Build or buy your SharePoint intranet: how to decide in 2026

• Last updated: 27 August 2026

SharePoint Online is a highly versatile communication and collaboration platform that is the base technology behind the majority of the world's intranets. But before launching an intranet it is critical to explore some fundamental questions about how you are going to use SharePoint to actually power your intranet. One of the most basic is:

Should I build or buy my SharePoint intranet?

Of course, there is no right answer, and the best approach will depend very much on what you are trying to achieve, your budget, your project timetable, your technical and security requirements, ongoing resourcing and more.

When it comes to SharePoint intranets, one size does definitely not fit all. In some ways the beauty of SharePoint is typified by the fact that you actually have a choice in the matter.

In this post we're going to explore the four routes open to you, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each:

• Native SharePoint: SharePoint Online as it comes, with no additional products.
• Full custom build: SharePoint Online developed to your own specification.
• Hybrid: native SharePoint with light customisation, usually a small number of web parts.
• In-a-box product: SharePoint Online extended by a product that sits on top of it.

Native SharePoint is the starting point rather than a purchase - you already own it. The real build or buy decision is between the second and fourth routes, with the hybrid sitting between them. In practice, most organisations land in the middle.

Let's explore each route in turn.

1. Native SharePoint

What is it?

Using SharePoint Online exactly as it ships, with no customisation and no additional intranet products. This is not really a purchase decision at all - SharePoint is already included in your Microsoft 365 licence. It is the option where you spend nothing further and work within what the platform gives you.

Advantages:

There is obvious appeal to just using native SharePoint Online to drive your intranet, and it is often a popular option from an IT perspective:

• There are no additional licensing costs, you don't have to spend time procuring an additional solution.
• It ticks all the boxes for security and governance, which will have already been applied across your Microsoft 365 tenant.
• On paper the intranet should also be quicker to implement - the features are all there available and ready to go.
• Understandably, many IT functions steer away from customisation and all its negative associations around technical debt and additional cost, so want to go for native SharePoint because it's cheaper and easier to manage and upgrade.

If you want a fuller picture of what SharePoint gives you natively, the complete guide covers the platform itself in more depth.

Disadvantages:

However, there are some disadvantages in just using SharePoint alone that are important to consider:

• Surprisingly, SharePoint Online has some major gaps in intranet functionality and often does not meet the needs of internal communicators, so you inevitably are making some compromises.
• Native SharePoint Online functionality will also not meet any specialist needs or processes you want to support and may not support a particular integration.
• These compromises are felt most in medium, large, and more complex organisations with more than 200 employees, global offices or with particular compliance needs.
• There are less flexible branding options, so while the intranet will still look good, it is unlikely to meet the look and feel adopted across other major digital channels.
• You will need more in-house technical resources and access to expertise to set up, manage, and maintain your intranet, or you may need to source an implementation partner.
• You will also need more resourcing from the business side to set up and manage the intranet and support governance across a devolved publishing model - ensuring content is up to date, for example is harder without a product.
• Although you avoid licensing costs, the extra resourcing you need may mean the total cost of ownership for your intranet over three years will usually be more than acquiring a product.

SharePoint also sits inside a wider Microsoft 365 toolkit. If you are weighing Teams, Viva and Copilot alongside the intranet itself, start with our guide to Microsoft 365 intranet options.

2. Full custom build

What is it?

Customising SharePoint Online to deliver features, branding and integrations that will help deliver value for your intranet and increase adoption.

Advantages:

Most IT teams now avoid custom development where they can, because of the cost, risk, effort and technical debt it carries. But there are four situations where it remains the right answer:

• Integrations with legacy, custom-built or uncommon systems that no native connector covers.
• Design and branding requirements that neither native SharePoint nor a product can meet.
• Individual requirements not covered by anything on the market, often a well-loved feature from a previous intranet.
• Specific business processes, usually within a single line of business, that need to run through the intranet itself.

A decade ago, when classic SharePoint was the norm, most SharePoint intranets were heavily customised. Features were fine-tuned and design was exactly as wanted, but projects ran to eighteen months, cost a great deal, and were then very hard to evolve. Very few teams want to go back to that.

Disadvantages:

A customised intranet can come with a lot of baggage, and it is important to consider carefully the ramifications of going down that path:

• Custom development comes at additional cost and can be very expensive, and you will usually need to go through an implementation partner.
• It also involves a lot of effort and will slow down your time to market.
• Custom development comes with potential additional risk around security, compliance, and accessibility, which you or your implementation partner will be responsible for, rather than your product vendor.
• Custom development builds technical debt that means upgrades are expensive and require more effort.
• Any custom development also requires ongoing support and maintenance which can also prove to be expensive.
• Extensive customisation can limit the opportunities to use new SharePoint features released by Microsoft, for example with AI, and prevent continuous improvement over the longer term.
• The total cost of ownership for a heavily customised intranet is likely to be the highest of all the options described in this post.

3. Hybrid: native SharePoint with light customisation

What is it?

An intranet built mainly on native SharePoint, or on native SharePoint plus a product, with customisation deliberately contained to a small number of individual web parts rather than applied across the whole platform.

Light versus heavy customisation

The distinction matters more than the decision to customise at all. If customisation is genuinely necessary, it is usually possible to keep it light - two or three custom web parts, with native SharePoint and product features doing the rest of the work.

Light customisation still incurs technical debt and still needs ongoing management. But two or three custom web parts are far easier and cheaper to maintain than a heavily customised environment, and they do not block you from taking new SharePoint features as Microsoft releases them.

Heavier customisation usually means delivering complete solutions through the intranet - onboarding, case handling, a line-of-business process. It can deliver real value, but it brings heavy cost, significant effort and a lasting impact on how easily the platform can scale. Before committing to it, it is always worth testing whether existing SharePoint and product features can be configured to do the job. They are more flexible than most teams expect.

Advantages:

• Balances most of the benefits of native SharePoint with the specific capability you actually need.
• Keeps cost, risk and effort proportionate to the requirement.
• Preserves your ability to adopt new SharePoint capability as it ships.

Disadvantages:

• Custom web parts still need managing, supporting and testing against SharePoint updates.
• The gaps that prompted the customisation in the first place may still exist elsewhere on the intranet.
• Total cost of ownership can creep if "light" customisation is allowed to grow.

Not sure which route you are on?

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4. SharePoint plus an in-a-box product

What is it?

There are a number of SharePoint intranet in-a-box products which sit alongside or on top of SharePoint and complete some of the gaps in functionality, have more flexible branding options, add templates, and introduce additional capabilities relating to communication, engagement, and productivity. These products vary in cost, extent, and maturity, but all add value. Invariably, they also rely on SharePoint.

For transparency, Lightspeed365 is an example of a SharePoint intranet in-a-box product. Lightspeed365 is built by Content Formula, a Microsoft 365 consultancy that delivers across all four routes described here, which is why this comparison is not weighted toward any one of them.

Advantages:

• These products fill the missing gaps in SharePoint, particularly in areas such as internal communications and engagement, and therefore will meet the requirements for larger and complex organisations.
• In-a-box products have intranet management and content governance features that make it easier and less effort for intranet teams and content editors to run the platform.
• There are usually more flexible branding options.
• There are additional capabilities often bundled that sometimes go beyond a traditional intranet, for example to deliver omni-channel communications, and move the product to being a wider employee experience platform.
• In-a-box products usually allow for a smoother and potentially quicker speed to market because they have ready-to-go templates and tools.
• You can often use the full SharePoint capabilities, but not always.
• You will usually get additional support from the in-a-box vendor so you will not require as much technical support and you can also get help to drive adoption and customer success. Sometimes support services are bundled in the licensing costs, or available as extra.
• SharePoint intranet in-a-box products tend to have an active product roadmap that continues to add new features - for example that incorporate AI - while remaining close to the Microsoft 365 roadmap.
• It depends very much on the product you choose, but the overall total cost of ownership over three years may end up being lower than just using native SharePoint.

Disadvantages:

• The upfront costs for acquiring an additional in-a-box product can be considerable.
• You are often paying twice for some of the same features which are replicated across SharePoint and also natively within the in-a-box product.
• You will also need to procure the solution which can be time-consuming and also manage an additional vendor relationship.
• In some in-a-box products some data may sit outside your Microsoft 365 tenant which may not sit comfortably with your IT security team.

Modular products versus full platforms

In-a-box products fall into two broad shapes. Full platforms replace much of the SharePoint experience with their own, bringing a wider feature set that often extends past a traditional intranet into employee experience territory. Modular products, of which Lightspeed365 is one, add a defined set of web parts to SharePoint and leave the rest of the platform alone.

Neither shape is better. The choice depends on whether you want a broader employee experience platform and are willing to pay for it, or whether you want to close specific gaps and keep the SharePoint editing experience your content authors already know.

The differences between products in this category - where the data and code sit, how much you end up paying twice for, how support is bundled, how active the roadmap is - matter more than the category label. We have set those out in full in our guide to SharePoint intranet in-a-box products.

Native, build or buy for my SharePoint intranet: Comparison table

If you are still not sure which of the four routes you are on, take the free intranet health check.