Review of IntelliEnterprise – Top Intranet Suite Alternative to Microsoft SharePoint
Intranet Suites
IntelliEnterprise is a comprehensive Intranet suite developed and supported by adenin Technologies. In addition to providing an enterprise portal and a host of collaboration tools, IntelliEnterprise includes content and document management, an application builder, business dashboards, and a number of other features designed to make the presentation and distribution of important information both quick and painless.
Other names in the Intranet suite business include Microsoft SharePoint, WebEx WebOffice, and Intranet DASHBOARD, with SharePoint being the most commonly known. Each has its own ups and downs, but all are priced high enough that choosing one is not a decision to take lightly.
While there are some free solutions available, such as Google Apps and Microsoft Office Live, these suites have very limited functionality for now, and all they really offer is a way to share various types of documents along with email capabilities. Sure, you can build something usable from these applications and call it an Intranet suite, but the end result isn’t even going to come close to what you can accomplish with the previously mentioned packages.
Live Demo Site
To get a feel for what the Intranet suite is capable of, a live demo has been set up on the IntelliEnterprise site that you can peruse at your leisure. While the demo does show what is possible with the software, it doesn’t really give an indication of how hard it is to build the site from the starting tools. If you want to test this out for yourself and create content for your own company, there is a free 30-day evaluation of IntelliEnterprise available.
Dashboards and Application Builder
When exploring the features of IntelliEnterprise, the first two things that caught my eye were the Applications Builder and Business Dashboards module. One thing that is missing from a lot of Intranet suites is the ability to effectively summarize and present data without using some other outside tool or application. Note the emphasis on “effectively” here. Most all tools, at least those with the higher price tags, have some data presentation means, but they tend to be unwieldy, not robust enough, or just plain ugly.
These two tools in IntelliEnterprise can be combined to develop reports on the fly from information housed in existing data sources, as long as these sources are ADO/ODBC compatible. This is ideal for members of management who want a daily one-page summary of all statistics important in their respective divisions.
License Options and Pricing
IntelliEnterprise Intranet Suite has two basic licensing options:
Perpetual License – With this license, you only have to pay a one-time fee, and you will basically own the right to use IntelliEnterprise as long as you want. This license does not include any support or subscription options – you have to purchase those separately.
License Rental – For users who are looking for a more short-term solution, one and two year contracts are available at a substantially lesser amount. It’s important to note here, though, that these licenses can only be renewed if the support and subscription package was purchased along with the initial license. For one year contracts, this additional service costs almost as much as the license itself.
Pricing for IntelliEnterprise is based on the number of users, but here are a couple of examples based on current pricing structure.
A perpetual license for 10 users would cost $1,485, and the related support and update subscription contract would run an additional $356 per year. If you only want a one-year contract, the price would drop to $386 for the licenses, and the support and subscription cost would remain the same.
On a somewhat larger, and more realistic, scale, a perpetual license for 100 users would set you back $9,900 plus another $2,376 per year for support and updates. A one-year contract for that same number of users comes in at $2,574.
Rating (4 out of 5)
Sound pricey? Well, considering what you get in this package, it’s actually a pretty nice deal. It’s certainly competitive with the likes of Microsoft SharePoint and Intranet DASHBOARD, two other big names in this arena. In fact, if your company is on the smaller side, finding a cheaper solution than this is going to be tough.
Most of the other solutions in this market don’t even advertise their prices and prefer to contact interested buyers before giving out this kind of information. It’s refreshing to see a company who is willing to divulge pricing terms before setting you up with a sales representative.
It’s not going to be the perfect solution for every organization, but IntelliEnterprise does offer several original features and options that are sure to appeal to many. The best thing to do, of course, is to give the package a test drive by taking advantage of the free trial, and see if it can stand up to your own rigorous testing.
