reports predicts a CAGR of 8.5% between 2026 and 2033 while Research and Markets forecasts a CAGR of 14.5% between 2025 and 2029.
Suzie Robinson, the main analyst behind ClearBox Consulting’s “Intranet and employee experience platforms report” also sees a relatively bright future, at least for the medium-term.
“While we are seeing some long-needed consolidation in the market, overall I think the industry is still healthy,” Robinson said. “There are masses of platforms on the market, and new ones launching all the time.” However, she cautioned that while in the short to medium term the future looked pretty good for intranets in the short- to medium term,beyond this it was hard to tell how the use of AI might affect the industry.
What Do Recent Patterns of Investment Show?
One clue to the state of the industry is to look at investor confidence. Over the past three years, there have been a number of investments involving intranet vendors, suggesting there is confidence in the prospects for the sector:
- April 2023: Zoom (already an investor) acquires Workvivo outright
- May 2023: Simpplr raises $70 million in series D funding
- December 2023: Monterro acquires 80% of Omnia from Precio Fishbone
- May 2024: LumApps sells majority stake to Bridgepoint for $650 million
- July 2025: Oak Engage receives funding from Northedge
Intranet vendor Omnia Intranet received funding from Monterro, a Nordics B2B software investor that has previously invested in the customer experience space with Optimizely (formerly EpiServer) and Umbraco. “Monterro recognized the growing importance of intranets and invested in Omnia with the long-term ambition of positioning us among the top three intranet vendors in Europe and North America,” said Anders Fagerlund, CMO at Omnia.
UK intranet software vendor Oak Engage has been in the industry since the late '90s and recently received investment from the NorthEdge UK private equity firm.
Receiving the backing was an endorsement of the company’s vision, a reflection of the commitment and talent of the Oak team and also a positive indication of the state of the intranet software market, said Will Murray, Oak Engage CEO.
“The investment that Oak Engage has received reflects the growing recognition of the industry as a whole and that connectivity is critical to business success, regardless of job role or location.” said Murray. “Intranets are no longer a ‘nice-to-have.’ Our customers know this and so do we.”
The investment will help Oak Engage enter its next phase of growth “as we scale our capabilities, invest in our people, our product and the experiences we deliver for our customers and their employees,” Murray added.
Employee experience platform (EXP) vendor Unily has also benefitted from recent investment. Investor interest in the sector is in part because intranets and EXPs now make a difference in business areas, said Kaz Hassan, principal, community and market insights, Unily. “We’re not just just seeing investment because intranets are trendy,” said Hassan. “It’s because the problems we solve have become mission-critical in the modern world of work. Leaders are finally waking up to the fact that how employees connect, collaborate and access information directly impacts business outcomes.”
ServiceNow, another popular enterprise software provider, has also entered the space with an intranet-style offering.
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Intranet Software Mergers and Acquisitions
While acquisitions of niche providers are relatively common with intranet vendors, in the past couple of years, some larger mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have happened as a result of investment in the sector. This has led to some consolidation and helped drive competition, by creating new leaders with combined market strength and greater geographic reach and improving existing platforms, especially by integrating complementary products.
Omnia, for example, used some of Monterro’s funding to acquire rival intranet solution LiveTiles. “When Omnia acquired LiveTiles, it was a step aligned with Monterro’s long-term goal,” Fagerlund said. “There were also good product synergies. LiveTiles had particular strengths when it comes to analytics, mobile and frontline and AI, all areas that further strengthen the Omnia platform.”
LumApp’s merger with Beekeeper was another significant transaction in the industry. LumApps offers an advanced intranet platform and Beekeeper is a mobile-first solution aimed primarily at frontline workers. The merger provides obvious synergies between one product primarily focused on desk-based workers and one aimed at deskless employees, with an aim to bring one overall employee experience platform to the organization.
This merger reflects a major shift in the market,” said Cristian Grossman, CEO and Co-Founder of Beekeeper. “The traditional intranet is giving way to something new, something different. What we’re building together isn’t just a better version of the old model. It’s a whole new generation of employee experience that connects everyone, empowers real work and drives impact at every level of the organization.”
Beekeeper is only the latest and biggest LumApps acquisition, and future acquisitions may be in the offing. “M&A remains a core pillar of LumApps’ growth strategy,” said Nadia Cid, director at Bridgepoint, the principal investor in LumApps. “With our support, the company will continue to assess opportunities to accelerate innovation, expand its offering and consolidate its leadership position in a rapidly evolving market.”
One left-field acquisition has been Zoom acquiring social intranet platform Workvivo. Workvivo, based in Ireland, has grown faster by being the preferred replacement platform for the sunsetted Workplace from Meta. It is also available as part of the Zoom Workspace.
The involvement of a big player like Zoom in the intranet world also shows confidence in the space.
Could Microsoft SharePoint Own the Industry?
The intranet software market has one curious characteristic: its relationship with Microsoft and SharePoint. SharePoint has been the dominant base technology for intranets for decades and with an estimated 50% of enterprise intranets based on SharePoint in some way.
How Microsoft evolves SharePoint influences the industry and individual offerings from intranet vendors. SharePoint in-a-box solutions add value to a basic SharePoint intranet, while other independent in-a-box solutions integrate with it. Over the past decade or so, the rise of SharePoint Online has also meant that using SharePoint Online is increasingly an option, even for larger enterprise clients.
This makes SharePoint simultaneously the major enabler of the industry and arguably its biggest risk. As Microsoft has supported more “intranet-ready” features, intranet vendors have been forced to add more value, sometimes pivoting to be fully independent, standalone solutions.
How Do Intranet Vendors and Investors View the Industry’s Reliance on SharePoint?
While it may be compelling to just use SharePoint for your intranet, particularly for teams with in-house skills, intranet vendors' ability to outpace Microsoft in terms of innovating intranet products has reduced much of the associated risk for the sector, Robinson said.
“SharePoint has been the thing that's going to ‘eat the rest of the market’ since I've been working with intranets,” Robinson said. “But the market continues to move and doesn't stand still as SharePoint catches up.” Vendors can still offer an attractive alternative, particularly given SharePoint’s poor reputation among certain groups such as internal communicators, she said.
SharePoint’s evolution has affected vendor revenue, but in other respects it has created the demand for intranet products, said Dan Hawtrey, CEO of Content Formula, which offers the Lightspeed365 intranet product.
“Microsoft is a threat to some vendors in that there are some companies who now look to just SharePoint to implement their intranet,” Hawtrey said. “Microsoft is without doubt eating into that vendor revenue. But a lot of Microsoft’s intranet features still feel half-baked. SharePoint doesn’t really do things like newsletters and subscriptions, or policy management, so Microsoft always opens up opportunities for vendors like us.”
Omnia is another intranet platform influenced by native SharePoint gaps. “We launched our first intranet product in 2008, focused on adding value to SharePoint,” Fagerlund said. “Since then, we have been under the threat that Microsoft might do something that pulls the rug under our feet. But we have learned over the years to constantly understand the gap between what Microsoft delivers and what customers expect, and to bridge that gap.”
The combination of shortcomings in SharePoint and innovation within the vendor space will continue to maintain the industry, Hawtrey said. “As much as I admire them, it is sometimes surprising that Microsoft does not turn out better SharePoint web parts,” he said. “There’s so much more innovation coming collectively from the vendor landscape compared to Microsoft.”
Today it seems the relationship between Microsoft and intranet vendors is now much less of a threat, and more of a mutually beneficial relationship.
For example, Unily has recently developed a closer partnership with Microsoft. “The Unily and Microsoft partnership is stronger than ever — you’ll notice greater strategic alignment, technical innovation and commercial agility,” said Hassan. “We’ve recently launched a Microsoft 365 Graph Connector and Copilot integration, co-developed with Microsoft.” Graph Connector is one of the first native Microsoft 365 connectors developed through the strategic partnership, he said.
Intranets Are Alive and Kicking
Recent patterns of investment, the emergence of new strong market leaders and a sector that has learned to live alongside — and even profit from — SharePoint are signs of a market in good health. The future of the intranet it seems is a lot more assured than those persistent rumors of its death suggest.
But of course there's a twist. Could generative AI spoil the party? In the second part of this article, we'll examine the current product roadmaps for intranets, the emergence of additional services and how platforms are incorporating AI and what all this means for the intranet software industry and the future of intranets.
Editor's Note: Read more on the very much still here intranets space below:
- How to Deliver an Intranet Project in 16 Months — From planning to go-live, this intranet project shows what it takes to meet real employee needs under tight timelines.
- Artificial Intelligence Trends in the Intranet and EX Platform Space — Just because an intranet has an AI feature doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Consider how and where you want to use AI, then vet the platforms.
- How to Move Your Intranet From Good to Great — There are plenty of bad intranets and a fair number of good ones. But great ones remain few and far between. Here's what it takes to achieve greatness.
