What is Sharepoint? Sharepoint is a collaboration tool that was first released in 2001 and integrates with Microsoft Office. The tool is mainly used by organizations for managing, storing and sharing documents and data within a company’s network. With that, the main purpose of Sharepoint intranet portal is to make team work easier and to help to top-down communicate important information within an organisation.
Sharepoint is a very customisable tool that helps companies in creating content and collaborating. However, compared to Sharepoint alternatives this tool adds less value for organizations, it suffers from a poor usability, is very costly and lastly the adoption rate is low. Read our Sharepoint intranet guide and learn more about the features and functionalities of Sharepoint and why Happeo is the best alternative to Sharepoint. Don’t miss our conclusion below our comparison table to find out what is similar to Sharepoint. Want to see and compare other intranet vendors? Visit our intranet platforms comparison.
Feature overview
| Digital workplace | Happeo | Sharepoint |
|---|---|---|
| Search | ✓ | ✓ |
| Third-party app launcher | ✓ | ✗ |
| Integrated Drive Editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integrated Docs editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integrated Sheets editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integrated Slides editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Collaboration platform | Happeo | Sharepoint |
|---|---|---|
| Employee directory | ✓ | ✓ |
| Slack integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| User-creatable channels | ✓ | ✗ |
| Integrated Hangouts conferencing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Integrated Calendar editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Jabber, Webex integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Social intranet | Happeo | Sharepoint |
|---|---|---|
| Page builder | ✓ | ✓ |
| Social channels | ✓ | ✗ |
| Analytics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Personalized news feed | ✓ | ✗ |
| Announcements | ✓ | ✓ |
| Widgets | ✓ | ✓ |
| Branded file templates | ✓ | ✗ |
| Influencer analysis | ✓ | ✗ |
| Overall features | Happeo | Sharepoint |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile intranet app | ✓ | ✓ |
| Push notifications | ✓ | ✓ |
| Single Sign On | ✓ | ✓ |
| ISO compliant security | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR compliant | ✓ | ✓ |
| Top-down communications | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bottom-up communications | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom branding | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multilingual | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deep Google Workspace integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| User-first design | ✓ | ✗ |
| Fast time to deploy | ✓ | ✗ |
| Google Workspace integration | ✓ |
Limited |
| Office 365 integration | ✓ | ✗ |
See how Happeo stacks up against other alternatives
Happeo vs Jostle
Jostle is a Canadian company that provides an intranet solution to companies that need software to align their internal communications.
Happeo vs Jive
Jive is a software company that provides solutions for internal communications in businesses. Jive is one of the old-school leaders in the industry.
Happeo vs Simplrr
Simpplr is a US-based software company founded in 2014. Simplrr helps with connecting and engaging employees accross departments.
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Sharepoint has a low adoption rate by employees
It is well known that Sharepoint intranet portal is not easy to maintain and to use, which impacts usability and adoption rate in many organisations. Users often complain that Sharepoint is not only difficult to use but also there is not enough training given to businesses and its employees. Whereas, at Happeo, we believe that usability is one of the most important parts of an engaging communication platform. That’s why we created a software that is easy to use and maintain also by non-technical users. Our customer support receives regularly positive ratings on comparison sites like g2.com.
Sharepoint is costly to implement
When you decide to use Sharepoint at your organization you can choose between different deployment models and pricings: on-premise, subscription and hybrid. Regardless of this flexible pricing, cost still remains an obstacle. Compared to Sharepoint Happeo offers cheaper packages. All packages can be customized to your organisation's wishes and the pricing depends not only on the package but also on the amount of users.
Managing and maintaining Sharepoint can be difficult
Sharepoint is a robust and powerful tool that often requires IT and admin support to create new content and pages. For non-techy users it feels difficult to re-organization the site hierarchy and often you need a third-party tool to rearrange your site pages and move site libraries. Also, managing access permissions is still clunky and creation is limited. With that in mind, when choosing your new intranet software you should select a software which is not similar to Sharepoint but similar to Happeo - where maintenance and updates can be done by every employee.
Sharepoint is only for Microsoft 365 environment
Sharepoint did not adapt to Google business users - there is no Google Workspace integration or Google Workspace Sharepoint available yet and you can only use Sharepoint when you already use Microsoft 365. Organizations often wonder whether Google Workspace is the best equivalent for Microsoft 365. Looking at features of both tools Google Workspace is the better pick over Microsoft 365. Using Google Workspace as a company has several advantages. Google Workspace is highly scalable and there is no maximum number of users, regardless of the plan a company chooses. Also Google Workspaces plans have a better price value data-wise than the plans of Microsoft 365. Furthermore, Google Workspace allows you to create Google Workspace documents and well as simple MS Office documents, whereas Microsoft 365 only lets you create MS Office documents. In the end every organization needs to evaluate whether tools of Google are an equivalent to tools of Microsoft.
Sharepoint misses fully integrated collaboration features
Collaborative features are one of the most important intranet features. Users want to post, share, like and comment easily and that’s why Sharepoint alternatives like Happeo become more popular. Sharepoint is missing the integration of good (social) collaborative features, namely My Sites and Newsfeeds – they will be separate from your solution. Also, user creation is limited, you can’t (video) call through Sharepoint and there is no integrated chat functionality available. What the platform does feature instead is just a people directory. One important fact to remember is that Google Workspace and social intranet solutions that integrate with Google Workspace were built as a collaboration-focused solution from the ground up. Microsoft 365 and Sharepoint intranet integrated collaboration features into an existing desktop-based product which was used in local context.
Sharepoint is a static communication platform
Sharepoint is a static intranet platform similar to the intranet solutions a few years ago. Communication typically happens in a one-way manner with HR professionals or the management communicating important information from the top-down to employees. The most dynamic part of Sharepoint is that information can be regularly updated and published. However interaction is not possible with Sharepoint. Sharepoint alternatives like Happeo on the other hand are modern social intranets which encourage employees to communicate and act on each other's messages. Communication is dynamically top-down and bottom-up. It can be said that Sharepoint acts mainly as an internal website and news tool.
With Sharepoint the user is NOT at the center
Because Sharepoint intranet portal is a static intranet it does not focus on the user but purely on the information management. Modern social intranets focus on technological advancements and on the needs of the users. The priority of dynamic platforms like Happeo is the user next to content management. Because of the strong user centric focus Happeo is the best alternative to Sharepoint.