What Does It Cost to Build an Intranet?
An intranet usually costs between SEK 300,000 and SEK 2 million – a customized SharePoint site at the lower end, a custom build at the upper end. The biggest cost drivers are search, permissions, and integrations with HR systems and Teams. But the real measure of success is adoption: a cheap intranet nobody uses costs the most per user.
An intranet is one of those projects where the price tag says the least about the outcome. Two organizations can spend the same amount and get completely different results – because what decides it isn’t how much you build, but whether staff actually use it. Here’s the price picture, the choice between customizing SharePoint and building your own, and why adoption is the metric that counts.
Price range and the fork in the road
| Path | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| SharePoint customization | SEK 300,000–800,000 |
| Custom intranet, focused | SEK 800,000–1,400,000 |
| Custom intranet, extensive | SEK 1,400,000–2,000,000+ |
The fork in the road is usually between customizing SharePoint – which many organizations already have through Microsoft 365 – and building a custom intranet from scratch. SharePoint gives you a faster, cheaper start with building blocks already in place. A custom build costs more but gives you full freedom in design and functionality. Which is right depends on how much you need to deviate from the standard.
If you already have Microsoft 365, SharePoint is often the natural starting point – you’re already effectively paying for the foundation and avoid building things like document management and permissions from zero. The price then goes into customizing, structuring, and integrating. A custom build only becomes justified once the standard gets in the way: when you want an experience and a design SharePoint can’t give you, or features that don’t fit within its constraints. Choosing custom because SharePoint feels “boring” is rarely worth the premium.
The biggest cost drivers
The pages themselves are rarely the expensive part. The cost lies in what makes information flow:
- Search. An intranet lives or dies by whether people find what they’re looking for. Working search across documents, pages, and people is harder to get right than it sounds, and it’s often the most important investment.
- Permissions. Who gets to see what? The right information to the right people, without sensitive material leaking or everything being locked away. The permission model is a project in itself.
- Integrations. Connections to HR systems, Teams, and other tools so the intranet becomes a hub rather than yet another place to keep updated manually.
Adoption: the real measure of success
Here’s the most important insight: an intranet only creates value once it’s used. The most expensive line item isn’t the development – it’s an intranet nobody opens.
Think of it this way. An intranet that becomes staff’s default homepage, where they find what they need, pays for itself in saved time every day. One that sits unused because the search is poor, the content is outdated, or login is a hassle is wasted money – and calculated per actual user, it ends up the most expensive of all.
That’s why the money should go where it drives usage: good search, relevant content, and integration with the tools staff already live in. A beautiful intranet nobody uses is a worse deal than a simpler one that becomes a natural part of the workday.
A concrete scenario
Say an organization with a couple hundred employees wants an intranet with news, a searchable document library, a staff directory connected to the HR system, and integration with Teams. Built on SharePoint, that often lands at SEK 500,000–800,000; as a custom build, more. But the decisive question isn’t the price – it’s how you’ll get staff to make it their homepage.
The surest way to waste the budget is to spend it on features nobody asked for while skimping on search and content. An intranet with stale information loses trust fast: once someone has searched and found something outdated, they stop searching. That’s why part of the budget should always go to someone who owns the content after launch, not just to the build itself. The technology determines whether the intranet can be good; the content and the search determine whether it actually is.
One last piece of advice: measure adoption after launch. If you know how many people actually use the intranet, and for what, you can steer further development toward what makes a difference. Without that knowledge, you’re building blind. At Weapp we build intranets and put as much weight on adoption as on the technology. See our services or get in touch with your organization and your systems and we’ll talk through the right approach.
Frequently asked questions
SharePoint customization or a custom intranet – what's the price difference?
A SharePoint customization builds on tools many organizations already have through Microsoft 365 and usually lands at the lower end of the range. A custom intranet is built from scratch around your needs and costs more, but gives you full freedom in design and functionality. The choice is between adapting something existing and building exactly what you want.
What drives the cost in an intranet project?
Three things stand out: search that actually finds the right thing, permissions that control who sees what, and integrations with HR systems, Teams, and other tools. The pages and content themselves are rarely the expensive part – it's getting information to flow, and to be searchable and secure, that costs.
Why does adoption matter more than the price?
Because an intranet only creates value once it's used. An expensive intranet that becomes staff's default homepage is a good investment. A cheap one nobody opens is wasted money – calculated per actual user, it ends up the most expensive of all. Adoption is what decides whether the investment pays off.
How do you get staff to use the intranet?
By making it the place where the information they actually need is there and easy to find. Good search, relevant content that's kept current, and integration with the tools staff already use. An intranet that requires workarounds or shows outdated information gets abandoned quickly, no matter how much it cost to build.
Does the price include hosting and content?
The build is a one-time cost. Hosting comes on top, and above all the work of keeping the content current. An intranet with stale information quickly loses trust and users. Budget for both technical maintenance and someone who owns the content – the latter is often what decides whether the intranet survives.