Comparing Igloo Software with Linchpin Intranet

Comparison table

This is representing Martin Seiberts opinion and views. How he came to his conclusions was recorded live in the videos on the right hand side. Feel free to contact him if you want changes or updates.

Criteria	Igloo	Linchpin
Intranet 1.0 Homepage Top down communication with a central Intranet 1.0 homepage where all news come together
Pretty news with consolidated view in web app and mobile app
Passive personalization for news, navigation or elements
Ecosystem with hundreds of partners worldwide
Marketplace with hundreds of high quality apps to enhance intranet
Suitable for smaller teams (below 250 users)
Suitable for bigger teams (above 250 user)
Concurrent editing on pages or news See clip:
Microblogging in web app an mobile app
Notifications in mobile app and web app
Collaboration on files in the intranet with inline viewing and commenting (incl. mentions)
Touch implementation as a kiosk mode for cafeteria or factory floors
Page in page contents (Documents in documents)
Display attachments (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ...) inline in pages and preview them there
Solution for spreadsheets in the intranet
Desktop shortcuts
Autocomplete
Autoconvert

Random Notes

• Igloo is way more expensive on a higher scale with their advertised per user per month pricing.
• Igloo is SaaS only.
• Igloo does not seem to have a partner network like http://seibert.biz/linchpinpartners. There is a mention of partners but no contacts here: https://www.igloosoftware.com/partners
• No dragging and dropping in the rich text editor please. You'll lose parts of your draft.
• Upload of a 12 MB file took 2 minutes. Same connection with Linchpin Intranet took less than 5 seconds. I do not know, where the Igloo servers are. But for Germany that's very very slow.
• Inline view of files is possible for PDF files but no collaboration like in Confluence with @mentions and stuff.
• Igloo feels like a Intranet 1.0 in some areas. E.g. you cannot add labels as a user. Only admins can. That's restricting the feature that is normally meant to breed the semantic web in your intranet. This is somewhat suspicious for the collaboration part.
• The mobile app is only offering very few info on profiles. If you want to get the full picture they will open up a browser with a dead window. 
• For news the mobile app does not show the attachments at all. I do not even see that they are there. 
• The mobile app is pretty limited and only shows stripped down news, profiles that only have pictures and an email address (full view leads to a dead link), notifications and a search for more content.
• It's much better not to start with the test drive but with your own trial instance as this is the real thing.
• The software surface isn't very modern. The design and the buttons are a standard, that is long gone in todays web apps. That indicates for me, that Igloo hasn't invested in their UI in the last years a lot. But the mobile app looks good and modern though.

Igloo Intro Video

• Working on a presentation should no longer happen in an intranet. That's better done in GSuite or Office365. You can do it with Igloo or Linchpin. But it's okay and not better. This is not the use case of such collaboration systems anymore.
• I do not believe in the overview of tasks in the video. The implementation of tasks in Igloo is not mature enough to cope with systems like JIRA or Basecamp or Trello. The list of reasons why this is so would be so long that it's overwhelming. So I'll stay with the blunt dismissal for now.

• The sample data for new customers in Igloo are better than in Linchpin. That is something we'll have to work on. While I dislike all the pop ups and "interruptions" while trying Igloo I admit that their onboarding probably works better for non technical people. We assume that our testers know Confluence and find their way easily themselves which may not be true for a lot of people.
• Igloo are actively developing in good hands in the software which can be felt by the reports and news that they publish here: https://support.igloosoftware.com/community/blogs/productnew
• The system Is not failsafe with drafts. As in my video users can easily use drafts when they inadvertently leave a page. Saving such drafts is solved better in Confluence.

• Igloo does have a responsive design, but the fixed maximum width they support is somewhat narrow. It would be better if they also leverage the potential of bigger resolutions like we do in Linchpin Intranets.
• When you create a micropost in Igloo and upload a picture, the user has to wait until all attachments are uploaded. If he does not do this, there will only be a placeholder "pasted image" instead of the uploaded image. The expected behaviour would be, that the software lets me wait until the upload is finished and does not allow premature publishing. Also a progress bar for the upload as in Linchpin would help users a lot to understand that the upload takes a while. The igloo progress bar is hidden if the image is near the fold of the screen. As above the slow uploading times decrease the usability of the process as well.
• When commenting on microposts you can again choose other channels. That's increasing complexity, decreasing usability and not helping at large in my opinion.
• Igloo has a broadcasting feature. If you use it, it will send a mail to predefined groups. But it will not include the content. It's as good or bad as if you just share the link via email. This broadcasting feature sits under almost all pages no matter if it is needed or not.
• I am not convinced, that users can differentiate between team updates and the forum.
• I miss the classic intranet homepage where I can share my news to my co-workers.
• The theme from Igloo was last edited on: Last published by Igloo Software at June 16, 2015 4:05AM. While I understand that this may be a special area of the software, I do think, that we go over our theming elements constantly, at least 3-4 times a year. June 2015 is 2 years ago. #surprised
  
• Although I am trying hard it is difficult for me, to understand, where my intranet 1.0 homepage is where all the news flow together and employees can see what's up for the whole company. I cannot even switch to the marketing department. [...] After a little while I figured out, that this central "team space" is the homepage and the marketing department is just the same thing boxed for this department again. There is no aggregation or personalized feed for all things like in Linchpin here. This also supports my initial thought, that Igloo really is for smaller teams and customers. Bigger companies cannot use this solution. It would become a real mess.
• I did send a calendar invitation to Igloo vcf contact for calendars. It would not appear.
• The read tracking is simple and easy. I like it. Unfortunately this is incompatible with German and European law. You can see that Igloo stems from Canada. Their target market is probably the US where employees do not have as many privacy right and wishes as in Germany for example. Read tracking would have to be totally anonymized in Germany to be okay for workers unions.
• There is no way to simultaneously edit on elements in Igloo with other users. That possible in Linchpin.
• There are design errors and small glitches in Igloo that let me speculate, that they do not love their interface enough:
  
   
• After trying out Igloo and getting content in the portal the mobile app only shows the microblog. There is no navigation to all of the other elements. Team members can be reached and notifications. There is the search that will get you to other elements. But I doubt that the app is heavily used and useful for Igloo users at this point. Still it is current and makes a good impression on design elements and stability.
• In the app the read tracking wording is misleading. It does say "agreed" as if I would agree to the content of the post, where it should say "read" as I only agreed to have read the article.