Unily Software vs Simpplr: Choosing the best intranet solution for your organization

Introduction to Unily and Simpplr

When comparing Unily vs Simpplr, ask yourself these questions:

• How much time are you prepared to spend building and maintaining your intranet?
• Is there a specific business reason why you would need a highly customized intranet solution — and a dedicated IT team to maintain it?
• How much do you prioritize AI and innovation in your intranet/EX platform? If this is important, do you have dedicated AI experts for ongoing maintenance and upgrades?

What is Unily?

Unily is a UK-based intranet solution that provides a hybrid solution built on top of SharePoint with basic, out-of-the-box functionality that can be highly customized. It offers a broad range of options but requires a dedicated team to build, implement, and maintain them.

Unily excels in facilitating digital workplaces for enterprises with custom requirements.

What is Simpplr?

Simpplr is a modern AI-powered employee experience and intranet platform that simplifies and enhances employee communication, collaboration, and engagement within organizations. Simpplr is a true out-of-the-box solution that gives developers the option for extensibility. It stands out by offering a platform approach to EX solutions in a user-friendly interface, personalizing content delivery, and providing advanced analytics.

Simpplr leverages AI and social features to facilitate a connected and informed workplace, positioning it as a competitive choice in the market for modern intranet solutions and employee experience software — without the need for extensive internal resources or maintenance.

Unily vs Simpplr

The comparison between Unily and Simpplr boils down to a choice between customization and user experience.

Unily is best suited for companies that want extreme customization and have a dedicated in-house development team to implement the changes.

Simpplr offers a comprehensive employee experience platform that includes an intranet, AI Assistant, intelligent search, surveys, newsletters, and rewards and recognition, all out-of-the-box. It’s AI-powered to drive rapid user adoption and ease of use, without the need for extra development.

Why Compare Unily and Simpplr?

When choosing an intranet platform, it’s important to find the right fit for your organizational needs and goals. A direct comparison can help identify the aspects of each platform that matter most to your unique situation. Let’s dive in.

Intranet Platforms Analyst Report Reviews

Analyst reports offer comprehensive, impartial assessments of top-tier intranet software solutions. Their value stems from in-depth frameworks,research-backed methodologies, and expertise in the market landscape.

2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions

As per the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions report, Simplr and Unily are positioned in the Leaders quadrant. What sets Simpplr apart is its highest ranking in Ability to Execute and unsurpassed for Completeness of Vision.

Gartner highlights Simpplr as the most “comprehensive intranet experience” for desk, frontline, and contingent workers, delivering unified tools for social interaction, communication, collaboration, and knowledge management. The platform offers a quicker deployment process with pre-built templates and features tailored for those who value “prepackaged solutions that reduce dependency on IT support, enabling rapid deployment.”

Additionally, Gartner praises Simpplr’s go-to-market strategy, as it “segments the sales team into enterprise, commercial and small to midsize businesses”, delivering personalized and specialized support across the entire spectrum of potential customers.

The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024

In the Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2024 report, both Simpplr and Unily are positioned in the ‘Leaders’ quadrant. Simpplr excels in strategy, whereas Unily holds an advantage in current offerings.

Forrester praised Simpplr for prioritizing employee experience and engagement in its innovation strategy and customer adoption methods. Simpplr excelled with top scores in AI/ML capabilities, surpassing Unily, enabling highly personalized news feeds tailored to each employee’s role and interests. It also led in automating content governance, reporting, rich metadata, developer tools, and surveys, outperforming Unily in these areas. Its lowest scores were for market presence — number of customers and revenue, both of which are expected to rise as more companies discover Simpplr’s industry leadership.

On the other hand, Unily offers strong features like specialized dashboards and reporting for internal communication leaders and technical platform managers. It excels in automating content governance, enabling repeatable employee journeys, executing communication campaigns efficiently, and offers flexibility in managing design, scheduling, and administration tools across sites/subsites.

However, Unily falls short in providing seamless native collaboration features for communities and frontline worker coordination, relying heavily on integrations with third-party tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or digital whiteboards. Additionally, users have expressed concerns “about extra costs for new features.”

Comparative Market Position

In conclusion, the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave affirm that Simpplr stands as the top intranet platform on the market. Simpplr’s emphasis on AI/ML, personalized content delivery, and automation offers a significant edge for organizations aiming to enhance employee experience and streamline internal communications. Despite Unily’s competitive offerings, Simpplr’s strategic vision and innovative approach position it as a strong choice for large and midsize enterprises.

Client Feedback and Market Reputation

G2 Grid® Report for Employee Intranet | Summer 2025

There are 180+ contenders for the Employee Intranet grid. However, only eight contenders appear in the top Leaders quadrant, meaning they’re strong in both user satisfaction and market presence. Simpplr has consecutively been named a Leader, and is a consecutive leader in the latest Summer, 2025 grid.

Here’s a comparison of Simpplr versus Unily, based on how G2 reviewers rated software sellers’ ability to satisfy their needs, as shown in the table below:

Customer Reviews: Unily

G2: 4.5

Capterra: 4.5

GetApp: 4.6

SoftwareAdvice: 4.6

Customer Reviews: Simpplr

G2: 4.7

Capterra: 4.8

GetApp: 4.9

SoftwareAdvice: 4.8

See also: Simpplr customer testimonials and third-party reviews

Unily pros and cons

While Simpplr has clear advantages over Unily in AI and automation, each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, as shown below.

Unily Pros: A closer look

1. Unique workplace tools

Unily’s platform centers around intelligent workforce segmentation and personalized content delivery, helping organizations create more relevant employee experiences. According to the Forrester Wave™ for Intranet Platforms (Q2 2024):

“Unily’s strengths include a well-resourced roadmap that its customers influence, focuses on automation, broadens its application integrations, and improves data insights.”

2. Solid content and editorial management

Unily’s content and editorial management simplifies content creation and governance across the digital workplace. Teams can easily manage pages, media assets, and site structure — ensuring content remains up-to date, on-brand, and aligned with business goals. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant report (2024):

“It provides strong page creation, site editing, and video and image management. Editorial management helps with governance efforts, including keeping content relevant.”

3. Support large-scale deployment

Unily’s platform is built to accommodate the complex requirements of large enterprise environments through its configuration-heavy approach. It can handle extranet-like scenarios, making it suitable for organizations that need to extend access to external stakeholders. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant report (2024):

“​​Its provisioning, granular security permissions and configuration model can support IPS scenarios more commonly found in large complex enterprises such as multiple intranet hubs.”

Unily Cons: Points to consider

1. Gaps in frontline support

While Unily shows promising capabilities, including dashboards/reporting for internal communication leaders and technical platform owners, the platform fell short in fulfilling work management and collaboration needs of frontline staff.

“Organizations looking for a miniapp that abstracts task and service activities and orchestrates back-end workflows may find other options in the market, specific to frontline staff more compelling.”

2. Technology may conflict with enterprise standards

While Unily was created to unify heterogeneous environments that have complex criteria for technology enablement, its chosen technology might not match up with organizations’ existing front-end structures. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant 2024 report:

“Unily relies on the Angular Module Federation framework, which may run counter to existing front-end architecture standards.”

4. Limited accessibility for small and medium businesses

Based on the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant report, Unily targets large companies with 10,000 or more employees. Its enterprise-first approach may limit accessibility for smaller organizations, as its IPS product may be better aligned for a large and complex workforce.

“Midsize and smaller companies may have difficulty engaging with Unily sales or dealing with its IPS product, which is designed for more complicated environments.”

Simpplr vs Unily: Which intranet is better?

Let’s explore and compare Unily with Simpplr across all crucial verticals.

1. Quick deployment and lower dependence on IT

The rollout process is significantly different across platforms. Unily was originally founded as a SharePoint consultancy, with a business model that depended heavily on hands-on development work. Simpplr offers a quicker deployment process with ready-to-use templates and purpose-built features designed for internal communications. It is an out-of-the-box solution designed to be fully implemented in weeks, not months — easily configured without the need for custom builds.

2. Empowers frontline support

Unily personalizes navigation menus, page layouts. They also offer specific mobile integrations (like shift swapping apps). Most of Unily’s task management capabilities are designed to support the building & administering of intranets, not frontline workers themselves. According to Gartner, “organizations looking for a miniapp that abstracts task and service activities… may find other options in the market specific to frontline staff”. 

Simpplr’s AI-powered employee experience platform is built for accessibility from the ground up. Through accessible interface design, mobile-optimized platforms, and flexible access methods, Simpplr provides digital accessibility across the workplace.

3. User experience and ease of setup:

Although the 2025 G2 Grid Report rates both Unily and Simpplr equally in the ‘ease of use’ category (95%), Simpplr stands out for its effortless setup and intuitive interface. Simpplr scored 90% while Unily scored 83%. The platform integrates seamlessly with 200+ workplace applications through out-of-the-box connectors and APIs, enabling smoother user experiences.

4. Cost-efficiency

Simpplr drives cost efficiency with its ready-to-use functionality. Gartner highlights that Simpplr’s “prepackaged approach reduces dependency on IT support.” Customers also highlight its ease of use, quick deployment, and simplified content creation. This intuitive experience enables organizations to realize value faster while keeping the total cost of ownership low. However, reference customers in the Forrester Wave report expressed “some concern about extra costs for [Unily’s] new features.” This makes it harder for organizations to assess value and potentially complicates the purchasing decision.

5. Focuses on AI and automation

Simpplr invests in AI across its platform, enhancing reporting and governance. Forrester Wave praised Simpplr’s “rich AI/ML capabilities, including genAI writing assistants for content creators… that facilitate deep personalization of an employee’s news feeds based on role, topic, or other context to deliver relevant information.” While Unily is making strides in automation — particularly in “areas like content governance, repeatable employee journeys, and communication campaigns” — it still has room for improvement.

6. Security and Compliance

When it comes to security, both platforms adhere to ISO 27001 standards and offer SOC 2 Type II attestations. However, Simpplr takes privacy and compliance a step further by offering TRUSTe verification as well as complying with HIPAA standards, securing communication and collaboration with all key stakeholders, and signing a HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) if requested.

Final Verdict: Simpplr vs Unily

For companies looking for an out-of-the-box intranet solution, Simpplr is the named industry leader according to Forrester, Gartner, and G2, with an implementation record that’s unmatched in the industry. Thanks to extensive automation and the power of AI, Simpplr provides an unparalleled experience for front-end users as well as hassle-free maintenance for HR professionals and IT teams.

Get a live demo to see Simpplr in action today!