Popular intranet CMS options
When it comes to choosing your intranet CMS provider, you’re not limited for choice as the marketplace is brimmed with a diverse range of quality providers. Below, we take a look at some of the popular options.
1. Sharepoint
SharePoint is known for being Microsoft’s intranet CMS offering. As you’d expect, SharePoint has that familiar Microsoft feel to it — it’s clean, but it’s also on the clunky side.
The benefits of Sitepoint include a good interface for uploading and downloading documents, and it can easily integrate with the most recent versions of Microsoft Office. It also boasts a host of customization options to meet your requirements.
The downside though is that SharePoint will require a substantial amount of technical expertise just to set up your intranet site – slowing down your time-to-market in the process. In addition, your average employee will not find it easy to use – some organizations have even struggled to utilize features beyond document management.
As far as pricing goes, enterprise plans range between from $10.00 and $20.00 per user, per month for SharePoint Online. For on-premise, you’re looking at roughly $7,000 per server.
2. WordPress
While very popular with bloggers, very few know that WordPress has the capability to be used as an intranet CMS. The open source CMS platform has a very easy-to-use front-end template and editor, with media support built-in. Users can add an array of features and functionalities through WordPress’s extensive plugin directory.
That said, the main drawbacks to WordPress, with it being an open source system, is security and how maintenance-heavy the platform is. WordPress has been plagued with security breaches, with SQL injections and cyberattacks occurring in the past. While some of these have been addressed with recent updates, it is the user’s responsibility in ensuring these updates are installed in a timely manner.
As far as pricing goes, WordPress is technically free. However, you’ll have to hunt for your own hosting provider, which won’t be free, but also won’t be too expensive. The real cost of WordPress comes in the ongoing maintenance it needs to stop it from breaking or becoming vulnerable to cyber attack. We have previously discussed these WordPress drawbacks, and how they can add to your total cost of ownership (TCO).
3. Drupal
Another option that is well known in the intranet CMS world is Drupal, which follows a similar model to WordPress. The open-source platform also provides users with a plethora of plugins and add-ons for extending the features and functionalities available out-of-the-box. The latest version of Drupal is notably more user-friendly and has a strong community of developers to provide support and assistance with troubleshooting and general operational issues.
However, Drupal does suffer from the same disadvantages as WordPress. Drupal encountered many major security breaches, with the most recent one happening in May 2018.
Like WordPress, Drupal is free and open source, so it won’t cost you anything to download and install. And again, your hosting fees will probably be minimal. However, Drupal needs just as much maintenance, and even closer supervision when it comes to protecting against malware and cyber attack — just check Drupal’s patchy security record if you don’t believe us. Again, these hidden costs can stack up very easily.