An intranet costs roughly $1 per user per month at very large scale (20,000+ users) and up to $8 to $10 per user per month for a few hundred users in SaaS. Its total cost of ownership over three years runs from a few tens of thousands of dollars for a small organization to several hundred thousand for a large group. But those figures only tell half the story. The per-user price is the tip of the iceberg: the real cost of an intranet is its TCO, license plus hosting, integration, administration, training and maintenance, over three to five years.
This article breaks down the pricing models, the real ranges by type of solution, the hidden costs vendors do not put forward, a worked three-year TCO example, and the simplest way to cut the bill when you are already on Microsoft 365.
One useful caveat up front: the figures below are indicative. They vary widely with the number of users, the feature scope, the integrations and the country. Treat them as orders of magnitude to frame a budget, not a quote.
What drives the price of an intranet?
Before the numbers, you need to understand what moves them. Two intranets can show a tenfold price gap for real reasons. Here are the main levers.
The number of users. This is the first factor. Almost every SaaS solution bills per user per month. A 200-person organization and a 10,000-person group do not play in the same league, neither in total amount nor in unit price (see volume discounts below).
The feature scope. A simple news portal costs far less than a full digital workplace with an enterprise social network, document management, advanced search, mobile and personalization. Every brick adds value, and price.
Integrations. Connecting the intranet to your business tools, your HRIS, your email and your collaboration suite is a significant part of the budget. The richer the ecosystem, the heavier the integration, especially if it is custom.
Customization and design. An intranet tailored to your brand, with specific development, costs more than a standard template. The question is not only the upfront cost, but maintaining that development over time.
The deployment model. SaaS, license, self-hosted open source: each model shifts the cost from one line to another. SaaS smooths the spend into a subscription; open source removes the license but moves the cost to operations. To frame this choice, see the pillar guide on the CMS intranet.
Intranet pricing models
Three models structure the market. Knowing which one applies to you changes how you read the bill.
The SaaS per-user model dominates the packaged intranet platform market today. It reassures by its simplicity, but it is also the one whose cost grows mechanically with headcount. At 200 people, the bill stays reasonable. At 5,000, it becomes a budget line of its own.
How much does an intranet cost per user?
This is the most asked question, and the answer is a wide range, because everything depends on the headcount tier and the platform level.
The per-user price is steeply degressive. That is the point pricing pages summarize poorly. The analyst ClearBox Consulting, which compares vendors on a three-year cost for 250, 1,000, 5,000 and 20,000 users, shows it clearly: the unit price collapses as headcount grows.
Concretely, expect around $8 to $10 per user per month for a few hundred users, $4 to $6 around 1,000, $2 to $4 at 5,000, and down to roughly $1 per user per month at very large scale (20,000 and above). LumApps, for instance, starts around $8 per user for small headcounts and falls toward $1 at very large scale. The logic is simple: the more seats you have, the lower the unit price, but the higher the total bill.
This per-user logic has an often-ignored consequence: the bill never pays itself off. Unlike a one-time investment, a per-user subscription is paid every month, for life, and rises with every hire. That is exactly what makes the real cost harder to read than a single unit price.
The hidden costs: the real TCO of an intranet
Here is the part pricing pages skim over. The license or subscription rarely accounts for more than half of the total cost. The rest hides in operations, and it is measured over three to five years.
- Hosting and infrastructure. For a self-hosted solution, count servers, backups, monitoring and redundancy. In SaaS, it is included, but you pay for it in the subscription.
- Integration. Connecting the intranet to Microsoft 365, the HRIS, business apps and the directory is a project of its own. Connectors must be built, then maintained at every update on both sides.
- Internal administration. This is the most underestimated cost. Managing rights, publishing, moderating and evolving the platform takes time, often the equivalent of a part-time or full-time role in large organizations. That time is rarely budgeted, but it is real.
- Training and change management. An intranet nobody knows how to use is worthless. Training contributors and the launch campaign are line items of their own.
- Maintenance and successive development. A custom solution ages: version upgrades, technical debt, fixes. Every evolution is a cost, and a risk of developer dependency.
- Exit cost. Migrating content to another platform is expensive. Vendor lock-in is a hidden cost that only shows up the day you want to change.
The number to remember comes from industry analysts: according to Omnia (2026), the total cost of ownership of an intranet over three years usually reaches 1.5 to 2 times the license cost once implementation, integration and administration are included. In other words, for $100,000 of license, plan $150,000 to $200,000 of real cost. That is one reason organizations end up choosing to migrate to an integrated SaaS intranet rather than stacking a standalone system.
The cost of an intranet by type of solution
Cost varies enormously by approach. Here are the orders of magnitude by family, factoring in total cost, not just the license.
Open source shows a zero entry cost, but its TCO quickly catches up with the others once hosting, security and development are counted. The topic is detailed in our article on the open source intranet. Packaged platforms offer a ready-to-use experience, but their per-user subscription adds to what you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. SharePoint starts from an already-funded foundation: the additional cost is limited to the experience layer that makes it engaging.
A three-year TCO example
Take a 1,000-employee organization, on Microsoft 365, weighing a packaged intranet platform against an enriched SharePoint intranet. The amounts below are illustrative, rounded, and meant to show the mechanics, not to give a firm price.
Packaged platform scenario. At $5 per user per month for 1,000 people (already a degressive rate at this tier), the subscription is $60,000 per year, or $180,000 over three years. Add the initial integration, administration, training and connectors to maintain: the three-year TCO easily sits between $270,000 and $380,000. And this spend adds to the Microsoft 365 subscription you already pay.
Enriched SharePoint scenario with Jint. The SharePoint foundation is already included in your Microsoft 365 licenses. The additional cost concentrates on the Jint experience layer, billed per user, plus an initial governance effort. Key point: that per-user rate stays lower than a standalone platform like LumApps, because Jint does not replace your foundation, it adds to it. You avoid the double bill, the platform on top of Microsoft 365, and the second system to host and secure. Over three years, the TCO comes out well below the packaged scenario.
The difference is not only a lower unit price. It comes from the fact that most of the infrastructure, security and identity is already paid inside Microsoft 365. You do not fund it twice.
How to reduce the cost of an intranet
Reducing the cost of an intranet does not mean picking the cheapest to buy. It means optimizing the total cost over time. A few concrete principles.
- Build on what you already pay for. If your organization uses Microsoft 365, you already own SharePoint, the identity, the files and the security. Building the intranet on this foundation avoids funding a parallel infrastructure. It is the most powerful saving lever, and the most often ignored.
- Avoid the application silo. Every extra system adds integration, sync and administration cost. An intranet integrated into your ecosystem is cheaper to run than a standalone system to connect.
- Favor a solution updated automatically. Custom development ages and costs in maintenance. An integrated SaaS solution, updated by the vendor, removes upgrade projects.
- Think adoption. An underused intranet is the most expensive of all: you pay for a platform nobody opens. Investing in experience and change management protects the value. Keep in mind the benefits of a company intranet: they only materialize if the platform is adopted.
How much does a SharePoint intranet cost?
This is often the best answer to the cost question, for a simple reason: the foundation is already there. If you use Microsoft 365, SharePoint is included in your licenses (present in Business and Enterprise plans such as E3 or E5). You pay no extra intranet license and no dedicated infrastructure.
The additional cost concentrates on two items. First, the governance and structuring effort, which serves all of Microsoft 365, not just the intranet. Second, the experience layer that turns raw SharePoint into an engaging intranet. That is the role of Jint on SharePoint: a controlled cost, added to a foundation already paid and already secured, without creating a silo or duplicating data. Jint is billed per user, like a packaged platform, but at a lower rate than a standalone solution such as LumApps, because it builds on the Microsoft 365 infrastructure you already fund instead of duplicating it.
The result shows in the TCO. Where a standalone platform adds a per-user subscription that piles up indefinitely on top of your Microsoft suite, the SharePoint intranet reuses the infrastructure you already fund. For an organization on Microsoft 365, it is the most favorable cost-to-value ratio on the market.
Intranet cost: what to remember
The price of an intranet in SaaS is degressive, from around $1 per user per month at very large scale to $8 to $10 for small headcounts, but the headline price is only a fraction of the real cost. The three-year TCO usually reaches 1.5 to 2 times the license once hosting, integration, administration and training are counted, from a few tens of thousands of dollars for a small organization to several hundred thousand for a large group. Open source removes the license but shifts the cost to operations. Packaged platforms add a per-user subscription on top of your existing suite. For an organization already on Microsoft 365, SharePoint stays the most economical option over time, because its foundation is already funded.
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