Need an alternative to Workplace by Meta? Our #1 intranet platform has you covered.

This article was originally published on May 22, 2024, and was updated on June 10, 2024.

Whether you’re looking for a better digital HQ to communicate with frontline workers, boost collaboration among employees at your small business, or elevate employee experience and productivity at scale, Simpplr has everything your employees need to thrive in one place.

Exploring the best alternatives to Workplace by Meta

• Review analyst reports
• Make innovation a priority
• Look for robust social capabilities
• Consider customer feedback
• Hone in on product features and functionality
• Take the next step

When it comes to transforming the digital work experience, industry analysts consistently give Simpplr high rankings in myriad global employee intranet and communication use cases. Workplace by Meta doesn’t even make the cut. This is why Simpplr is the best alternative to Workplace. (Here’s a quick Simpplr vs. Workplace FAQ.)

Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions

Simpplr didn’t just make the list. We scored the highest in Ability to Execute and furthest for Completeness of Vision in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Intranet Packages Solutions™.

What propels our modern intranet past the competition along both axes? According to Gartner, our particular strengths include:

• Delivering a cohesive, personalized employee experience regardless of where employees work
• Incorporating technology innovation rapidly, in a controlled, deliberate way
• Being “simple” to acquire, deploy and use
• Showing greater user awareness and adoption of product capabilities
• Showing greater user awareness and adoption of product capabilities
• Adopted more frequently than most other providers across both office and frontline worker use cases

Our focus on unifying employee engagement, enablement and services truly sets us apart. We leverage state-of-the-art AI models to deliver a seamless, cohesive and personalized employee experience.

Top ranking for 5 use cases in 2023 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for Intranet Packaged Solutions report

While the Magic Quadrant provides a graphical representation of how vendors are positioned based on those two key criteria — Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision — Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for Intranet Packaged Solutions research focuses on the specific features and functions and how each vendor aligns against what Gartner perceives as critical requirements and capabilities.

Simpplr scored highest in 5 of 6 use cases among 15 vendors.

“Intranet packaged solutions often look the same, but different capabilities make some more fitting to your requirements and use cases than others,” the Gartner Critical Capabilities report states. “Application leaders driving intranet efforts should use this research to find the IPS vendors that best fit their use cases.”

Simpplr aced these use cases:

• Employee Communications and Engagement
• Employee Services
• Knowledge Services
• Work Management
• Frontline Worker Support

According to the report:

“Simpplr is well-equipped to support all six of the intranet use cases in this report. Its out-of-the box analytics are rich, well-aligned with intranet goals, and capable of capturing in-the-moment employee sentiment.

While AI is still emerging for many IPS competitors, Simpplr offers fully functional and integrated AI applied to a wide range of functions. For example, Simpplr uses AI to boost analytics and personalization, learning employee preferences and analyzing intranet activity to deliver insights, recommendations, and predictions to intranet managers and end users. AI-powered content moderation helps to ensure compliance and content hygiene by employing autolabeling, tagging and categorization.

Simpplr also scores highly for employee communications, enabling communicators to plan, create, coordinate, customize, distribute, execute and measure the effectiveness of communication campaigns.”

Simpplr vs. Workvivo

Workvivo didn’t make the top three for any of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities:

• 4th place: Employee Communications and Engagement

• 9th place: Employee Services

• 8th place: Application Portals

• 5th place: Knowledge Services

• 8th place: Work Management

• 8th place: Frontline Worker Support

“Workvivo is not as strongly equipped for employee services as for other use cases,” according to the report. “Low scores for platform extensibility account for some of its challenges in this role. Workvivo may also be challenged to accommodate the multiexperience support and work and task management requirements for some use cases.”

Workvivo seems to lag in AI innovation, which might help explain the low rankings across most use cases. The company’s announcement to release an AI assistant in 2024 suggested limited generative AI functionality (like the kind of writing assistance readily available via ChatGPT). In contrast, Simpplr’s AI Assistant Is designed to empower every employee with personalized guidance, automated content creation, and faster issue resolution — all within their daily workflows.

And while Workvivo recently announced the integration of a third-party AI product to support employee listening strategies, Simpplr’s AI is purpose-built across the platform to support employee listening and much more. We’re continually enhancing our features, including industry-leading EX·AI to provide even deeper insights into employee emotion, confidence and sentiment with AI-powered passive listening across employee interactions throughout the platform.

“You don’t just want to see when people log in, what they’ve read, or when they’ve been recognized,” says Carolyn Clark, VP of Employee Experience Strategy at Simpplr. “You want to know the whole vibe, their sentiment, the mood within the organization. And you need to take the right action based on what you learn. This is what investing in a platform that leverages AI purpose-built for EX can help you accomplish.”

Learn more about Simpplr vs. Workvivo

Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms report

“[Simpplr’s] strategy puts employee experience and engagement at the core of its innovation plans and customer adoption methodologies. The product vision is a common platform that serves communication, HR, and technology leaders as they deliver content, communication, and recognition to employees.” ~ The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024

The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024 report recently recognized Simpplr as a Leader in Intranet Platforms for the third year in a row.

After a rigorous evaluation of 13 vendor offerings, we received the highest scores possible in the Innovation and Adoption criteria in the Strategy category, as well as in the AI/ML, Dashboard and Reporting, Governance, Metadata Support, Developer Resources and Surveys criteria — reflecting our commitment to unifying employee experience (EX) capabilities and enhancing business outcomes.

We believe our highest score in the AI and/or machine learning criterion reflects our vision and track record of delivering continuous innovation and leading the way.

“Simpplr invests in AI across its platform, enhancing reporting and governance,” the report states. “Simpplr has strong AI/ML capabilities that facilitate deep personalization of an employee’s news feeds based on role, topic, or other context to deliver relevant information.”

Forrester also noted our intranet’s leading capabilities in automation, analytics and integrations to boost operational efficiencies and enhance EX. According to the report, “Other strengths include automation of content governance, rich metadata, and reporting tools […] Reference customers see Simpplr’s internal communication tools as a ‘strong suite.’ They like its content authoring capabilities, reporting, and application integration.”

High marks from real users on G2 report

Based on actual customer reviews, the G2 report aims to help buyers find the software solutions that can best solve their business problems. That includes software that’s designed for building intranets along with packaged solutions.

Simpplr consistently outranks other leading employee intranet solutions.

In G2, only six of the 200+ contenders appear in the top quadrant, indicating strength in both user satisfaction and market presence. Simpplr holds the leading position for satisfaction with the exception of Microsoft’s SharePoint — which is for building an intranet, not buying one. Workvivo isn’t in the top quadrant of the G2 report.

Related: SharePoint Alternative Options

Since many Workplace by Meta users were small businesses, it’s worth noting that all of our G2 reviews from small businesses have earned 4.5 to 5 stars.

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Innovation matters. Make it a priority for your new SaaS vendor.

We’ve heard that a lot of organizations looking for an alternative to Workplace by Meta were frustrated by that platform’s seeming apathy for innovation. In today’s ever-changing workplace, innovation is critical to stay ahead of the employee experience curve.

At Simpplr, we’re committed to purposefully utilizing AI-driven insights to empower employees, enhance decision-making, and streamline day-to-day workflows — and have been since our inception.

This commitment drives innovation across our entire platform — including search functionality, content recommendation engines, content moderation, emotion/sentiment analysis, theme classification and prescriptive analytics.

We’re here for the long haul and ready to serve you.

Responsible AI innovation

But we wield the power of AI ethically. A proud member of the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute, Simpplr stands by the core principles that guide our product development and AI implementations:

1. AI must be useful and accessible: Our AI-driven solutions enhance employee efficiency and responsiveness to meet business needs, enabling organizations to derive tangible value from automation, improved collaboration and increased efficiency.

2. AI should augment people, not replace them: We strive to improve the work experience by automating routine tasks and speeding up access to personalized information, allowing individuals more time for meaningful contributions and excellence in their work.

3. AI must respect data privacy: When handling employee data, prioritizing privacy and security is crucial. In line with this commitment, we strictly adhere to rigorous data privacy regulations.

4. AI must be used responsibly: We are committed to transparency in AI development on our platform. Our AI ethics principles guide ethical product development and use.

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No ‘Facebook for work?’ No problem.

You don’t need Workplace by Meta to foster a social experience for anywhere employees. Workplace often touted itself as “Facebook for work” — but the right employee experience platform includes plenty of social capabilities to keep employees connected, informed and inspired wherever and however they work.

Simpplr offers frontline and desked employees an equally rich and engaging social experience.

• Each employee gets a personalized home dashboard within the app, including relevant top-down communication and announcements, must-reads, built-in onboarding workflows, a social feed and intelligent search.

• Simpplr mobile apps provide full functionality — for example, all employees can engage with content, receive alerts, browse albums, upload images, watch and record streaming videos, answer surveys, give and get recognition, receive must-read content, search the employee directory, and update user profiles.

• The AI Assistant provides employees with a single destination to process approvals, retrieve immediate answers to questions, and engage in employee surveys.

• Surveys target and reach the frontline to help improve compliance, assess employee sentiment, and deploy employee engagement surveys.

“Simpplr has elevated the way we communicate, engage and connect,” said Laura Marchiafava, Internal Communications Manager at RB Global. Over the past 36 months, the platform’s 5,000+ users have viewed intranet content more than 1 million times, with an 86% average content engagement rate. Like on Facebook, they’ve engaged using likes, comments and replies — with content garnering 15,100+ likes, 2,100+ comments and 1,100 comment replies.

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Social proof: Our customers trust us

For the small-, mid-size and enterprise businesses that relied on Workplace by Meta for employee communications, Workplace’s abrupt end opens the door for a significant upgrade. Many customers who’ve switched to Simpplr from legacy platforms can attest to its value in enhancing the employee experience and offering a strong return on investment. Here are just a few examples from our more than 1,000 customers.

• Natalie Geley, Manager of Digital Media at OPTrust: “We said goodbye to an outdated intranet and organization-wide emails and said hello to a more curated, centralized, and social intranet for all our latest news, information, events and more. We went from zero metrics to over 96% of team members visiting the Cube within the first few weeks of launching and that number has held steady every month to date.”

OPTrust’s new corporate intranet, the Cube, debuted in October 2022 — with more than 90% of team members consistently visiting ever since.

• Stephanie Strigenz, Sr. Corporate Communications Manager at TEAM Marketing: “Our previous intranet platform was over 10 years old and really limited two-way communication and engagement. With Simpplr’s platform, features like audience targeting, rich analytics, notifications for “must read” content, a master event calendar, sites for every department and photo albums have allowed us to communicate more effectively, while simultaneously creating a much more engaging and positive user experience.”

• Jen Bare, Director of Corporate Communications at Sammons Enterprises: “I could not have asked for a better implementation team. They helped to make a very complex use case manageable, especially in the timeframe we wanted to go live by. Simpplr absolutely met the original timeframe and budget.”

• Wendy M. Pfeifer, former CIO at Nutanix: “When testing the [Simpplr] platform, we found a 50% increase in efficiency when individuals searched for onboarding materials. Such time savings can quickly add up across our entire team.” Simpplr’s user-friendly interface also made it easy for employees to find information, mitigating friction in completing tasks and raising the Net Promoter Score (NPS) by an average of 590%.

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In a nutshell: Why Simpplr is the best alternative to Workplace by Meta

“Large and midsize enterprises wanting a cutting-edge cloud intranet that operates in the Google or Microsoft ecosystem should consider Simpplr.” ~ The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024

Simpplr is unified

Too many employees have too many tools, creating a sense of digital friction that fractures their attention, causes frustration, and limits productivity — creating a poor employee experience that impacts key organizational outcomes. Simpplr delivers core EX capabilities to unify the employee experience — including surveys, recognition, search and newsletters — all in one place.

Simpplr is easy to use

Our intranet software is managed with clicks, not code, so you can break the IT dependency cycle.

You can migrate in weeks, not months

Simpplr is a great alternative to Workplace because it provides effortless automated migration and fast deployment. Our rapid go-live process allows most clients to transition to their new intranet with confidence in 16 weeks or less. And you can launch without any extra development needed.

You can deliver more effective employee comms

Simpplr enables you to align everyone across your organization with relevant information. Our AI allows you to personalize and target internal communications so you can deliver custom content tailored to employees’ roles, workstreams and preferred channels — ensuring that communication is meaningful, engaging and effective to foster a deeper connection and understanding.

Simpplr helps employees find exactly what they need, fast

Our Enterprise Search queries all your company’s knowledge bases and adapts results to each user, returning only the information that people need — increasing productivity and putting an end to frustration. Our latest update to Search, Smart Answers, uses RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) to not only understand and retrieve information; it generates a key summary based on that information.

Simply ask a question, and you’ll get the best “human” answer possible based on the intranet content and integrated sources.

The Smart Answers feature is built on Simpplr’s secure platform and utilizes large language models (LLMs) through Microsoft’s Azure platform — providing a higher level of security and trust and more control over the data that we pass to them. The data is encrypted on Azure servers, deleted after a short while, and not used for any other purpose, including training LLMs.

Simpplr automates content governance, maintenance and moderation

We take care of mundane and repetitive tasks to free up time and keep things “SFW.” Simpplr launched the industry’s first Auto-Governance Engine™ to combat the challenge of stale intranet content — a top reason intranets fail.

Our Auto-Governance Engine™ leverages AI to automatically monitor, surface, and unpublish outdated content — reducing the burden on intranet admins.

Authors and site owners get alerts when their content needs a refresh, news management algorithms naturally deprioritize older news, and analytics surface content that’s collecting dust.

And of course you want your intranet to reflect your organization’s values — so our AI-powered content moderation algorithm combs every feed post, comment and reply to ensure employees are using the platform appropriately (e.g., no hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, etc.). This feature supports Spanish, Danish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Swedish — enabling multilingual customers to keep their environments safe from offensive or inappropriate language.

Simpplr provides the most comprehensive insights

We offer advanced analytics out-of-the-box, and give clear recommendations so you can take action on the insights provided. Powered by AI across the platform, we surface insights into usage patterns, sentiment analysis, employee signals and feedback to help you better understand the content, channels and strategies that improve the employee experience and drive intranet adoption.

But we don’t stop there. We provide actionable recommendations so you can improve everything from content consumption and social engagement to employee sentiment.

Simpplr offers unrivaled security

Your reputation rides on the cybersecurity footprint of the third-party vendors you partner with. Simpplr meets the highest security standards, including certifications for SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, and we’re TRUSTe verified. When it comes to security and compliance, we don’t play games.

Get this: Even Workvivo touts Simpplr as a top alternative to Workplace by Meta!

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Next steps

As you explore alternatives to Workplace by Meta, do your due diligence to pick the best solution for your organization’s unique needs. Here are some additional resources that can help:

• Check out what our customers have to say about their Simpplr experience, including our 2024 Intranet Superstars.

• Get your complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024 report.

• Get your complimentary copy of the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions report

• Read this comprehensive guide to the best intranet platforms

• Discover how to revolutionize the employee experience with an AI-powered EX platform

• Learn what to ask SaaS vendors about ethical AI in intranet software development

• Compare vendor security with our this free intranet security & trust checklist

• Understand the ROI of internal communications

• Use this free template to build your SaaS business case

Want to see Simpplr in action? Watch a 5-minute demo to get started with the upgrade you deserve!