When it comes to selecting a platform for your organization's digital workplace needs, there are a lot of options to consider. Tools like Unily aim to centralize communication, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing, offering a unified solution for modern teams—a critical goal when research shows employee disengagement can cost a median-size S&P 500 company between $228 million and $355 million annually in lost productivity. But is Unily the right fit for your team, or could another solution like Guru better meet your needs? In this guide, we'll dive into what Unily offers, explore its strengths and weaknesses, and compare it directly with Guru to help you make the best decision for your organization.

What is Unily?

Unily is a digital workplace platform designed to help organizations enhance communication, foster collaboration, and improve knowledge sharing. Created by Unily Ltd. in 2005, the tool serves as an intranet solution that brings together employees, tools, and resources into a single, customizable hub. Unily is popular among enterprise-level organizations looking for a centralized platform to connect dispersed teams and streamline workflows.

Key characteristics of Unily include:

• Customizable interface: Sleek design with robust branding options

• Industry focus: Popular in healthcare, financial services, and retail

• Employee experience: Helps companies foster culture, engagement, and productivity, which is crucial in a landscape where global employee engagement declined to just 21% in 2024.

What is Guru?

Guru is the AI Source of Truth for the enterprise, connecting all company sources and permissions into a unified company brain.

Employees interact with this brain through a trusted Knowledge Agent via:

• AI chat and search: Instant answers within existing workflows

• In-depth Research: Detailed analysis with citations

• Native integration: Works inside Slack, Microsoft Teams, and browsers

Guru provides policy-enforced, permission-aware answers with clear lineage, meeting IT governance requirements. When updates are needed, experts correct information once and changes propagate everywhere.

Unily vs Guru: Direct comparison

Now that we've covered the ins and outs of Unily, let's compare it to Guru. While both tools help teams centralize knowledge and streamline workflows, they serve different purposes and excel in different areas. Here's how they stack up:

Guru's strengths

Guru delivers verified knowledge directly within existing workflows. Key strengths include:

• Ease of use: Guru integrates seamlessly with tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Chrome, allowing users to access information without interrupting their workflow.

• AI-powered knowledge verification: Guru's AI ensures your team's knowledge base remains accurate and up-to-date by notifying subject matter experts when content needs review or verification, tapping into a trend where 66% of companies adopting AI agents report they are delivering measurable value through increased productivity.

• Pages for tailored employee hubs: Guru's Pages feature allows teams to create customizable, branded homepages that act as central hubs for accessing critical updates, resources, and tools. These pages help keep employees aligned by prioritizing essential content and making it easy to find key information.

• Announcements for critical updates: With Guru's Announcements feature, teams can broadcast vital updates that employees must acknowledge, ensuring no critical information slips through the cracks.

• Scalability for teams of all sizes: Whether your team is a startup or a large enterprise, Guru's flexible structure and robust features scale effortlessly to meet your needs.

Unily's strengths

Unily's primary strength lies in its ability to serve as a centralized digital workplace. For organizations that need a comprehensive intranet solution with customizable branding, employee engagement features, and enterprise-level integrations, Unily is hard to beat.

Integration and user experience

Both Unily and Guru integrate with popular tools, but their approaches differ. Guru integrates directly into your team's existing workflows, enabling employees to access knowledge without leaving their preferred tools, like Slack or Chrome. Unily, on the other hand, focuses on creating a centralized hub for all tools and resources, which can be advantageous for organizations with complex workflows but may require employees to spend more time navigating the platform.

Key Features Comparison

While both Unily and Guru centralize company information, they serve different purposes and deliver knowledge in fundamentally different ways.

Unily

Core Function: Customizable intranet with CMS and social features
User Experience: Serves as a central hub that brings users into the platform to access company content and communication
AI & Trust: Uses AI for personalization and content recommendations, tailoring news, updates, and resources to each user’s role and interests

Guru

Core Function: AI-powered knowledge infrastructure with built-in verification
User Experience: Delivers knowledge directly within existing tools like Slack, Teams, and Chrome, allowing users to access trusted information without leaving their workflow
AI & Trust: Employs trust-centered AI that prioritizes verification workflows and citations, ensuring accuracy and reliability across all shared knowledge

In short, Unily focuses on internal communication and engagement through a centralized intranet experience, while Guru emphasizes in-context, verified knowledge delivery powered by AI.

Integration capabilities and platform support

Unily and Guru approach integrations differently:

Unily's approach:

• Acts as a central hub for all tools

• Integrates with Microsoft 365 and Salesforce

• Goal: Make Unily the single destination for work

Guru's approach:

• Integrates into existing workflows

• Browser extensions and apps for Slack/Teams

• Powers other AI tools via MCP and API

• Ensures other AI assistants provide accurate, company-approved information

Pricing and value comparison

Unily is positioned for the enterprise and typically involves a custom pricing model based on the organization's size and specific needs, which can represent a significant investment. Its value is measured by its success as a central communication and employee experience hub.

Guru offers more flexible pricing suitable for both upper-mid-market and enterprise clients. The model is based on seats, which represent user identity and access controls, while value is tied to usage. This includes credits for AI-powered answers, the depth of Research queries, and calls to other AI tools via MCP. This approach frames value around trusted knowledge consumption and governance, rather than just access to a platform.

Who uses Unily?

Unily is primarily designed for medium to large enterprises with diverse teams and complex needs. It's especially popular in industries like healthcare, financial services, and retail, where internal communication and employee engagement are critical. Organizations that need to manage a dispersed workforce or want to enhance their employee experience tend to find value in Unily's extensive feature set, a key consideration as research shows 45% of an organization's most valuable employees, or thriving stars work remotely.

Unily is also well-suited for companies that prioritize creating a strong internal brand identity through a customized intranet experience.

Who uses Guru?

Guru is designed for enterprise and upper-mid-market organizations that require auditable, governed AI. While it serves the entire organization, primary adopters are in IT Operations/Service, Customer Support/Success, Revenue/Sales, and HR/People teams. These teams value Guru's ability to deliver permission-aware answers, enforce knowledge verification workflows, and provide explainability for all AI-generated responses. Leaders choose Guru because it enhances their existing toolset—including powering assistants like Microsoft Copilot via MCP—rather than requiring a disruptive rip-and-replace strategy.

Pros and cons of Unily

No platform is perfect, and Unily is no exception. Here's a breakdown of its main advantages and disadvantages to help you evaluate if it's the right fit for your team.

Pros:

• Comprehensive integrations: Unily integrates seamlessly with enterprise tools like Microsoft 365, making it a natural fit for organizations already using these platforms.

• Customizable design: The ability to create a fully branded, personalized intranet experience is a major selling point for Unily.

• Employee engagement features: Social feeds, gamification, and surveys help organizations foster a sense of connection and community among employees.

Cons:

• Steep learning curve: Setting up and managing Unily can be challenging, particularly for smaller teams without dedicated IT resources.

• High cost: Unily's pricing structure can be prohibitive for small and mid-sized businesses, as it's primarily geared toward enterprise-level organizations.

• Overwhelming feature set: While Unily's extensive features are a strength, they can also be a drawback for teams that don't need such a complex solution.

Pros and cons of Guru

Understanding Guru's strengths and weaknesses is key to determining if it's the right fit for your organization's goals.

Pros:

• Trusted, Governed AI: Guru delivers policy-enforced, permission-aware answers with citations, providing the auditability that IT leaders require, a crucial feature given that executive trust dropped sharply to just 22% for autonomous AI-employee interactions.

• Workflow Integration: By meeting users in tools like Slack, Teams, and their browser, Guru increases adoption and reduces the time spent searching for information.

• Knowledge Verification: Built-in workflows ensure that subject matter experts can easily review, verify, and update knowledge, creating a reliable source of truth.

• Powers Other AIs: Through its MCP/API, Guru can serve as the trusted knowledge base for other AI assistants, ensuring consistency across your tech stack.

Cons:

• Not an Intranet Replacement: Guru is not designed to replace a full-featured intranet like Unily; it focuses specifically on knowledge management rather than broad internal communications and social features.

• Requires SME Engagement: The value of Guru's verification engine depends on subject matter experts actively participating in the process of keeping knowledge up-to-date, a significant factor when research shows 70% of team engagement is attributable to the manager, who often acts as a key SME.

What customers are saying

Hearing directly from users can provide valuable insights into how tools like Unily and Guru perform in real-world scenarios. Here's what customers have to say about each platform:

Unily users often commend the platform for its flexibility and ease of use. One reviewer on G2 shared, "Unily has been a great partner. We're able to take advantage of the many options, features, and functionality that they offer for their intranet. We love that it is easy to use, customizable within reason, and user friendly. We're very happy with the customer service that we've received from both the customer service teams and the technical teams from Unily."

Guru users, on the other hand, frequently highlight its simplicity and its ability to transform team workflows. A G2 reviewer stated, "I use it every day. It's very user-friendly. It works just like Google—all you need is a keyword and bang—you'll find what you're looking for. Also, I've been working for 7 years and I can tell you: We never had that much knowledge or organization that we have now. Workflows are very organized and with proper reading and attention, you'll know what to do."

Choosing the right AI source of truth for your team

Choosing between Unily and Guru ultimately comes down to your team's needs. If you're looking for a customizable digital workplace with robust employee engagement tools and don't mind a steep learning curve, Unily might be the right fit for you. However, if your priority is ensuring your team has easy access to trusted, verified knowledge directly within their workflows, Guru is a better choice.

Ready to see how Guru can transform your team's knowledge management? Check out a demo today!