Want a better intranet? Try Igloo.

by Alison Green on November 10, 2014

And now a break to talk about a sponsor…

I wrote recently about Igloo, a really cool product for corporate intranets – and the exact opposite of the stale, clunky intranet interfaces you’re probably used to.

Not too long ago, I received the following email from a reader (shared here with permission):

“I regularly read your blog, and enjoy it immensely. A few weeks ago, you published an endorsement for Igloo intranet services. Coincidentally, our organization, which went through a merger last year that resulted in offices in two states, has been seeking a viable option for such services. They were on the verge of signing a contract with Sharepoint, which was going to be pricey.  I forwarded your blog post to the team that was working on this project, and they just informed me that they’ve decided to contract with Igloo and are thrilled with the product.

I just wanted to say thanks! I know it will be a very useful as we continue to foster better communication and teamwork between our various offices.”

If you haven’t checked out Igloo yet, I hope you will! 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.

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. 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.

Plus, you can set it up and edit it with incredible ease. You won’t need to send every change through your I.T. department; even non-technical-savvy people can configure Igloo themselves.

And – as the reader I quoted above found out – it’s affordable: $12 per user per month (about a quarter of what you’d pay for Sharepoint, for example), with volume discounts for larger users. And it’s free if you have fewer than 10 users.

You can learn more about Igloo here.

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

You may also like:
{ 16 comments }

{ 16 comments… read them below }

  1. Neruda*

    Does anyone know anything further about the pricing. I’m in Australia and share point is advertised at $5.10-$8.10 per month. I’m interested in igloo but not sure it’s the cheaper option here? This kind of stuff is way beyond me but I’ll happily discuss it with our IT department if it’s worthwhile.

  2. Sorena Tiba*

    Hi Neruda,

    We do have a list price of $12/user/month but we offer discounts for non-profit organizations as well as volume-based discounts for larger organizations. I would love to have a conversation with you about your specific needs and show you how you can build your own Igloo at a price that works within your budget.

    Best wishes,
    Sorena
    stiba@igloosoftware.com

  3. Evan*

    So…..Sharepoint Online straight from Microsoft costs $5/user/month.

    How could that possibly be 4 times the cost of Igloo?

      1. Unconvinced*

        Do you have any reason to trust in Igloo’s claim? Besides that they are paying you to, of course. I tend to think that people trying to sell me something are not best placed to tell me how much their competition will cost me.

        Not to mention, their page says the SharePoint cost “can include” these things, not that it necessarily does. Plus they admit they charge more for “ongoing customer support” and other services. Hmmm. How much does the average Igloo use actually end up spending on such services and support, I wonder?

        1. Sorena Tiba*

          Good morning Unconvinced,

          You can use our platform as-is! Your community is yours to control in terms of what you choose to use, but you always have access to the full suite (including any new features as they get added), with no hidden costs.

          From a functionality point of view, everything can be enabled, disabled, created and deleted using check boxes and drag and drop functionality so you don’t need an expert to get you up and running and you certainly don’t need to be a expert to use the platform.

          You can make your own changes to the look and feel! As you can imagine however, that requires a little more technical knowledge than the average user may have. This is were our JumpStart packages come in. They were created for organizations that wanted customizations and re-branding but either did not have the staff internally, and did not want to hire a new resource, or preferred to not put additional pressure on their existing teams, pulling them away from other projects.

          We have experts in house that can help you design your community to really give it an at-home feel, but if you have already have someone that can do that, then you would not need to leverage us for that. We give you full access to the theme so you can implement the design changes yourself, but if you don’t have someone with CSS knowledge, we’re here to help.

          From a support point of view, everyone has full access to our Customer Care community where you can connect with our support team, ask questions, propose ideas and even collaborate with other existing customers free of charge.

          I hope this helps! I’d love to have a discussion with you about our product if you’re interested, or even if you’re just curious :).

          Best wishes,
          Sorena

          1. Unconvinced*

            Just saw this comment as Alison has posted yet another plug for this service and I wanted to check what had been said in the comments last time.

            Very interesting that nothing in your reply actually answers the questions I was asking! Says a lot about your company, that does. A lot.

            I’ll pass, thanks. Whether your product is any good or not, your approach here is inadequate and unconvincing, and it does not speak well of the people behind this tool.

            1. Ask a Manager* Post author

              Jeez. My experience with Igloo is that these are good people with a good product. But if nothing else, I’d ask that you be polite to them here (if for no other reason that their sponsorship makes it possible for you to read this site).

            2. Sorena Tiba*

              My apologies Unconvinced! Our pricing for an intranet instance is $12/user/month but the cost does go down if you are a non-profit organization or have a larger volume-base (which is why it is difficult for us to provide an accurate quote without additional information).

              We do not charge for the maintenance of the platform but customers do have their choice of support levels that they can choose to purchase depending on their needs. To set up your community you have the option of doing the majority of it yourself (which is great for companies that have the resources internally) or purchasing one of our JumpStart packages (the cost which again depends on how many hours you would like). We are very open about our pricing model but because our customers are able to select the packages that make the most sense to them, there is a lot of flexibility.

              The reason that we offer these packages is because some companies do not want to use their staff and would prefer to leverage Igloo services instead (you have to keep in mind that even when using your internal teams you are still paying a cost as the hours they spend setting up the community takes away from other internal projects).

              Our customers are consistently ranking us #1 for services but don’t take my word for it, Gartner reported the following:

              “Feedback from Igloo’s reference customers was consistently positive. They praised the product’s quick deployment, configuration and customization flexibility with self-service options for nontechnical users, control over branding and information organization and ease of use. They also praised the responsive design of Igloo as an organization. ”
              – Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, September 2014

              As both my colleague and I have mentioned, we would love to have a conversation with you to answer any additional questions you may have and I hope you feel this better answers your question.

        2. Jean Le*

          Hi Unconvinced, it’s always good to do your own research and find what’s out there that fits your company’s goals and objectives. Every company is different, and each vendor has different strengths, so it’s important to know what you need, and search for technology that will improve your company, whether it’s communication between departments or teams, collaboration, file storage, knowledge management or all of the above!

          Perhaps a good place to start, if you are in the market for enterprise social platforms would be to do a quick search for ‘social intranet’ and see what you find. I always say – make sure you can try the platform first before paying. Igloo offers an instant trial community that you can play with for as long as you want. You can remove and/or add any features as you need with a few clicks, and if you’d like, we’ll be happy to give you a quick tour of how to do that and more!

          Quick tip – if you’re a small company and/or want a simple intranet, select the ‘app-based template’, which has beautiful large, intuitive icons. If you’re a company with 70+ users, the corporate template might be what you’re looking for – it’s organized for team collaboration and much more.

          After a bit of research, I’m confident that you’ll find Igloo a great, flexible and configurable platform that is easy to use! We’re also ranked 2nd out of 17 vendors for customer service. You can read more about Igloo Software here – we’re kind of a big deal!
          http://www.igloosoftware.com/blogs/inside-igloo/were_kind_of_a_big_deal

          We love supporting Ask A Manager, it’s a fantastic blog, and we also hope you enjoy playing with Igloo!

          Cheers
          Jean Le,
          Business Development Manager
          jle@igloosoftware.com
          http://www.igloosoftware.com

          1. Unconvinced*

            None of that answers my actual question. I didn’t ask for a sales pitch, I already got that from AAM in the post. I asked for cost info, and neither you nor your colleague above bothered to answer the damn question.

            1. Jean*

              Hi there, I’m sorry – you’re right, I didn’t answer your question about pricing. Our pricing starts at $12/user/month, and it includes all hosting and maintenance, so you never have to worry about any of those pesky upgrades.

              I’d be happy to provide you with a cost estimate. I just need to understand what you’re hoping to do first, so I can provide you with a personalized quote. What’s your availability like this week for a 15 min call?

              Jean
              jle@igloosoftware.com

  4. Tai*

    I totally understand that sponsored posts help keep Ask a Manager going. I try to read all of them to help support your great content! But I usually have to stop halfway through because they end up as ad copy. That probably makes sense for Igloo, but it doesn’t make as much sense for the other companies that have sponsored you in the past.

    If you are contractually obligated to write these posts like this, I understand, but I suspect even more people would read them and comment on them if they were more gracefully written. There are a bunch of bloggers who have done this well, especially Dooce. While I understand that you run a different (and really terrific!) blog, I really hope you’ll consider writing these posts in a different way in the future when possible.

    1. Mittens*

      Huh? I’m not sure if I understand what you mean by more graceful. I think this post is no different than the posts she had for the cat food in the past. They have Alison’s voice, they’re short and sweet and it’s a relevant topic. I don’t mind these ads at all and I’ll happily read them if it sustains the website.

  5. kacey*

    I say, you provide so much valuable content that I wouldn’t care if there was one ad per day like this, to be honest. You deserve to make a living off this!

  6. sjw*

    Late to this party, I realize, but I’m the writer of the quoted email in Alison’s post. I’m not actively involved in the implementation of Igloo for our company’s intranet, but I work closely with those folks, and they are very happy with our decision to use Igloo. I can also vouch for the fact that our “all in” cost saved us a good bit of money over Sharepoint. Also — I’m going to step on out on a limb and say that future support calls to Igloo, if needed, will be much less frustrating than they would be calling Sharepoint. Also, our company is quite small (40 or so employees) and Igloo support team has, I’m told, bent over backwards to assist in our implementation. You just don’t get that kind of service from the big players.

    No one is paying me for my comments. If, however, someone wants to pay me for them, I’m open to that! :)

Comments are closed.