Report:

Magic Quadrant for Intranet Packaged Solutions

Top Vendor Products for Intranet Packaged Solutions in 2023

• Firstup
• Interact
• LumApps
• Simpplr
• Staffbase
• Unily
• Workvivo

Intranet Packaged Solutions Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

• Firstup - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Firstup's strong marketing strategy, business model and focus on customer experience has enabled it to quickly and effectively enter the IPS market from the enterprise communications applications market.
  • Innovation practices that deliver new employee experiences, most recently involving GenAI, help Firstup create value for both communicators publishing information and employees who can interact with that information across channels and touchpoints.
  • Partnership with a variety of technical service providers and consultancies has helped Firstup offer a variety of choices for those seeking an implementation partner.

  Cons:

  • Firstup's experience lags behind some other IPS vendors for use cases like employee services and application portals. Organizations with intranet aspirations beyond employee communications and engagement and knowledge services may find it limiting.
  • Firstup's operations and market presence is predominantly in North America, with some additional presence in Europe. Organizations centered elsewhere should carefully examine support and hosting accommodations in their region.
  • Large customers seeking to develop sophisticated and differentiated intranets may find Firstup less-equipped with necessary platform extensibility and integration capability.


• Interact - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Customers praise Interact for its understanding of their goals and requirements during the sales and deployment process. Interact is well-regarded for its willingness to share the details of its technical foundations with organizations focused on platform assurance and compliance.
  • Interact demonstrates clear market understanding and knowledge of the industries that it specializes in. It also has a good grasp of different user personas and shows the ability to cater to organizations that have many frontline workers, as well as desk-based staff.
  • Interact is well-regarded for its ability to innovate; it has developed several powerful GenAI features, such as sentiment analysis for new content.

  Cons:

  • Organizations headquartered outside of North America and Western Europe may be better served by vendors who have a more localized presence and understanding.
  • Organizations looking to cover intranet use cases that fall outside of the verticals that Interact specializes in may find that their needs can be better understood and supported by another IPS vendor.
  • Interact's sales strategy focuses on larger enterprises with 2,500 employees or more. Many of its new customers are substantially larger, with more than 100,000 employees. As Interact grows, smaller organizations may find that some of their needs are deprioritized.


• LumApps - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Much of LumApps' recent innovation focuses on the end-user experience itself. It provides an employee hub to help employees manage their attention and tasks through nudges and notifications, and offers assistants that render cumbersome cross-application processes into conversations.
  • LumApps offers a simple and intuitive interface, allowing users to operate in Writer, Builder or Advanced modes, none of which require advanced technical expertise.
  • LumApps does not depend on a foundational product like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, even while it can integrate with either. This eliminates the need for a heavyweight suite, which may make the IPS less flexible.

  Cons:

  • Some customers report requiring a greater-than-expected development, deployment and design effort when using LumApps. As a highly extensible platform, it is often best-equipped for organizations with complex requirements.
  • With some of its features replicating those on Microsoft 365 or Microsoft's roadmap, LumApps' trajectory may raise conflict for some organizations. The functional redundancy creates additional work for customers, who must define and demarcate the roles of products and vendors.
  • LumApps lacks a definitive vertical industry orientation or solutions, preferring to focus on use cases it sees as universal across industries. Organizations needing to support industry workflows, regulations or workforce types may benefit from an IPS vendor offering solutions geared for and proven in their industry.


• Simpplr - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Simpplr has incorporated technology innovation rapidly, in a controlled, deliberate way, to quickly expand its applicability to use cases and personas. Many organizations find it 'simple' to acquire, deploy and use.
  • Simpplr customers show greater awareness and adoption of product capabilities than customers of many other competing solutions.
  • Simpplr is reported to be adopted more frequently than most other providers across office and frontline worker use cases.

  Cons:

  • Simpplr is packaged and configurable by design, but that leaves some organizations, particularly those looking to innovate and develop on their own, feeling restricted.
  • Simpplr's business is concentrated in the U.S., and its presence in Europe is relatively small. Organizations outside the U.S. should ensure there is adequate local support for their needs.
  • Organizations with industry-specific requirements, standards and regulations may not find Simpplr a fit.


• Staffbase - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Staffbase's integration with Microsoft applications and development tools strengthens its appeal for organizations looking for a complementary IPS that focuses on employee communications.
  • Staffbase's multichannel communication heritage, along with an expanding collection of IPS capabilities, has proven valuable to organizations looking beyond a destination intranet toward a more pervasive, multichannel approach.
  • Staffbase has long treated frontline workers as a priority from a design and customer engagement standpoint, so it's well-equipped to support organizations with employee segments across office, plant, retail and other frontline environments.

  Cons:

  • Organizations that seek an intranet that offers stronger customization, development and support for diverse use cases might find Staffbase less suitable than other offerings.
  • Staffbase focuses mostly on serving organizations in Europe and North America. Organizations based in regions where Staffbase lacks a strong presence may feel better-served by region-based vendors with a nearby physical presence.
  • Staffbase lacks a vertical industry strategy, instead targeting organizations with a mix of frontline and office workers — no matter the industry.


• Unily - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Unily's platform extensibility offers wide-ranging components, from templates to preconfigured integrations. Those qualities, along with numerous prebuilt connectors and federated modules, equip it better than most IPSs to unify multiapplication experiences.
  • Unily demonstrates its dedication to innovation as it applies real-life, emerging concerns for enterprises and their customers. For example, it offers AI content summarization and offline reading for frontline workers with no data connection.
  • Unily's external knowledge and community platform, called Universe, can be extended in combination with customers' intranet and used for ideation, learning and knowledge exchange.

  Cons:

  • Unily's support for work and task management is not as comprehensive as some competitors in this research. Buyers focused on frontline and hybrid worker experiences may find Unily less suitable when looking to combine communication and work activities.
  • Some Unily customers report slower-than-expected customer support.
  • Unily has invested less heavily than its main competitors in an ecosystem of implementation partners outside of North America. Decision makers should ensure that sufficient program resources are available in all required regions.


• Workvivo - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Workvivo is one of the few IPS vendors with a strong employee community capability that can support the needs of internal communications and HR teams in their efforts to promote employee resource groups (ERGs).
  • Workvivo has demonstrated a strong role as an employee-centric alternative to a traditional intranet, while avoiding conflict with customers' existing investments in productivity, collaboration and work management tools.
  • Zoom's well-known brand, along with its ecosystem, is giving Workvivo a significant boost in overall viability and market awareness.

  Cons:

  • While the Zoom acquisition opens new capabilities and integrations into synchronous use cases, organizations strongly committed to Microsoft and Microsoft Teams may raise this as a risk factor related to potential bundling and co-dependencies.
  • Workvivo is largely present in North America and Europe. While Zoom has a larger global presence, organizations in regions where Workvivo has less adoption may prefer to assess other options, including local providers.
  • Organizations looking for intranet options that are contextualized around verticals may find Workvivo lacking nuance in support of their industry-specific requirements.


• Akumina - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Akumina's extensible platform, combined with its customizable UI, appeals to larger organizations with complex requirements and a desire for differentiated user experiences.
  • Akumina benefits from its strong integrations with Microsoft 365, including services such as SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams. This enables organizations to utilize their existing Microsoft investment while benefiting from Akumina's IPS functionality.
  • Akumina's flexibility, combined with its tiered pricing structure, will benefit large and growing organizations. Additionally, its add-on subscriptions and ability to self-host will appeal to organizations that require greater control or have strict data residency requirements.

  Cons:

  • Organizations that are looking for an out-of-the-box solution may face an unexpected design, development and integration effort. While Akumina benefits from flexibility, it is best aligned to organizations with sophisticated goals and requirements.
  • Akumina lacks a mature vertical industry strategy. While this is partly by design, as the platform is intended to support organizations in many industries, organizations requiring accommodations for industry-specific requirements may need support from third-party systems integrators or consultants.
  • Akumina focuses on large organizations with a substantial investment in Microsoft 365. Smaller organizations or organizations that do not have an investment with Microsoft are unlikely to be a good fit.


• LiveTiles - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • LiveTiles' deeper integration with the Microsoft Azure global network allows it to bring customers a wide array of applications.
  • LiveTiles Reach, an employee-centric, mobile-first application allowing targeting and personalization based on employee-driven subscription, channels, keywords and groups, represents an improved mobile experience that translates to better support for frontline and hybrid work scenarios.
  • LiveTiles has a more extensive geographic presence than most other vendors in this research, with a significant presence in North America, Europe and APAC, and an ecosystem of implementation partners in other regions, including the Middle East.

  Cons:

  • LiveTiles defers a substantial portion of its search capability and applications, such as planning and collaboration, to an array of Microsoft tools and platforms. Thus, prospective buyers may need to justify the value that can be garnered from LiveTiles, versus assembling and building their intranet using Microsoft directly.
  • LiveTiles has an inconsistent track record of integration when acquiring technologies for complementary capability. Prospective customers should ensure their selection process includes role-based demos and discussions with existing customers to ensure integration among LiveTiles' capabilities meets their expectations.
  • Some LiveTiles customers report that deployment and administration often requires hard-to-find, specialized expertise.


• MangoApps - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • MangoApps blends intranet, communications and community into an engagement hub that enables organizations to combine internal communications and IPS needs with employee communities supporting employee resource groups (ERGs), such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and sustainability.
  • While MangoApps' broad mix of capabilities satisfies a range of intranet use cases, its concentrated focus on mobile experiences enables it to address frontline workers' needs, such as access to payroll, time off, shift, benefits and similar applications. IPS vendors focused on employee communications and engagement rarely provide this capability.
  • MangoApps has demonstrated a differentiating ability to adjust to quickly changing market demands. Effective synchronization between marketing and sales execution enables MangoApps to sense shifts in customer needs and respond quickly.

  Cons:

  • While MangoApps is expanding its technical capabilities to handle a variety of frontline worker needs, buyers may find that it lacks experience and partner relationships in some industry sectors.
  • MangoApps increasingly targets and focuses on organizations with frontline worker requirements. Customers whose workforce is primarily office workers may prefer a vendor more focused on their needs.
  • Although serving many global organizations, most MangoApps customers are based in North America. Organizations headquartered in other geographies must assess MangoApps' ability to address their region-specific requirements.


• Powell Software - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Powell demonstrates a strong market understanding and a clear focus. It is well-suited for organizations that have adopted Microsoft 365 as the foundation of their digital workplace.
  • Powell has expanded its core product strategy to meet common challenges in the wider digital workplace. It provides a Microsoft 365 governance function that can manage Microsoft Teams and mitigate the risks of sprawl.
  • Powell's customers praise its support model and customer service, while highlighting the platform's usability and strong integrations with Microsoft 365.

  Cons:

  • Powell Software is a relatively small organization employing a partner ecosystem to expand from Western Europe to North America and other regions. Prospective customers must determine whether Powell's regional experience and partner model meets their preferences and operational requirements.
  • Powell serves relatively a small number of large, multinational organizations. Prospective customers should ensure that Powell and its partners have adequate experience and resources to ensure successful and scalable implementation and ongoing use.
  • Powell's dependence on a rapidly evolving Microsoft digital workplace portfolio raises the dual challenge of ensuring its products' continued compatibility and providing value beyond Microsoft itself. History has been unkind to IPS vendors, and their customers, that have been unable to keep pace.


• Appspace - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Appspace's orchestration of employee experience across the digital and physical workspace is differentiating. Investments in connecting with physical workplace systems and IoT (from digital signage to resource scheduling) are more advanced than those of other vendors in the IPS market.
  • The product requires very little customization. Designed with corporate communications as its primary user, Appspace Intranet is a ready-to-go experience for employees to engage in corporatewide, localized, team and personal experiences.
  • Appspace Intranet is highly regarded for usability. Technology like AI, analytics and personalization are put into the hands of business users through a persona- and journey-based design approach.

  Cons:

  • The downside of Appspace's highly packaged product approach is a relative lack of customizability and extensibility, compared to some other providers.
  • Appspace Intranet requires third-party support to enable substantial analytics capability. Advanced analytics for engagement, content, sentiment and voice of employee analysis rely largely on separately licensed third-party products from Microsoft or other vendors.
  • Appspace's customer base is relatively small in terms of overall numbers of customers, though it tends to serve larger organizations than many of its competitors. Some organizations may prefer a stronger IPS-focused customer and support ecosystem.


• Axero - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Axero's customers value the product's reliability and express confidence in Axero's responsiveness and commitment to product development.
  • The product is well-regarded for its versatility, customizability and interoperability on multiple levels. It includes a robust set of APIs, as well as a highly configurable front end.
  • Axero offers differentiated capabilities without additional cost, including a case management and ticketing platform that can be used for IT and business service scenarios.

  Cons:

  • Axero has been slower to exploit technology innovation in areas like GenAI and engagement analytics than other vendors in this research.
  • Axero's marketing and sales efforts have not yielded significant market presence. Our research indicates low customer awareness of Axero, both inside and outside of Gartner's client base, even when the product is a good fit.
  • Axero's nearly exclusive reliance on internal resources for sales, implementation support and professional services limits its potential for growth and expansion, as well as the availability of expert resources for customers.


• Haiilo - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Haiilo Modern Intranet customers benefit from an intuitive, simple UI for communicators, while giving employees control of their own experience.
  • Haiilo has a simple and economical pricing model compared to most other providers in this research.
  • Haiilo's strong operations instill customer confidence in its reliability and potential for growth. The vendor makes higher-than-average investments in engineering and design, fosters a strong and active customer community to extend support, and achieves good employee satisfaction ratings.

  Cons:

  • Haiilo's sales and marketing efforts have failed to garner market awareness or growth outside of Western Europe.
  • Haiilo demonstrates more commitment to the employee communications and engagement use case than other intranet use cases.
  • Haiilo addresses use cases it regards as universal across industries. Organizations needing to support industry workflows, regulations or workforce types may benefit from an IPS vendor offering solutions geared specifically for their industry.


• Igloo - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Igloo's strong professional services offering helps customers tailor their intranet to meet their unique requirements and needs.
  • Many Igloo customers report they are satisfied with the support they receive from the vendor, and comment positively on Igloo's focus on partnership and relationship building.
  • Igloo goes beyond offering typical analytic capabilities by providing a monthly insights program and benchmarking service. Organizations can assess their maturity relative to other Igloo customers through anonymized usage and KPI data.

  Cons:

  • Igloo's geographic presence is almost entirely focused in the U.S. and Canada, with a much smaller presence in Europe. Organizations in other regions may find Igloo less experienced in addressing region-specific needs and requirements.
  • Some of Igloo's customers have raised concerns over the lack of innovation in the platform and its limited mobile offering. Key features, such as enterprise search and integration with collaboration and productivity suites, are lacking compared to competitors.
  • Igloo may fall short of meeting some organizations' data residency and data sovereignty requirements. Igloo is less suitable for large, multiregion organizations with distributed operations and strict data residency and compliance obligations.

Reference

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Intranet Packaged Solutions, 27 November 2023, ID G00781434

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