SharePoint vs Collab Hub: Finding the Best Intranet Software for Small Business

An intranet is a private network that is contained within a company. The main purpose of an intranet is to share your company information and resources among employees. This increases collaboration, efficiency, and organization. An intranet software can also be used to facilitate working in groups.

There are lots of software’s out there that claim they are the best so let’s compare two of them and note their differences.

SharePoint has been around since 2001. It’s well-known as a web-based collaborative platform integrated with Microsoft Office.

Collab Hub, on the other hand, is a newly launched software.

When you compare both you’ll quickly discover that the age of a software doesn’t automatically translate into quality or, more importantly, adaptability.

SharePoint, billed as a document management and storage system, has a problem. It’s too inflexible and rigid in what it offers.

It’s also far too expensive.

Companies that want to improve internal communications between their growing workforce need something better, and that’s why Collab Hub was created. Our team knows that the best intranet is the one that responds directly to your company or organization’s needs.

What Do Companies Want from Intranets?

Intranet software serves several purposes. It can:

• Improve internal communications
• Help workers manage their workload
• Encourage workers to become more social with their coworkers
• Enable employees to collaborate successfully
• Give them the tools to post information, content, questions, and answers

As writer Pan Tan noted in HyperOffice, it’s all about productivity.
“An intranet is the ‘home’ for employees (ideally) and the intranet desktop is probably the first thing they see in the morning. An intranet which gives employees’ access to all the tools and information they need to effectively perform that day’s tasks, every day, can go a thousand miles in improving productivity.”

Your intranet is the private portal that only your employees can access. It’s a critical tool for businesses that are growing, adding on new employees, hiring some to work remotely, and in need of a centralized way for everyone to communicate and easily access important company news and information.

You want to be certain your intranet serves these functions through a system that’s:

• Simple to install
• Easy to learn
• Operates smoothly
• Doesn’t require extensive input from your IT department.

That’s exactly what Collab Hub offers – along with significant advantages that SharePoint doesn’t have.

If you want to better understand the SharePoint vs. Collab Hub question, think about what your requirements are – and what kind of resources you need.

Older, “traditional” intranet systems allow you to store content and documents. But the “collab” aspect between workers is limited in many of them.

Today, businesses are looking for additional features and functions – think of it as an extra layer of social components. It can include:

• Blogs
• Employee profiles
• Calendars for upcoming events
• Staff directories
• Team pages.

Kara Pernice wrote that these tools are particularly useful for small businesses.
“Employees need a place where they can methodically share information in a secure and findable way. Employees should be aware of what they should share and have tools and methods for communicating information about projects, policies, or teams, as well as news and announcements. Announcements and news keep employees abreast of happenings and can foster a feeling of excitement and unity. They can make people feel respected, as though they are important enough to the organization to be informed about particular efforts.”

If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re likely to find SharePoint disappointing.

What Does SharePoint Offer?

SharePoint is the platform companies have used to develop custom intranet sites. Their key features are publishing content and storing document libraries.

Companies using SharePoint do have the option to add-on additional tools (usually by third-party systems) or to configure social features onto this intranet manually.

But one of the challenges with using SharePoint is that as a development platform, you’re going to need:

• Specialized developers and administrators to install it
• An advanced team to get it up and running
• Administrators to train your employees on how to use it
• Regular support from your IT team

SharePoint has a high degree of complexity that requires you to invest in expertise, training, extra time —and significant development costs.

It’s not a system you’ll have up and running quickly.

If you’re looking at an intranet solution built on SharePoint, one option is to build an intranet from scratch, then have it customized to meet your requirements.

That’s an expensive and time-consuming process. You also need to have SharePoint skills based around coding, which means your IT team will have to maintain the system, so it won’t become outdated.

You could also adopt a ready-to-go SharePoint intranet system, but the truth is that even SharePoint 2016 fails to compete with newer models that are less rigid and fixed.

Frankly, too much of what SharePoint offers is slow, outdated, and outmoded.

It’s also an expensive software, charging companies permanent monthly fees per user. If you’re a growing company with several hundred workers and more coming on board, you probably don’t want to invest in something like that. It’s costly in the long run and you’ll need to invest money up front for training and development costs.

It’s also difficult to get approvals for new feature requests. For too many SharePoint users, the content put into the system never gets accessed because SharePoint lacks the “collab” aspect of newer intranets.

Collab Hub was created with all of these challenges in mind.

What Does Collab Hub Offer Instead?

Collab Hub is an excellent alternative to SharePoint. It’s a software that’s easy to install, and getting it up and running is a piece of cake.

At the same time, consider that Collab Hub:

• Does not require any IT support
• Is considerably less expensive, with a onetime fee of $1,299 and no additional monthly costs or user fees
• Is very easy for your employees to use as they can communicate and collaborate on ongoing company projects
• Is ideal for internal business communications
• Is a self-hosted intranet software powered by WordPress, with all the features that WordPress offers

A custom WordPress intranet is the best value for your intranet project. It’s a reliable software hosted on a very secure server.

WordPress also offers a lot of third-party plugins that add additional features and strengths to your Collab Hub intranet. WordPress has mobile ready themes that work on smartphones and tablets.

The website WPBeginner noted that:
“People often make the mistake of classifying WordPress as just a blogging platform. Although that used to be true in the past, WordPress has evolved throughout the years into a versatile content management system … now it also allows you to create fully functional websites and mobile applications. The best part about WordPress is that it’s easy to use and flexible enough for just about anything … Due to its robust features, many of the top brands use WordPress to power their websites including but not limited to: Time Magazine, Google, Facebook, Sony, Disney, LinkedIn, The New York Times, CNN, eBay, and more.”

A Better Alternative to SharePoint

Hosted solutions like SharePoint are going to cost you thousands of dollars in training, IT support and licensing fees. WordPress support is available for free online and the Collab Hub team offers you customer support long after your intranet has been installed.

Collab Hub offers your company a private network that’s only accessible to your organization’s staff. Your company gets the tools to ensure that everyone within your company, regardless of department or location, can communicate in the fastest, most reliable and efficient manner possible.

It’s the system that brings everyone together.

A social intranet works far more efficiently than a traditional intranet setup, with powerful tools and features for blogging, posting news, scheduling events, creating employee profiles and maintaining a staff directory on top of a user-friendly platform.

Suddenly you’ll find that internal communication and collaboration have become easier than ever, a seamless process that your employees will love because it allows them to share videos, images, and other content; publish news; manage file content; create schedules and review documents; and more.

SharePoint vs Collab Hub

Rather than thinking about which is the best intranet, why not think about what is the best intranet for your company?

By using Collab Hub, your workers are going to become far more engaged with their colleagues and supervisors. It expands opportunities for companies that rely on flexible social and document sharing among workers.

And it allows your company to create access to the site for as many workers as needed while giving each one of them the ability to coordinate tasks.

Collab Hub was created as a cost-effective solution for small businesses. If you’re worried about how long it will take to learn a new system, we’re very user-friendly. No lengthy training sessions are needed.

Just install the Collab Hub software and your workers can take advantage of popular WordPress features that include the ability to publish news blogs, create static pages describing what your company does, post videos and make internal announcements to all departments.

SharePoint, on the other hand, can’t keep up with modern software like Collab Hub.

It’s expensive. It doesn’t play well with mobile devices. It can be difficult to navigate and customize.

Collab Hub is a platform that fuels and enhances employee engagement and productivity through a vibrant, interactive digital workplace.