ClearBox Consulting has released its 2025 edition of the comprehensive intranet report. Impartial digital workplace experts have analysed, critiqued and scored 20 intranet and employee experience platforms. This provides an unbiased review of each one to inform IC teams to make the right decision when choosing the tool that is the best fit for them.
What is ClearBox?
ClearBox Consulting is an independent consultancy that provides insights and tools for companies to communicate more effectively with their people. They provide strategic internal communications consulting and part of their offering includes helping to identify workplace tech platforms and assess digital comms channels. This puts them in a strong position to be able to provide thorough commentary on such a broad range of intranet and employee engagement solutions.
The ClearBox report
This report is created with the decision-maker in mind. From the work that they do, ClearBox understands what the user needs. It provides clear and detailed commentary on all aspects of digital workplace tools, ensuring you can invest in the right platform to suit your requirements.
ClearBox assessment categories
Each workplace technology provider is rated against eight scenarios:
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User experience & visual appeal
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Publishing & communications management
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Community & engagement
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Integrations & services (including M365)
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Information finding & search
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Administrator experience
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Analytics
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Mobile and frontline support
ClearBox also seeks feedback from actual customers for real-life user insights into each platform.
Oak Engage recognised as a leader
In last year’s report we were recognised as a ClearBox Intranet Choice Winner and a leading product. We are delighted to have increased our scores yet again in 5 out of 8 categories. Our overall score has helped us to reach the 6th highest position amongst the latest intranet and employee engagement platforms in the report.
We received high scores across the board, but the following areas are ones we’ve really excelled in.
User experience & visual appeal
The report echoes feedback from our customers who find Oak very easy to use. Our content applets simplify the creation of visually appealing homepages, helping admins to mirror the intuitive social media feel in a timeline.
The streamlined delivery of content has a huge positive impact on user experience. With personalised news feeds, users only see content that is relevant to them, their job role, location or specific interests they have opted into. Easily accessible notifications ensure nothing important gets missed.
“We like the breadcrumb trails that help people see their whereabouts on the intranet. Left-hand sub-menus can be automatically generated based on the section structure or are served by applets with configurable navigation buttons. A ‘favourites’ home page applet lets people bookmark pages for quick access.”
“Admins will find the branding and overall design options in Oak flexible, including those who want alternative intranet branding to serve different parts of the organisation. Organisations can offer distinct home page and intranet configurations for different audiences, which could include an extranet. We like that branding choices extend even to the initial sign-in screen.”
Publishing & communications management
The report comments on how we offer a range of tools to help our users create and manage content effectively. This can be through the timeline, our AI assistant Aria or the 'waffle' menu. It highlights how we provide pre-built templates, allowing admins to easily drag, drop and resize applets or add more templates as needed.
Oak enables you to sync or create target audiences within the platform, and our AI targeting feature inspects audience activity and communication needs to deliver relevant information to the employee.
“On page creation, the publisher chooses which audiences ‘should’ or ‘must’ read the article and by what date. An ‘AI Targeting’ capability inspects the audience – such as when they’re active on the site – and the communications need – for example a short promotional period will result in more tenacious activities – and releases the article appropriately. Anything that’s missed is resurfaced in applets and individuals receive reminder notifications, too. Content will enter into an approval process, with helpful notifications and ‘Tasks’ to prompt approvers. Articles are presented to employees in various targeted applets across the site and published into an attractive news centre for ease of browsing.”
Our campaign management, editorial calendar, push notifications and upcoming Teams integration have all been praised in the report, along with our highly personalised automated email newsletters.
Community & engagement
ClearBox gave high praise to our range of community and engagement features, including Hubs, our social timelines, polls & surveys, employee appreciation and events management.
“Oak has some excellent community features, starting with ‘Hubs’ where social and collaborative groups are found. Each Hub can be private, membership on request or completely open, and is configurable so that appropriate applets are presented to members, for example to share ‘blogs’. Hubs can be used for communities of knowledge, by allowing anyone to edit or contribute to the space, such as through dedicated blogs.”
One key feature that our customers find invaluable for employee engagement and rewards schemes is awards and recognition. From quick notes of thanks on the homepage to structured employee recognition programmes, the capabilities of this tool are broad and provide great results in businesses of all sizes.
“We really like the ‘Quick Thanks’ feature that gives people ‘stars’ to recognise the work of their colleagues. Anyone can choose any individual or group to award a star to, with frequent contacts appearing towards the top of the search list. The star can be branded as desired, so could be associated with company values or areas associated with KPIs, and the awarder may write a message to those they’re sending stars to. The stars will display as a notification to those involved but may also display in a dedicated applet and / or in a timeline. The number of sent and received stars is tracked, with the potential to integrate with a rewards platform to award physical prizes based on stars received or sent.”
Integrations & services (including M365)
We have a multitude of ways to connect with so many third party tools to help streamline the digital employee experience. This provides a single source of truth, saving employees time.
Oak integrates with all of the tools you need to do your day to day job. Whether you’re working on documents, accessing payslips, checking rotas or logging into your training portal, they’re just a click away from your Oak homepage.
“The range of SharePoint and Google Drive integrations is good. When creating a file library, publishers can upload from Google and SharePoint. Publishers are presented with a folder structure to navigate to the list of relevant files…publishing creates an entry in Oak to a file that still “lives” in its source system, with any changes there syncing to Oak. This allows those without a SharePoint or Google license to view and search for the content, with the benefits of Oak’s search experience.”
“Rota and payslip integrations work well, particularly in the mobile app. Integrated payslips can be secured behind an additional password request or even biometrics on the mobile app, so actual data is blurred out until the additional authentication step is made. The rota integration displays dates and associated shifts from integrated systems, with colour coding to differentiate between holiday days vs a shift that’s coming soon. A shift swapping capability and clock in and out features are on the roadmap.”
Information finding & search
In addition to our integrations with Microsoft and Google workspaces, Oak’s advanced search enables users to view results from these third-party systems within their Oak search results. This creates a much streamlined content search, saving time and reducing frustrations of sourcing the right versions of important documents. To further simplify the search experience, results will display icons and thumbnails to help people browse for the correct answer.
“Oak takes a novel approach to search; while the search icon is familiar, results are loaded in a slide-out panel on the right of the screen with the content on the left reacting to the new space available. This approach allows users to check results by clicking on them and the screen to the left loads the content, leaving the list of results unchanged to the right. This allows people to find the right item without the frustration of having to backtrack.”
Administrator experience
We've received continuous praise from ClearBox on our simple and intuitive experience for admins. It’s a top priority for us to empower admins, as well as the end user and provide them with the best possible experience, ensuring they can manage content quickly and easily.
ClearBox has also shown appreciation for the value in our knowledge base, allowing users to access help pages, log support tickets and submit feedback. The report acknowledges our pleasant front-end for creating content pages and audience-targeted home pages which cater to different employee needs, with applets that can be easily dragged, dropped and resized.
“Home pages are audience targeted, allowing organisations to have multiple home pages to meet different employee needs. Home pages are created using applets, which admins drag and drop into appropriate places with the applets resizing as they’re moved. There is a good range of applets too, including those that will display content from within Oak’s features, such as employee recognition or events, and also from external sources such as news feeds. Additionally, we like the confetti, snow and bats animations that introduces an element of fun to a business tool.“
Other features which got a favourable mention were our auto-translation feature which has levelled up accessibility for many of our customers, and how we have created visually appealing and user-friendly storage for audio and video content, the latter of which can be translated and include subtitles.
“Video and audio content is handled well, where it’s easy to replicate a Spotify or Netflix approach, which the vendor says a client has done. Videos include features such as subtitles and searchable transcripts, which can be edited and even translated.”
Analytics
Perhaps one of our favourite features right now, also got a great write-up from ClearBox. In addition to our reporting dashboard which can be accessed at any time, AI-generated analytics reports deliver a ready-made PDF with insights and actionable recommendations for comms teams, saving time and resource in creating the report themselves.
“‘Monthly Engagement Reports’ are automatically generated and presented to relevant admins. The Monthly Report is a PDF file that collates a snapshot of the intranet’s performance over the previous month. We’re impressed by the use of AI here, which generates a narrative around the data and makes recommendations for improvements or to repeat success. We think the application of AI here is excellent and look forward to seeing the sophistication of recommendations increase.”
Highlights from the ClearBox 2025 report:
As you can see, the report contains insights and honest opinions of specific features within Oak and user-friendliness on the administrative side of things.
They utilise real-life customer feedback to feed into the ‘Voice of the customer’ section of the report. While we enjoy sharing customer stories on our own platform, hearing feedback through an unbiased resource can provide an extra layer of trust. Common praise was that Oak is “simple to use”. This extends into the admin experience too:
“The product has an attractive interface, [is] intuitive to use and functions really well with a wide range of tools.”
“Putting together engaging pages is very quick and easy”
“Multitude of options in terms of layout and use for the various applications.”
Customers also praised the “Search functions and document management” and “support for deskless workers”.
“The platform also helps us engage and communicate, which has improved overall team performance.”
Every piece of feedback received about the team at oak was entirely positive. This is testament to our wonderful team who guide customers through the entire process, from initial conversations to personalising the platform, through launch and ongoing customer support. Here are some snippets from our customers:
“Everyone is really helpful and proactive – joy to work with.”
“10/10, [we have] a great relationship with the team at Oak”
Multiple customers said that the Oak team are good at “helping you get the most out of the product” with one customer adding that this “ensures the platform continues to meet our needs.”
And finally, on the Oak product overall
“We have reviewed Oak for several years now and have seen the product develop in sensible directions in that time. Strong areas have become stronger, and they have listened to feedback to make real improvements to areas that needed strengthening. Oak therefore has a lot to offer, particularly at a lower price for an independent intranet solution, so it is an excellent option for organisations that want to offer employees a flexible intranet with an easy-to-use interface.”
“Oak’s high level of flexibility, content targeting capabilities and ease of use enable organisations to deliver an intranet that meets many employee needs. Deskless workers are well served with a strong mobile app, while desk-based employees will appreciate the clean user experience. There are excellent publishing and community features for employees and admins alike. Integrations with other business systems work well, with a comprehensive developer framework for those who wish to build deeper two-way integrations. Overall, Oak delivers a strong employee experience, at a competitive price point.”