Intranet

What is an intranet?

An intranet is a private network inside one organisation, with a website that only its staff can reach. An intranet uses the same technology as the open internet but sits behind a login. An intranet gathers documents, forms, policies and news in one place so that staff can search for them and find them.

What is the difference between an intranet and the internet?

The difference is address space and access control, not technology. Company networks use address ranges that are never routed on the open internet. The IETF fixed those ranges in 1996 in RFC 1918, written because a growing number of organisations "use this technology and its addressing capabilities for sole intra-enterprise communications, without any intention to ever directly connect to other enterprises or the Internet itself". That sentence is a working definition of an intranet: same plumbing, different address space, closed group of users. An extranet sits between the two. It opens part of the intranet to suppliers, partners or customers, with their own accounts and their own permissions.

How do people get into an intranet?

Through an account and an approved device. In practice that means three things: a company identity, usually the work email address, a sign-in step, often single sign-on, and a route in, which is either the office network or a VPN tunnel from outside. Cloud-hosted intranets have loosened the third requirement, and many now open in any browser.

Those same three requirements are where part of a workforce drops out. In Germany in 2025, 68.4% of people employed in businesses with ten or more staff had internet access for work purposes, according to Eurostat. In manufacturing the figure was 64.1%, in construction 60.6%, in transport and storage 61.3%, and in food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing 39.2%. Across the EU27 the average was 64.6%. People without that access have no account, and without an account there is no way into the intranet. This is not a misconfiguration. An intranet assumes an identity in a directory, which is why production sites, hospitals and depots almost always run a second channel beside it. The survey covers businesses with ten or more employees and leaves out agriculture, mining and the financial sector, so it understates some sectors and misses others entirely.

What is an example of an intranet?

Four shapes recur. A document store with search, often built on SharePoint. A news portal with a front page, an editorial team and comments. A service portal with forms for leave, sickness, orders and IT tickets. And a staff directory with responsibilities and cover arrangements. Most real intranets are two or three of these, grown together over a decade.

The judges of the Intranet Design Annual at the Nielsen Norman Group summarise recent winners this way: they show "supporting the return to work and hybrid working, fostering employee growth and development, utilizing AI effectively, and minimizing the need for employees to leave the intranet to access additional tools" (Anna Kaley, Maria Rosala, Kara Pernice and Patty Caya, Nielsen Norman Group, 30 July 2023). The last item is the telling one. The goal of a good intranet now is that nobody has to leave it.

Does an intranet still exist, and is it still needed?

Yes as a store, no as the only channel. Contracts, policies, forms and work instructions need somewhere versioned and findable, and an app does not replace that. What an intranet does not do is deliver. It waits for a visit. Anyone who does not open it learns nothing, which is fine for a policy and useless for a shift change.

Why do intranets fail in practice?

Three reasons, and none of them is the software. Upkeep: without a named owner, content ages, and a page that was wrong once does not get opened again. Search: a decade of folder structures defeats any search box. And the design itself: a pull channel reaches only the people who come looking.

How does tchop sit next to an intranet?

tchop reaches the staff who have no intranet account. People register with an access code from their employer instead of a work email address, the app carries the company's name in the App Store and on Google Play, and data can be hosted in the EU. Several regional AOK health insurers run their employee app on tchop. One limit belongs here: tchop is not a document management system and does not replace an intranet's version control.

More on intranet software from tchop and on the comparison of an intranet and an employee app.

FAQs: intranet

What is a simple definition of an intranet?

A website only the people who work at one organisation can see. It holds news, forms, phone lists and policies. It opens in a browser like any other site, but only after a sign-in, and often only from the office network or through a secured connection from outside.

What should go on an intranet and what should not?

Put anything that gets looked up on the intranet: policies, forms, work instructions, org charts, templates. Keep anything that has to arrive within hours off it. A shift change, an outage or a safety notice will miss exactly the people it was written for if it waits on a page somebody has to visit.

Does an intranet reach frontline staff?

Usually only in part. Access depends on a company account and a device, and both are often missing in production, warehousing and care. The Eurostat figures above put numbers on the gap by sector. Where the gap is wide, a second route is needed, such as an app that opens with an access code.

Is an intranet the same as an employee app?

No. An intranet is a store that waits to be visited. An employee app is a channel that delivers. The practical difference is the front door: an intranet needs a company identity, an app can open with an access code. Plenty of organisations run both and give each the job it was built for.

Sources

• IETF, RFC 1918 "Address Allocation for Private Internets", February 1996

• Eurostat, dataset isoc_ci_cm_pn2, Germany and EU27 2025, indicator P_IUSE, unit PC_EMP, businesses with 10 or more persons employed, data updated 15 June 2026

• Nielsen Norman Group, "The 10 Best Intranets of 2023: Trends in Design and Process", 30 July 2023