Traditional company intranets, once popular for centralizing workplace information, are now often underused and outdated. But with the rise of AI-powered solutions, intranets transformed into intelligent, user-friendly hubs that boost productivity.
Want to learn how generative AI is reshaping intranet tools and how your company can benefit? Dive into this article to discover how modern platforms like Qatalog are revolutionizing internal knowledge management, streamlining operations, and solving the challenges that have long plagued traditional intranets.
1. Qatalog
Qatalog is an enterprise intranet search designed to find any information across your company's tools without requiring complex setups or high upfront costs. Unlike traditional intranet solutions, Qatalog searches data at its source, eliminating the need for external storage or outdated repositories, so your sensitive information stays secure within your systems.
At just $15 per user per month, Qatalog offers a powerful natural language search that inherits your existing permissions, requires no maintenance, and is ready to use within hours. Simply connect your tools, and your team can locate anything—emails, Slack threads, SharePoint files—by asking questions in plain English.
No more switching between apps, no more outdated repositories, and no more worrying about where your sensitive data is stored.
Key features
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Search Across Data Types: Qatalog searches through various file types on platforms like Google Suite, MS Suite, and Salesforce for unstructured data, and queries structured data stored in databases such as Snowflake, BigQuery, and Looker.
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No Data Indexing: The system performs searches in real time without copying, uploading, or storing data. Data is immediately discarded after retrieval.
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Plug-and-Play Integrations: Supports multiple connectors for for easy implementation process.
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Enterprise-Grade Compliance: Ensures security and compliance with end-to-end encryption and certifications, including ISO 27001, SOC2 Type II, HIPAA, HiTrust, and GDPR.
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Permissions Control: Allows users to manage and control which integrations can be searched and is aware of permissions.
Pricing
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Pro plan with 20+ integrations, priced at $15 per user.
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Custom Enterprise plan.
- Get started for free
2. Guru
Guru combines the features of a modern employee intranet with enterprise AI search and wiki capabilities into a single platform. Companies can customize their intranet homepage to create a familiar experience for employees, highlight important updates, and track engagement on announcements across the company or specific teams.
Guru’s integrations allow teams to sync their organizational charts and employee profiles with HRIS systems and enhance processes by connecting popular tools through Workato and Zapier.
Key features
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Contextual knowledge retrieval
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Browser extension for easy access to content
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AI-driven suggestions
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Collaborative content creation and verification
Pricing
- Free trial available
- Monthly subscription costs $18 per user
- Custom packages for enterprises
- Compare the best Get Guru alternatives
3. Confluence (by Atlassian)
Confluence is another popular intranet software for business. It offers a range of features to streamline internal communication and document management. Confluence allows teams to create customized spaces for different projects and departments, ensuring that content is organized and relevant to specific needs.
It’s important to use keywords consistently throughout your content, and try to mimic how your users typically search for information for better results. Alternatively, you can try Qatalog’s AI-powered answers for enhanced insights and faster results.
Key features
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Document creation and organization features
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Real-time collaborative editing with version control
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Template library for various project types
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Seamless integration with other Atlassian products like Jira
Pricing
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Free plan with limited number of users
- Different packages priced per user a month
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Enterprise plan billed annually
Related: Generative AI for Business: What 600 Enterprise Leaders' Survey Revealed
4. Google Workspace
Google Workspace offers Google Sites as a simple company intranet software that doesn’t require advanced technical skills to set up. It provides cloud-based solutions for file sharing, communication, and collaboration across teams, serving as a modern alternative to traditional intranets. However, with limited customization options compared to more advanced intranet solutions, it may not be ideal for larger organizations with extensive content and collaboration needs.
Google Sites integrates seamlessly with other Google Workspace applications like Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Calendar, enhancing productivity and collaboration. Additionally, Qatalog enhances the functionality of Google Workspace by providing AI search capabilities across its suite of apps. Connect Google Workspace apps and try Qatalog for free.
Key features
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Real-time collaboration with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
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Centralized file storage with Google Drive
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Integrated communication tools like Gmail and Google Meet
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Cloud-based, accessible from any device
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Strong security and admin controls
Pricing
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Free trial available
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Different packages priced per user a month
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Enterprise pricing available
Gmail search not working? Qatalog is also available for personal use.
5. Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint is a robust employee and company intranet solution for document management, internal knowledge search, and team collaboration. It integrates deeply with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and enables organizations to create customized pages and layouts for sharing content and collaborating efficiently. However, integrating SharePoint with other systems or applications may require additional configuration and technical know-how.
Qatalog works over SharePoint to improve its search capabilities by providing AI-powered answers. You can the and find out for yourself.
Key features
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Customizable intranet portals and web pages
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Strong security and user permissions management
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Collaboration features like task lists, calendars, and shared workspaces
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Integration with Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook
Pricing
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Annual business packages starting at $5 per user per month
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One-month trial available
Check out Microsoft Copilot alternatives and competitors
6. Workvivo
Workvivo is a cloud-based social intranet platform, also known as an employee experience platform (EXP), designed to enhance employee internal communication and engagement. It merges traditional intranet functionality with social media-like features, such as news feeds, posts, likes, and comments. As a result, it creates a dynamic environment for collaboration and connectivity.
Users can customize their profiles, set notifications, follow topics or groups, and receive content tailored to their interests and roles within the company.
Key features
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Social intranet features with activity feeds and posts
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Engagement tools like surveys and shout-outs
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Mobile access for remote employees
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Event management features
Pricing
- Business plan with typical minimum pricing starts at $20,000 (for 250-2000 employees)
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Custom enterprise plan with additional features
7. Simpplr
Simpplr is recognized as one of the best intranet platforms. It offers a user-friendly interface with advanced features to enhance collaboration and information sharing within organizations. Additionally, it includes social interaction tools like news feeds and employee recognition to foster a connected and engaged workforce.
This intranet app is designed to be straightforward to deploy and use, which helps in increasing user awareness and adoption of its capabilities. It also delivers a unified and personalized employee experience, regardless of where employees are working.
Key features
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Custom enterprise plan with additional features
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Social collaboration features like news feeds
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Accessible from mobile devices
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Plug-and-play integrations with other business tools
Pricing
- Pricing customized for the organization’s needs
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Limited free trial
Are company intranets still relevant?
Done well, intranets can make employees more informed, which in turn makes them more productive. However, intranets often fall short of their potential, with research suggesting only 13% of employees use their intranet daily and over 30% never use it.
Why don’t employees use intranets anymore?
From a user perspective, the low engagement is often caused by the difficulty of finding information on the intranet. Additionally, intranets are usually full of dated and irrelevant information accumulated over the years. Another reason for not using company intranets is that their design and interface aren’t user-friendly and they pose several enterprise data integration challenches.
What’s an alternative to a company intranet?
An alternative to a traditional company intranet is AI knowledge management software. Unlike traditional intranets, which can be complex and underutilized, platforms like Qatalog integrate various collaboration, knowledge management, and resource-sharing tools into a single, user-friendly platform.
This new technology transforms how businesses interact with their internal knowledge, access data, and automate complex processes. It seamlessly connects with multiple internal apps and tools and allows users to query company knowledge and data using natural language.
With Qatalog, you can search all your connected tools to find relevant information in real-time. For example, if you want to find out the status of a project, you don’t have to know if the documents you need are in Confluence, shared in a Slack channel, or posted to your CRM. With Qatalog, you simply run a single search and get back results from all your tools, along with their summary and links to sources.
Additionally, Qatalog search supports various document formats like Word documents, Excel sheets, PDFs, and other files stored in platforms like Google Suite, Microsoft Suite, and Salesforce.
How does generative AI change intranet tools?
Building and maintaining an intranet is technically complex and resource-intensive. Its customization, usability, and integration require significant effort, which often requires hiring outside consultants and developers to design and implement an intranet strategy. Once the platform is built, internal teams need training and onboarding to use it effectively.
Generative AI tools for business, praticularly those using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), address these challenges by simplifying the intranet's setup, maintenance, and usability. These AI-powered tools reduce the need for extensive technical expertise, integrate smoothly with the tools and apps employees regularly use, and deliver accurate insights while personalizing the user experience. With advanced search and retrieval capabilities, AI keeps knowledge accessible and up-to-date, preventing the formation of information silos.
This shift allows intranets to evolve into dynamic, user-friendly work hubs that improve productivity by keeping information centralized and easy to find.
Learn more about using AI-enabled knowledge management.
What are intranet tools?
Intranet tools are private networks that enable collaboration and knowledge sharing within an organization. They centralize access to company resources like announcements, internal applications, and employee directories, often using platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint or Jive.
AI-powered intranet tools upgrade traditional intranets by integrating advanced features such as enterprise search, personalized content recommendations, and internal knowledge management. They leverage artificial intelligence to streamline operations, improve user experience, and facilitate more effective collaboration
What types of intranet tools are there?
Today, you can group most intranet solutions into one of three groups:
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Traditional intranet: A centralized portal-style intranet that provides CMS-like access to web pages, resources, and files.
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Social intranet: Social intranets add features like chatting, liking, and @ mentions to traditional intranets. They also usually support more integrations and modern features (e.g. support for mobile access) than traditional intranet solutions.
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AI-powered intranet: Intelligent intranets offer advanced enterprise search, integrations with your apps, and conversational search experience beyond what is found in other intranet platforms.
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Extranets: Extranets are intranets shared by multiple organizations. For example, if you grant your suppliers or customers access to your intranet, you now have an extranet.
How does intranet work?
Under the hood, an intranet and the Internet use many of the same protocols and technologies. Traffic flows back and forth between servers and clients based on DNS names and IP addresses. Users connect to a site using a web browser and click links on HTML web pages.
The key difference is that the Internet is open to anyone, while an intranet is designed for accessing internal company knowledge. For example, you can search through company’s OneDrive, Outlook, or Asana.