Intranet vs Internet: Key Network Differences & Uses |

Internal communication can make or break an organization’s performance.

If your employees lack a secure way to communicate and collaborate efficiently, productivity takes a hit, deadlines suffer, and the risk of your confidential information leaking increases exponentially.

This is why companies often use an intranet to connect their teams. But in this Internet era, do we even need an intranet for internal communication at our workplace? 🤔

That’s the question we’ll answer here. This post will explore the functionality and the differences between intranet and internet to determine which makes more sense for your organization.

What is the Internet?

The Internet needs no introduction. However, if you need a background on how it works, its origins, and key features, here’s a brief overview:

Definition and origins of the Internet

The Internet originated as a US government project during the Cold War in the 1960s. Simply put, it’s a massive network of networks interconnected to each other (hence the name, internet).

Your telecom company’s network is connected to another telecom company, their network is connected to other telecom networks, and so on. And it’s not just about telecom networks—many other networks participate in the internet, including:

• Different Local Area Networks (LANs) connecting devices within an organization
• Networks of cloud computing service providers
• Networks of virtual private network (VPN) companies, etc.

These connect to a global network of undersea data cables (called submarine cables), which are connected to different data centers’ networks. This creates a massive, global computer network on which data travels worldwide and information can be sought from anywhere. 🛜

Key features

The internet as we use it today is made possible by some of its key features that we use every day. They include:

• World Wide Web (WWW): This feature allows building websites and accessing them over an internet connection. It defines how the web pages are designed and loaded by the web browsers
• Search engines: Search engines like Google and Bing help us find information published on the web
• Email: Facilitated by different email service providers (i.e., Gmail, Outlook, etc.), this feature plays a crucial role in professional communication, allowing company employees (and people in general) to exchange any kind of information easily
• Social media: This consists of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a bunch of other similar websites and apps that allow people across the world to connect and communicate 
• E-commerce: A combination of WWW with global payment industry standards and payment gateway technology that facilitates online shopping and transactions
• Instant Messaging (IM): This refers to messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Chat that make it possible to message and chat with people from across the globe in real-time
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): A protocol that facilitates voice and video calling over the Internet through platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype, Zoom, etc.

Role of the Internet in communications and mass media

The internet has played the biggest role in revolutionizing communications and mass media. Technologies like email, IM, social media, VoIP, and video calls have changed the communication landscape, allowing people to connect worldwide. 🌍

For mass media too, the internet has played a major role through channels like social networking sites to facilitate mass streaming and consumption of media content without substantial investment. This has led to some unprecedented changes in how we live, work, and communicate.

Some examples of this change include:

1. Remote work: It’s possible to work completely remotely for organizations, all thanks to email, VoIP platforms, instant messaging and other internet-based features 
2. Information age: We live in the information age—the era in which news, data, and information reach from one corner of the world to another in real-time
3. Globalization: Thanks to the Internet, working with talent from any part of the world and serving global clients has become much easier

Understanding Intranets

While the internet is the default setting for most global communication, some businesses use an Intranet to facilitate communication and information sharing between their employees. 

What are they, and how do they work? Here’s a brief explanation:

Definition and functionality of Intranets

Intranets are private networks implemented by organizations to connect the devices operating within their premises.

They create a secure internal network that is inaccessible outside the organization so employees can transfer confidential data, access resources, and share information without the fear of a leak.

Intranets also double up as a:

✅ Content management system: Most intranets come with a content management system (CMS) to facilitate the creation and management of content to disseminate information within the organization

✅ Integration channel: Intranet platforms can also be integrated with other tools your organization might be using, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system or a customer relationship management (CRM) platform 

✅ Medium of communication: Email, messaging, chatting, and other social intranet features to allow team members to communicate

✅ Home to organization charts: Intranet platforms also provide companies with a way to build detailed organization charts that give controlled access to administrators and managers for a quick overview of team hierarchy

✅ Centralized file repository: Intranets allow companies to build a centralized file repository to store all the files and documents related to their company’s operations

Intranet’s role in internal communications and collaboration

Wherever an intranet is implemented, it plays a crucial role in the company’s internal communication and collaboration. Here are some of its important functions in the company’s operations:

🌟 Single source of truth: The intranet serves as a single source of truth for its organization. It’s the official hub of all company documents, updates, and announcements, allowing employees to refer to it for all organizational information

🌟 Human Resource (HR) management: Intranets also play a critical role in the HR management of a company. It allows centralizing company policies, employee onboarding and training, and other HR processes like leave management and distribution of employee benefits

🌟 Communication and collaboration channel: The intranet provides internal employee engagement channels (i.e., email, messaging, etc.) to communicate with colleagues and collaborate through group chats or discussion forums

Intranet vs. Internet: Key Differences

There are some fundamental differences in the functionality and nature of the internet and intranet. While the internet has no owner, an intranet is privately owned by the organization that implements it. Access to an intranet is, therefore, limited to only authorized users (i.e. employees), and accessible only on campus. 🏢

Due to these reasons, the security of an intranet is higher than the security of a public network like the Internet, which is everyone’s playground. However, it also means that network issues need to be resolved by the organization on its own.

Here’s an overview of the difference between the Internet and intranet:

Criteria	Internet	Intranet
Ownership	Public	Private
Accessibility	Worldwide	Inside an organization
Security	Less secure until you use security mechanisms	High
Anonymity	Possible	Not possible
On-the-go access	Possible	Not possible
IT support and maintenance requirements	Low	High
Scaling	Simple	Complex

Choosing the best option for your target market and organizational needs

So, which of these options is a better choice for your organization: an Intranet or the Internet? Well, the answer depends on your organization’s needs. 

If security and confidentiality of data are paramount in your industry, you need an intranet. It offers better privacy due to its isolated nature and better monitoring of network activity due to its lack of anonymity, private ownership, and centralized communication. 🔏

However, your employees can’t access the intranet portals or documents stored in them from anywhere outside your organization. 

As a result, they can’t work remotely. If remote work is a factor in your business, you should choose an internet-based project management and collaboration solution for your workplace.

Implementing Intranets: Best Practices

Intranet implementation is done by the in-house IT support team of your organization. However, there are some best practices you should keep in mind while implementing it. These are:

1. Determining the right intranet solution for your organization

First, you need to determine the right intranet software solution for your organization. Some examples are Sharepoint, Workvivo, and Simpplr, and you should choose one while keeping your organization’s budget, team size, and communication requirements in mind. Scalability and white labeling are some other factors to consider when choosing an intranet platform. 

2. Leveraging software tools

Once you put your intranet infrastructure in place, build internal software tools for specific objectives. This means building internal portals for HR processes, information sharing, and other business operations. 

You don’t need to build them from scratch—many intranet-compatible platforms are available to make building internal portals easier. Examples of such platforms include Notion or self-hosted WordPress on an Xampp server. 

3. Integrating with existing systems

Once you’ve built your internal portals, connect them to your existing tech stack. This means connecting them to your email, CRM solution, ERP solution, and any other tech tools you might be using for team productivity. 

This way, they can fetch and feed the necessary information from the right systems to provide your team members with up-to-date information. ℹ️

It also allows you to set up automated rules to execute certain tasks (like creating a contact in the CRM when your sales team receives a new email), minimizing the need to switch between multiple apps. 

4. Ensuring usability and a positive user experience

Lastly, ensure that the intranet portals and other tools you are implementing remain usable and provide a positive user experience. Businesses often end up complicating processes with their intranet installation by not taking employee feedback into account. 

To avoid this, involve your employees in both the planning and implementation of your intranet. Also, keep taking their feedback regularly even after implementation to ensure its usability in the long run.

How Can Help with Internal and External Communications

So far, we have evaluated the role that intranets play in a company’s internal communication and how they should be implemented. They’re safe and customizable but not ideal for remote accessibility. Intranets are also tricky and expensive to set up. 

If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, there’s a smarter, better alternative—!

As the everything app for work, includes all the features of a secure intranet platform combined with project management functionality and client portals.

This makes it the best choice for both internal and external business communication. It also provides strong collaboration features to help your team members and authorized external users (clients, consultants) strategize, plan, and execute projects.

Let’s explore how aces the job of an intranet platform. 

features for intranet and extranet management

’s features are designed to improve your employees’ ease of communication. Here are some of those features:

1. Communication

Chat is an instant messaging feature that allows your team members to communicate easily with each other. For seamless communication, it links conversations to context (i.e., projects, files, etc.) so your team can easily find any file or project information while chatting. It also allows sending files along with messages, offering a better email alternative. 📩

But it doesn’t end there— Chat is AI-powered and performs several actions on your command. Brain, the AI functionality included in , makes this possible. You can use it for:

• Summarizing a conversation
• Providing catch-up on project progress since your last login
• Finding a file from any of your project folders

2. Knowledge management

’s Knowledge Management features are more robust than those of intranet platforms. This includes built-in document editing and organization features to build your internal knowledge base. 

You can use Docs to create and store documents related to all your projects and organize them within the project folders on for easy retrieval. Alternatively, build a centralized repository of all policies and procedures that everyone must follow while working on any project.

3. Integrations

integrates with third-party business and productivity apps like Google Drive, Slack, Hubspot, etc. This functionality allows you to manage all your work from a single dashboard, thus eliminating the need to switch between different apps. 

There are over 1,000 integrations that you can use to connect it to a wide range of business apps, which makes it more flexible than any other intranet platform. 

Task management and collaboration features for internal communications

also provides numerous task management and collaboration features that help your team members manage their workload. Here’s a brief overview of those features:

1. Task management

includes a built-in task manager to help employees manage all their project workload from one place. Use Tasks to break down the project workload into actionable steps and assign them to different team members. 🪜 

Each task can also have attached files to provide the information required to complete it. Tasks also allows your team members to tag each other to clarify doubts. 

2. Collaboration

offers planning and strategizing features for your team members and clients to collaborate on projects. Whiteboards enables your team members and clients to build mind maps and flowcharts of project strategy, execution process, and much more. 

Once a strategy or process is designed, tasks for all its steps can be launched from the whiteboard itself.

Using Docs and Whiteboards for knowledge sharing and collaboration: An example

A software development company is looking for an internal communication system. It considers different intranet platforms, but none of them fits the bill because tools don’t allow external access, and it is crucial for the company to involve its clients in the projects. 

Then, it comes across and starts using Docs to build a knowledge base of project-specific Software Requirement Specification (SRS) documents and internal processes. Pre-designed wiki templates help the company in this task. 🤩 

Once complete, the Wiki or knowledge base is shared among all the employees who refer to it whenever they feel confused about the requirements of any project or a company policy. This significantly reduces the inquiries for the HR department and project team leaders, saving valuable time. ⌛

The company also starts using Whiteboards to plan and strategize with its clients. This improves the quality of project planning and eliminates the possibility of misunderstandings. The result is fewer bugs in each sprint and faster completion of projects, ultimately leading to greater client satisfaction.

Streamline and Secure Your Internal Communication With

An intranet solution is important for a company’s success, essentially serving as its digital headquarters. But while it provides collaboration and security features, it’s expensive and complex to set up and lacks remote accessibility.

This is where shines. It combines the security of the intranet with solid project management, communication, collaboration, and integration features—all in a unified platform. To top it off, it’s remote-friendly, making it perfect for your modern, global, and digital workplace.

Sign up for today to experience these benefits first-hand and streamline your organization’s project collaboration!

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