If you're shopping for an intranet solution that boosts internal communication, improves access to resources, and fosters employee engagement, you're addressing a critical need, as research shows knowledge workers spend over a quarter of their time searching for information. This guide will help you understand what Hubley offers, where it shines, where it falls short—and how it compares to Guru, a powerful alternative built for today's distributed, fast-moving teams.

Let's take a closer look at Hubley and how it stacks up.

What is a SharePoint intranet?

A SharePoint intranet is a private, internal website built on Microsoft's SharePoint platform that serves as a central digital workplace for organizations.

Key functions include:

• Internal communications: Company news, announcements, and updates

• Document management: Centralized file storage and collaboration

• Microsoft 365 integration: Native connections to Teams, OneDrive, and Outlook

Organizations use SharePoint to create customized sites for different departments or projects. However, effective SharePoint intranets face common challenges:

• Technical complexity: Requires significant IT resources for setup and maintenance

• Content governance: Risk of becoming outdated, hard-to-navigate repositories

• User adoption: Complex interfaces can hinder employee engagement

SharePoint intranet benefits and challenges

While powerful, a SharePoint-based intranet comes with a distinct set of advantages and disadvantages that are important for any IT or operations leader to consider.

Benefits

• Deep Microsoft 365 integration: It works seamlessly within the Microsoft ecosystem, connecting to tools your teams already use.

• High customization: Companies can build highly branded and customized sites tailored to specific departmental needs and workflows.

Challenges

• Complexity and cost: Implementation and maintenance often require specialized IT expertise, and costs can escalate with licensing, customization, and support.

• User adoption: Without intuitive design and constant upkeep, intranets can become difficult to navigate, leading to low employee engagement and content sprawl.

• Information silos: Content is often locked within the intranet site, making it difficult to access information quickly from other applications where work happens. This problem is widespread, as one study found that only 16 percent of content within a typical business is posted where other workers can access it.

What is Hubley?

Hubley is a customizable intranet solution built on Microsoft SharePoint. It was developed to help organizations centralize communication, streamline internal content, and improve collaboration among employees. Because it's SharePoint-based, it's particularly appealing to companies already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem.

While Hubley primarily focuses on being an employee intranet, it also supports use cases around knowledge sharing, HR communications, and onboarding. Its design leans heavily on visual customization, with components like department landing pages, branded content sections, and interactive widgets.

Key features of Hubley

Hubley offers a suite of features aimed at improving the employee experience and fostering better communication across teams. Here are a few of its standout capabilities:

Custom intranet design

Hubley emphasizes visual customization, allowing teams to build department-specific pages with branded content and configurable widgets. This gives companies the ability to create an intranet experience that reflects their unique culture and structure.

Employee engagement tools

To foster connection and morale, Hubley includes social features like polls, shout-outs, and recognition feeds. These tools are designed to make the intranet feel interactive and engaging, which is especially important in remote or hybrid environments where fully remote employees are more likely to report experiencing loneliness than their on-site counterparts.

HR and onboarding support

Hubley provides modules to support HR teams and new employees, including onboarding workflows, directories, and centralized access to policies and documentation. These features help streamline the onboarding process and ensure important information is always accessible.

Integration with Microsoft 365

Built on SharePoint, Hubley integrates natively with Microsoft tools like Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive. For organizations already relying on Microsoft 365, this makes adoption seamless and enables users to work within the tools they're already using.

Who uses Hubley

Hubley is a good fit for mid-sized to large organizations already invested in Microsoft 365. It's especially helpful for HR, internal comms, and IT teams looking to improve knowledge access, streamline onboarding, or centralize announcements.

Industries with structured processes—like healthcare, education, finance, or government—are most likely to benefit from its formality and SharePoint-based foundation.

Pros and cons of Hubley

Like any platform, Hubley has its strengths and limitations. Here's what teams need to consider when evaluating it.

Pros:

• Integration with other tools: Hubley integrates smoothly with Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook, making it easy to adopt in Microsoft environments.

• Collaboration features: With built-in social elements and content sharing, employees can interact via shout-outs, comments, and polls.

• Customization and scalability: Hubley's intranet can be deeply branded and scaled across departments and business units.

Cons:

• Learning curve: Because it's built on SharePoint, users unfamiliar with that ecosystem may find Hubley unintuitive or difficult to navigate at first.

• Cost: Licensing and implementation can be expensive, especially when factoring in required SharePoint licenses and any additional customization work.

• Complexity: Some users report that the platform feels bloated or overly complex, especially when trying to set up or maintain custom widgets and content layouts.

Guru vs. Hubley

Both Hubley and Guru aim to solve internal communication and knowledge access challenges—but they approach the problem very differently. Here's how the two compare.

Guru's strengths

Guru is more than just an intranet—it's an AI-powered knowledge management platform designed to deliver trusted information where your team works, leveraging technology that has been shown to make some workers 14% more productive.

Key capabilities include:

• Enterprise-wide AI search: Verified content across your entire tech stack

• Smart integrations: Works within Slack, Chrome, Microsoft Teams, and 50+ tools

• Auto-verification workflows: Knowledge Triggers and AI-powered answers you can trust

Hubley's strengths

Hubley stands out for its deep customization options and native integration with Microsoft 365. For companies heavily invested in SharePoint, Hubley offers a branded, centralized intranet experience that fits within existing workflows. Teams can build visually rich landing pages and social features to drive employee engagement and showcase company culture.

Integration and user experience

Here's how the platforms compare on key integration factors:

What customers are saying

Customer feedback is a great lens for understanding what it's really like to use each platform.

Hubley users appreciate its centralization features but point out performance inconsistencies, especially on mobile:

"Hubley is centralized platform facilitates easy communication and collaboration among employees. The Hubley mobile app has been criticized for its inconsistent performance and lack of features compared to the desktop version."

Guru users consistently highlight the platform's reliability and usefulness in day-to-day work:

"Guru can hold such a wealth of information that helps support my everyday work. It's nice to have a dependable resource! I like that I can organize information so I have easy access to information that I use regularly."

"I think it's really awesome that my employers can send me 'required reads' and I can click right on it that I've read the information. What a great way to get information out to several thousand people without weird email threads or messaging. Super helpful feature!"

Choosing the right knowledge solution for your team

If your team is fully immersed in the Microsoft ecosystem and values highly branded intranet experiences, Hubley could be a strong contender—especially if you have the IT resources to manage a SharePoint-based solution.

But if your priority is fast, reliable access to accurate knowledge—without the bloat or complexity—Guru is the better fit. With AI-powered search, seamless integrations, and real-time content verification, Guru helps teams work smarter by keeping trusted information right where they need it.

Want to see how Guru could transform the way your team works? Check our our demo and experience a better way to find and share knowledge.