Lightspeed365 Sharepoint intranet Reviews & Product Details

Lightspeed365 is a SharePoint intranet layer, not a standalone platform. It installs into the Microsoft 365 tenant you already own and turns native SharePoint into a branded employee intranet, built on the SharePoint Framework so every component runs as native SharePoint content. WHAT LIGHTSPEED365 CORE INCLUDES Branding and design. A branding customiser gives full control over typography, colours, navigation and layouts. Sub-branding lets multi-brand businesses give each division or region its own visual identity from a single intranet, which most SharePoint intranet products do not offer. Pre-built site templates cover homepages, onboarding, benefits hubs, department landing pages, policy libraries and location pages. Findability. Structured handbooks aggregate pages, documents and list items from across your entire SharePoint environment into one searchable, filterable interface, permission-trimmed through your existing SharePoint and Entra permissions. A Microsoft Graph-powered files explorer sits alongside it. The people directory is searchable by skill, project, custom field, department and location, with profile cards showing reporting lines, contact details and expertise, built from Entra ID so it updates automatically as people join, leave or move teams. Communications. Targeted news feeds, alerts and audience-specific content, with audience targeting driven by your existing Entra ID groups rather than a separate targeting system. Content scheduling publishes and expires content automatically. Page feedback lets employees flag out-of-date content. Engagement and personalisation. A welcome bar delivers a personalised greeting with local weather and quick access to relevant content. An app launcher surfaces the tools each employee uses most, targeted by role and audience, with apps administrators can mandate and users can personalise. Polls, accordions and multilingual support via SharePoint's native page variants are included. Analytics and access. Microsoft Clarity integration provides heatmaps, scroll depth, session recordings and content performance trends, so comms teams can show leadership engagement data rather than page views. A Teams app delivers the full branded intranet inside Microsoft Teams on desktop and mobile, pinnable to the Teams rail. PREMIUM APPS Premium apps are enterprise-grade extensions, licensed on subscription. They can be added alongside Core or bought standalone for an existing SharePoint intranet, at any point. AI search lets employees ask questions in natural language and get permission-trimmed answers from across your SharePoint environment, covering policies, how-to guides, news and people profiles. Push notifications target urgent updates through Teams and device lock screens, reaching employees who do not open the intranet daily. Subscriptions let employees opt into the news channels and topics they care about. Noticeboard is an employee-driven space for community posting and bottom-up communication. Site index is a searchable directory of every SharePoint site, Teams space and Viva Engage community across the tenant. Site provisioning lets employees request new sites, Teams spaces or Viva Engage communities from the intranet, with approval workflows that prevent sprawl. AI search and push notifications require additional Azure resources, scoped with your IT team during setup. Core has no Azure dependency. INTEGRATIONS AND ARCHITECTURE SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections, Viva Engage, Entra ID for identity and audience targeting, Outlook, and Microsoft Clarity. Because Lightspeed365 content is native SharePoint content, Microsoft Copilot can reference and summarise it within its standard Microsoft 365 scope. Everything executes inside your own tenant, with no external platform and no third-party data processing. Access follows native SharePoint and Entra permissions rather than a parallel permission model, so there is no separate user administration. Administration happens through a dashboard embedded in the intranet itself, so there is no external admin console and no separate configuration layer to maintain. Compliance posture is inherited from Microsoft 365 rather than certified separately. PRICING Core is licensed per tenant and banded by employee count, available as a one-time perpetual licence or an annual subscription. Premium apps are subscription only. No per-user monthly fee and no reseller margin. Available direct, through Microsoft Marketplace, or via the UK Government G-Cloud framework. WHO IT IS FOR Internal communications, HR and IT teams at mid-sized and enterprise businesses running Microsoft 365, typically 150 to 2,500 employees, replacing or refreshing a SharePoint intranet. Used across financial services, healthcare, education, professional services, energy, real estate and the public sector, in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Lightspeed365 is built by Content Formula, a Microsoft 365 consultancy founded in 2005 that has delivered more than 500 digital workplace projects. Implementation is delivered by the same team that builds the product, with no outsourced partners or resellers. Lightspeed365 has been featured in the ClearBox Intranet Report and is rated 4.8 on G2, 5.0 on Google and 5.0 on Microsoft Marketplace. A 14-day free trial of Core features runs in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, with no credit card required. COMMON QUESTIONS How is Lightspeed365 different from native SharePoint? SharePoint provides strong foundations for document libraries, search, audience targeting, news publishing and site analytics. Lightspeed365 adds the capabilities that turn those foundations into an intranet: branded design with sub-branding, a searchable handbook, deeper people search, full branding control, personalisation, engagement tools and governance features such as site provisioning. Do we need SharePoint Online already, and can we keep our existing environment? Yes to both. Lightspeed365 runs inside your existing SharePoint Online tenant, which you already have on Microsoft 365 Business or Enterprise, and it works with your current site structure, permissions and content. You do not need to start from scratch. How long does it take to launch? Around a week for licence-only deployment, three to four weeks for smaller builds with implementation support, and eight to twelve weeks for enterprise deployments involving significant content migration. Is Lightspeed365 easy for non-technical people to manage? Yes. Editors use the standard SharePoint page editor, and every web part has its own configuration video guide. Comms and HR teams publish and target content without depending on IT. How is Lightspeed365 licensed? Per tenant, banded by employee count. Core is available as a perpetual licence or an annual subscription. Premium apps are subscription only. What is the difference between Core and Premium? Core is a complete intranet covering branding, templates, people search, handbooks, targeted news, personalisation and analytics. Premium apps are enterprise-grade extensions, including AI search, push notifications, subscriptions, noticeboard, site index and site provisioning. Premium is not an upgrade to Core, and Premium apps can be bought standalone for an existing SharePoint intranet. What is a perpetual licence? A one-time purchase of Core. You licence the version current at your purchase date and keep it indefinitely, with support and maintenance included for the first twelve months. Later feature releases are not included, and Premium apps are not available on a perpetual basis. Where is my data stored? In your own Microsoft 365 tenant. Lightspeed365 does not introduce external storage, external APIs or third-party data processing. Your existing data residency settings apply. Is there any vendor lock-in? No. Your content sits in native SharePoint. If you stop licensing Lightspeed365, your pages, libraries and structure remain in place. Only the additional components stop functioning. Does Lightspeed365 require Azure infrastructure? Core does not. Two Premium apps, AI search and push notifications, require additional Azure resources, which are scoped with your IT team during setup. Does Lightspeed365 work with Microsoft Copilot? Yes. Because Lightspeed365 content is native SharePoint content, Copilot can reference and summarise it within its standard Microsoft 365 scope. We continue to evaluate deeper integration as Microsoft expands the platform. Can employees access the intranet from Microsoft Teams? Yes. The Teams app delivers the full branded intranet inside Teams on desktop and mobile, and can be pinned to the Teams rail for one-tap access. Is Lightspeed365 suitable for regulated industries? Yes. It inherits your Microsoft 365 compliance posture and adds no external data processing. Businesses in financial services, healthcare and the public sector use it. For formal policy attestation and audit-ready compliance evidence, Content Formula offers a dedicated product alongside it. How does Lightspeed365 compare to a custom SharePoint build? A custom intranet build typically costs GBP 50,000 to 150,000 and takes six to twelve months. It also creates an ongoing dependency on developers for updates and maintenance. Lightspeed365 delivers comparable outcomes in weeks using maintained, supported web parts rather than custom code. Is Lightspeed365 an alternative to Viva Connections? They solve different problems. Viva Connections surfaces SharePoint content inside Microsoft Teams. Lightspeed365 enhances the SharePoint content itself, with richer news, deeper branding, people search and governance tools. They work well together rather than as alternatives. Try before you buy Book a live demo at https://lightspeedintranet.com/book-a-demo or sign-up for a free tail at https://lightspeedintranet.com/lightspeed365-free-trial/