How much does an intranet cost in Australia?

What are the three ways to get an intranet, and what does each cost?

You can configure SharePoint on licences you already pay for, subscribe to a packaged intranet product, or build a custom staff portal. Each path is cheapest for a different kind of workforce.

Path	Best fit	Indicative cost (AUD, ex GST)
SharePoint on existing Microsoft 365 licences	Office based organisations where nearly everyone already has Microsoft 365	$15,000 to $60,000 for a partner to design and set up, plus internal content work
Packaged intranet SaaS	Organisations wanting news, directories and engagement features out of the box	Per user subscription, often by quote for larger organisations, plus setup
Custom staff portal or employee app	Deskless or casual workforces, or portals pulling rosters, pay and forms from several systems	$60,000 to $200,000

These are indicative market ranges, not quotes. Setup and build effort convert at an assumed blended agency rate of $1,100 to $1,500 a day; Re:Sourced’s July 2026 guide puts senior software contractors in Sydney at $800 to $1,100 a day ex GST.

What does a SharePoint intranet really cost on licences you already have?

The software is already paid for; the cost is design, configuration, content and governance. A partner setting up a SharePoint intranet typically works through:

1. Information architecture. Hubs, sites, navigation and who owns each area.
2. Design. Home page, news, branded templates, mobile layout in the SharePoint app.
3. Permissions. Groups by team and role, external sharing rules, and a review of sites that are open to everyone.
4. Content migration. Moving policies, forms and documents from file shares or an old intranet, and archiving the rest.
5. Training and governance. Training section owners, publishing rules and a review schedule.

A small organisation with one hub and a handful of sites sits near $15,000. A multi entity organisation with dozens of departments, heavy migration and a permissions clean up sits near the top of the band. Internal staff time for rewriting content is on top of either.

What does packaged intranet software cost?

Enterprise intranet vendors usually price by quote, while smaller staff communication apps publish per user prices. At the time of writing (November 2026):

Product	Pricing shown	Notes
Staffbase	By quote	Says every enterprise solution is scoped and priced individually, with separate quotes for frontline and whole workforce
Connecteam Communications hub, Basic	US$29 a month for the first 30 users, then US$0.50 per extra user a month, billed yearly	Chat, updates, directory, surveys, knowledge base
Connecteam Communications hub, Advanced	US$49 a month for the first 30 users, then US$1.50 per extra user a month, billed yearly	Adds scheduling of messages and more controls

Connecteam showed prices in US dollars; at the RBA’s rate of about US$0.69 in early November 2026, US$1.50 is about $2.17. Add setup, integrations with your HR or rostering system, and the cost of single sign on if the tool supports it. Ask packaged vendors for a three year price, because first year discounts are common.

When does a custom staff portal or employee app make sense?

A custom portal earns its cost when the intranet must be a front door to several systems, or when most staff would otherwise need a licence just to read it. Typical features:

• passwordless login for casual staff, and single sign on through Entra ID for office staff, explained in our Entra ID single sign on guide;
• news, policies and a staff directory;
• rosters, leave balances and pay slips pulled from your rostering and payroll systems;
• forms and approvals, such as incident reports and leave requests;
• training records and required reading with acknowledgements;
• search across all of it, optionally with AI answers.

If the portal is mostly forms and approvals, it overlaps with internal tools; our internal tools guide covers that case.

How do frontline licence costs change the answer?

For organisations with many deskless or casual staff, licences can cost more than any build. This hypothetical example has 50 office staff who already hold Microsoft 365 E3, and 350 frontline staff who don’t. Prices are Microsoft’s and Connecteam’s list prices at the time of writing; the custom portal figures are assumptions inside the range above, at $1,300 a day. It is illustrative arithmetic, not a quote.

Option for the 350 frontline staff	Arithmetic	3 year total (AUD, ex GST)
Microsoft 365 F1 (read only Office web and mobile, 2 GB storage)	350 × AU$4.50 × 36	$56,700
Microsoft 365 F3 (editing in Office web and mobile)	350 × AU$15.00 × 36	$189,000
Connecteam Communications Advanced	(US$49 + 320 × US$1.50) a month, about $767, × 36	about $27,600
Custom staff portal	60 days × $1,300 = $78,000 build, plus hosting $4,800 and maintenance at 15% ($11,700) a year	$127,500

The prices moved recently. Microsoft’s licensing announcement says commercial price changes took effect on 1 July 2026, with F1 up 33% and F3 up 25% in US dollar list terms, so budgets built on early 2026 figures are now low.

Reading the table honestly: if frontline staff only need to read news and policies, F1 or a low cost communication app is cheapest. If they need forms, rosters and pay in one place, the custom portal competes with F3, and it also avoids a fixed per head cost as casual numbers rise and fall. The office staff use SharePoint either way.

What do content migration and governance cost?

Content work is usually the largest internal cost of any intranet, whichever platform you choose. Budget for:

• an audit of what exists and who owns it, then deleting or archiving most of it;
• rewriting the pages people actually use, such as policies, how to guides and contacts;
• moving documents with their permissions intact;
• a named owner for each section and a review date on every page.

Intranets fail when nobody owns the content, not when the software is wrong. A governance plan costs little and protects the whole investment.

What does AI search over the intranet add?

AI answers add either per user licences or a system you own, and both depend on clean permissions. Two routes:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft lists it at AU$44.90 per user a month paid yearly, or AU$47.15 paid monthly, at the time of writing. For 50 office staff that is $26,940 a year. It searches content each user can already see, so an overshared SharePoint becomes an overshared Copilot.
• A retrieval system you own. A custom search and answer layer over intranet content, with answers that cite the source page. It costs a build and running costs instead of per user fees, which suits large or frontline audiences. Our RAG knowledge base cost guide has ranges.

Our Copilot vs custom AI assistant guide compares the two in more detail.

What are the ongoing costs?

Ongoing cost is licences, content upkeep and, for custom portals, maintenance. SharePoint and packaged intranets carry per user fees that rise with headcount and price changes. A custom portal costs roughly 15 to 20% of its build each year to maintain, plus hosting, and integrations with HR and rostering systems need attention when those vendors change their APIs. Every option needs someone to keep content current.

How can you reduce the cost?

Most savings come from doing less, better, rather than from a cheaper platform.

1. Count who needs what. Split staff into those who need to edit documents, those who only read, and those who need forms or rosters. Licence each group for what it does.
2. Launch with the ten pages people use. Policies, contacts, forms, news and the leave process cover most visits. Everything else can wait.
3. Use what you own first. If you already pay for Microsoft 365 for office staff, use SharePoint for them, and solve frontline access separately.
4. Integrate, don’t copy. Link to rosters and pay slips in their own systems before building screens that duplicate them.
5. Defer AI search until permissions are clean and content is current; otherwise it amplifies the mess.

How AWLabs approaches intranet and staff portal projects

We start by counting who needs access and what they need to do, because that decides whether SharePoint, a packaged tool or a custom portal is cheapest. The first step is a 15 minute Development Consult. If a custom portal or AI search layer is the right call, a paid Discovery Audit maps users, systems, content and permissions, and the fee is credited in full against the build. You then get a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options, The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build. See our enterprise software service and RAG knowledge base service.