What are you replacing SharePoint for?
Answer this before comparing any vendor, because it decides which list below matters to you.
- The intranet. Company news, the homepage, policies, the people directory, department pages. This is the most common reason teams go looking, usually because building and maintaining the intranet on SharePoint depends on IT or a developer for changes a comms team wants to make on its own.
- Document management. File storage, sharing, and permissions. Organizations outside the Microsoft ecosystem, or those that find SharePoint’s site and library structure hard to govern, often move this job first.
- Team collaboration. Project sites, wikis, and working discussions. Teams that live in Jira, Google Workspace, or Slack sometimes find a SharePoint team site is one more place nobody checks.
It’s also worth pricing what SharePoint really costs you today. It isn’t sold standalone, and the license is rarely the biggest line item. We break that down in is SharePoint free?, which is a useful baseline before comparing anything below.
SharePoint alternatives for your intranet
These are platforms built to be the employee intranet from day one: communications, knowledge, people, and department spaces in one branded place.
1. Axero
Axero is an intranet platform that business teams can run themselves. Communications managers build and update pages with a drag-and-drop page builder, departments own their own spaces with granular permissions, and IT keeps control of identity, security, and hosting.
Where it fits: organizations that want a full intranet (news, documents, knowledge base, employee directory, recognition, and a mobile app) without building it on top of SharePoint. It runs in a single-tenant cloud or self-hosted on your own infrastructure.
Working with SharePoint: you don’t have to pick one or the other. The SharePoint integration surfaces SharePoint Online and OneDrive libraries inside Axero spaces with two-way sync, so the intranet changes while files stay where they are. If you’re weighing a straight switch, see how Axero compares to SharePoint, including what it takes to implement and run each.
Keep in mind: Axero replaces the intranet layer. If your organization also relies on SharePoint for heavy records management or custom line-of-business apps, plan for those separately.
2. Simpplr
Simpplr is a cloud intranet and employee experience platform aimed at mid-size and large companies. It leans on AI for personalization and search, and it connects to both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Where it fits: organizations that want a vendor-hosted SaaS intranet with a strong communications focus. We compare the two in Axero vs Simpplr.
3. Staffbase
Staffbase is an employee communications platform built around a branded mobile app, intranet, and email newsletters. It’s popular with organizations that have a large frontline or deskless workforce.
Where it fits: comms-led teams whose main problem is reaching employees who never sit at a desk. It’s less focused on documents and knowledge management than a full intranet.
4. Workvivo by Zoom
Workvivo is an employee experience app centered on a social feed, recognition, and company communications. It’s now part of Zoom.
Where it fits: organizations whose main goal is engagement and culture rather than replacing SharePoint’s document and knowledge jobs. Workvivo isn’t positioned as a document management system, so plan where files will live before you switch. Our Axero vs Workvivo comparison covers the trade-offs.
For a wider field of intranet vendors side by side, see our comparison of the best intranet software platforms.
SharePoint alternatives for document management
If the job you’re replacing is file storage and sharing, a dedicated content platform is usually a better fit than an intranet.
5. Google Drive (Google Workspace)
Google Drive stores and shares files, and Docs, Sheets, and Slides let people edit together in real time. For organizations already on Gmail and Google Workspace, it’s the natural replacement for SharePoint document libraries, and Google Sites can cover simple internal pages.
Keep in mind: shared drives are simple to set up, but permissions and structure need governance as the organization grows, just as they do in SharePoint.
6. Box
Box is a cloud content management platform with strong security, retention, and compliance controls. It integrates with both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, so people can keep editing in the apps they know.
Where it fits: regulated industries and organizations that want enterprise-grade file governance without the SharePoint site model.
7. Dropbox
Dropbox is a file sync and sharing service that’s easy for employees to pick up. Its business plans add team folders, admin controls, and sharing with outside partners.
Where it fits: smaller teams and creative or agency environments that share large files with clients.
8. Egnyte
Egnyte combines cloud file sharing with support for on-premises file servers, which makes it a common choice for organizations moving off a mix of network drives and older SharePoint deployments.
Where it fits: companies with large legacy file shares, remote sites, or a need to keep some data on local storage.
SharePoint alternatives for team collaboration
These replace SharePoint team sites and wikis, the working spaces where projects get documented and discussed.
9. Confluence
Confluence, from Atlassian, is a team wiki for documentation, project pages, and meeting notes. It’s closely tied to Jira, which makes it the default for many engineering and product teams.
Where it fits: technical teams that want structured documentation next to their issue tracker. It’s less suited to company-wide communications for non-technical employees.
10. Notion
Notion is a flexible workspace for docs, wikis, and lightweight databases. Teams build their own structure, which is its main strength and, at scale, its main governance challenge.
Where it fits: smaller companies and individual teams that want to shape their own knowledge space quickly.
11. Slack
Slack is channel-based messaging with a large integration ecosystem. It doesn’t store and organize documents the way SharePoint does, but it often takes over the discussion and quick-sharing that used to happen on team sites.
Where it fits: teams whose collaboration happens in conversation. Pair it with a document platform or an intranet so decisions and files don’t disappear into chat history.
If you’re really looking for a Yammer alternative
Yammer is now Microsoft Viva Engage. Microsoft rebranded it in 2023 and folded it into the Viva suite, so it’s no longer a separate product you’d compare against SharePoint. It’s the social layer that sits next to SharePoint inside Microsoft 365.
If Viva Engage is the part that isn’t working, the question is usually whether you want social features as one more Microsoft app or built into the intranet itself. Axero, Workvivo, and Simpplr all put discussion, comments, reactions, and recognition in the same place employees read news and find documents. Slack is the other common route, though it replaces conversation rather than company-wide communication.
How to narrow the list
A short shortlist beats a long one. These questions usually settle it:
- Who needs to run it day to day? If comms or HR should publish without filing a ticket, test that directly in a demo: have a non-technical person build a page.
- Where will the files live? Decide whether documents move, stay in SharePoint and get connected, or split between the two. That choice narrows the field more than any feature list.
- What does IT need to control? Single sign-on, provisioning, permissions, audit logs, and hosting options (vendor cloud, private cloud, or self-hosted) are where platforms differ most.
- Who are you trying to reach? Deskless and frontline employees need a mobile app and push notifications, not just a desktop homepage.
- What’s the full cost? Compare total cost of ownership, including implementation and administration time, not only per-user pricing.
If the intranet is the job you’re replacing and you’re already on Microsoft 365, the realistic path for many teams is to keep SharePoint for storage and put a dedicated intranet on top of it. If you’re deciding between Axero and SharePoint for the company intranet and internal collaboration, our Axero vs SharePoint comparison lays out features, setup, admin effort, and migration on each side.
