you need a better intranet: Igloo

by Alison Green on September 30, 2014

And now a break to talk about a sponsor…

What’s your experience been with corporate intranets? If it’s anything like mine has been, you’ve often found them to be clunky one-way repositories of stale information – the place where documents go to die.

That’s why I was excited by what I’ve seen from Igloo. They’ve created an intranet product that’s much cooler than anything else out there.

They gave me the chance to play around with it, and I love it. It’s interactive, really easy to use, and highly customizable. You can use it to have a super simple intranet if that’s what makes sense for your organization, or you can have something quite complex; it’s impressively adaptable.

And it’s not just for traditional intranet stuff like storing expense forms. Igloo will pull together team calendars, project information, working documents, wikis (which you might use for SOPs, manuals, etc.), task management, document collaboration, and real-time updates from all your teams. On top of all that, you can also use it for secure file-sharing (like a secure version of Dropbox). And it even has a Twitter-like internal micro-blogging system, if you want to give people the chance to share quick thoughts across the company.

Moreover, it’s easy. If you’re the one in charge of it, you can set it up and edit it with incredible ease. You won’t need to send every change through your overworked I.T. department; if you can figure out how to read this blog (and you have), then you’re going to be able to configure Igloo yourself. It’s seriously easy (but it will look impressive, like you’re a technical genius).

Right now you’re thinking that something this cool has a crazy price, but: It’s weirdly affordable. It’s $12 per user per month (about a quarter of what you’d pay for Sharepoint, for example). And if you have under 10 users? Free.

You can learn more about Igloo here.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Igloo. All thoughts and opinions are my own. And I am picky.

{ 18 comments }

{ 18 comments… read them below }

  1. KC*

    They’ve created an intranet product that’s much cooler than anything else out there.

    It’s “cooler” — get it? :)

    1. KC*

      I’m actually trying the demo, though. I’ve worked on projects to build out new intranets and it’ll be interesting to see what this solution can do. And hey–if the task management is really good, maybe I’ll keep using it for my own personal projects–it’s free for up to 10 collaborators!

  2. Treena Kravm*

    My org is updating the intranet, and they claim it’ll have much of these capabilities. We have a shared drive right now that is the place documents go to die. Every time I have to look for something, I find a 2001 doc that is not only useless and wrong, but amusing in all the wrong ways. Here’s hoping they’re using Igloo (or something like it!)

  4. M. in Austin!*

    This sounds awesome! I have a side project/”job” (doesn’t pay me yet… boo!) that could really benefit from something like this. Thanks AAM!!!! I’m so excited to try it!

  5. Elizabeth*

    This is definitely a product I was looking for years ago when our company didn’t want to go with SharePoint because of costs. Can’t wait to check this out more.

  6. Relosa*

    Does anyone else use Bitrix? Is this better/worse than? From what I can see it’s pretty much the same, but my boss (and everyone else included) hates Bitrix’s calendar.

    We’re all over the continent and communicate almost entirely via Wunderlist, email, and Bitrix. So if this can replace all of them, or most of it, it would be awesome.

    1. Marine*

      Hi Relosa,
      Igloo Software Employee here. I cannot really talk about Bitrix but I can tell you that we use Igloo internally and our calendars are really easy to use. If you would like, I can set you up for a demo of our product with someone from our team. We would be happy to tour you around so you can get a feel.
      Cheers

  7. Cath in Canada*

    Anything that makes people more likely to read the info I’ve put on the intranet can only be a good thing!

    Conversation with my husband last week:

    Him: “how was your day?”
    Me” “frustrating! I had about 20 emails from trainees, all asking the same questions about how to submit their funding applications”
    Him: “if they all keep asking the same questions, wouldn’t it make sense to put that information somewhere where they can all find it and not have to email you every time?”
    Me: “…ya think?”

    (I’ve put tons of resources on the intranet about how to apply, which forms are needed for which applications, who needs to sign them and in which order, how long it typically takes to get each signature, and even examples of correctly completed forms. I put a link to this resource in my at-least monthly emails to the group. Does anyone actually use it? Nope).

    Rant over, will forward this to our IT department…

      1. Jessa*

        This, every time I would be asked something that’s out on the intranet where I used to work, they got an email with either a link, or instructions on how to drill down through the choices to find x. They never, unless they were an employee with an accommodation about communications (we had a visually impaired employee for whom I was more than willing to send excerpts that were easily read on their device, making them navigate a bunch of stuff was harder for them, while the intranet was good, it wasn’t perfect for their reading software,) ever, got x from me. Just how to find x. Because I was tired of doing the work for them.

        And if I kept having the same conversation over and over with the same person, it was time to get with their manager and have that dealt with.

        Because explaining once or even twice if it was a long time apart is one thing, but having people just expect “because you’re the admin, it’s your job to do all this for us,” not happening.

  8. Piper*

    Love this! I’m currently working on finding a good option for my team to communicate and collaborate. This looks like a viable option and I’m going to check it out further.

  10. My Fake Name is Laura*

    Immediately sent this to a community group I participate in that could use a project management suite. Thanks so much!

  11. Piper*

    Stopping back in to say that I’ve checked this out further and now am working to get a proposal together for my organization to use it. It is exactly what I’ve been looking for and was fearing we’d have to build ourselves. Thank you!

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