Valo Intranet went EOL. Now what?

Powell Software, LiveTiles Hub, intranet.ai. Same architectural pattern as Valo: a vendor-defined intranet experience deployed inside or alongside SharePoint. The transition is conceptually familiar (replace the wrapper) and these vendors actively court Valo refugees.

Honest trade-off: You will be in structurally the same position as you were with Valo. If your new vendor goes EOL or sunsets the product in three to five years (which has happened before in this category), you face this decision again. If that risk is acceptable to you, this path is the closest to “what we had before.”

Athena or ShortPoint. Different architectural model: instead of buying a wrapper around SharePoint, you enhance your own SharePoint with premium webparts and a design system. The intranet lives on your M365 tenant; the vendor provides components, not the intranet itself.

Why we recommend this: If a vendor in this category goes out of business, you lose the premium webparts but your intranet continues to function: the pages, content, navigation, and structure are all in your own SharePoint. This decision never needs to be made again.

Honest trade-off: You (or an MSP, or an in-house admin) have to design the intranet. With a complete intranet product, you get a packaged experience. With an enhancement tool, you compose your own. If your organisation doesn't have someone willing to do that design work, the enhancement path will sit underused.

See what Athena includes →

Engage a SharePoint agency or consultancy to build a custom intranet specifically for your organisation. Most expensive option (typically £30,000-£200,000+ depending on scope). Most customisable. Highest design ceiling.

Honest trade-off: Bespoke builds tend to be brittle once the consultancy walks away. Each customisation is yours to maintain, update, and evolve. If the consultancy goes out of business or the build's original developers leave, you're in a different version of the same problem. Bespoke is the right call for organisations with very specific requirements that no product can meet, or with strong in-house SharePoint engineering teams.

Microsoft's built-in SharePoint Online has matured significantly since Valo was first built. Modern SharePoint pages, hub sites, and the built-in webparts are perfectly serviceable for many use cases, particularly for organisations whose intranet needs were never that elaborate to begin with.

Honest trade-off: Out-of-the-box SharePoint will look like out-of-the-box SharePoint. If your organisation expects a designed intranet (distinctive branding, hero sections, polished navigation, premium webparts), native SharePoint will feel like a step backwards from Valo. For organisations whose intranet was primarily document-management with light news and people surfaces, this can be a perfectly defensible call.

Run on the existing Valo deployment until the transition window closes. Use the time to evaluate options carefully, talk to peers who have made the same decision, and pilot one or two alternatives before committing.

Honest trade-off: Time pressure tends to produce worse decisions, but premature commitment to the wrong path is also expensive. A 6-9 month deferred-decision window with structured evaluation is often the most rational choice for organisations with enough runway. Verify your specific transition deadline with the vendor before relying on any assumed window.