How much does a custom SharePoint intranet cost?

A bespoke SharePoint intranet build typically costs £30,000 to £200,000+ depending on scope, complexity, and the consultancy delivering it. The range covers initial design, SharePoint development, content migration, training, and stabilisation. Costs vary by region, agency rates, and the number of integrations and custom webparts required. Most builds also incur ongoing maintenance costs of 15-25 percent of the build cost per year for updates, bug fixes, and feature additions.

How long does a custom SharePoint intranet take to build?

Typical custom SharePoint intranet projects run 3 to 6 months from kickoff to user adoption, with larger or more integrated deployments running 9 to 12 months. The timeline includes requirements discovery, design, development, QA, content migration, training, and a stabilisation period. Athena's productised approach delivers a fully branded intranet in hours via the Orchestrator wizard.

Is a custom intranet better than Athena?

Each suits different needs. A custom intranet is justified when an organisation has highly specific requirements that no product can meet: for example, integration with proprietary legacy systems, regulated industry workflows with custom audit trails, or executive-team design requirements that demand bespoke creative work. Athena is justified when the intranet's needs are well-covered by 19 production webparts and a premium design system, which is true for most SMB and mid-market organisations.

Can I customise Athena?

Athena is heavily themable and configurable through its property panes: palettes, animations, layouts, content sources, audience targeting, and integrations are all admin-configurable without code. For custom development beyond what the platform exposes, Athena supports the standard SharePoint Framework extension model. Your developers can add custom webparts alongside Athena's. The boundary is: if your needs are inside Athena's configuration surface, the platform path saves you weeks and money; if your needs require materially custom development, hybrid is typical.

What happens when the consultancy that built our intranet walks away?

This is the most-cited weakness of bespoke builds. Custom code lives in your SharePoint tenant but is typically maintained, updated, and evolved by the original consultancy. When the consultancy is no longer engaged, ongoing changes become difficult: the team that knew the code is gone, documentation is partial, and re-engaging another consultancy to inherit the work usually costs 30-50 percent more than the original build. Athena's productised approach sidesteps this entirely: updates ship continuously from the platform vendor, your admin maintains the configuration, and there is no consultancy dependency for ongoing work.

Should we hire a SharePoint consultancy to deploy Athena instead?

Many organisations do this. A SharePoint consultancy or MSP deploys Athena into your tenant, runs the Orchestrator wizard, configures the webparts to your needs, and trains your admin. This typically takes 5-15 days of consultancy time at consultancy rates, plus the Athena subscription, materially cheaper than a fully bespoke build and faster, while still giving you expert deployment. We work with MSP partners across the UK for exactly this scenario.

Build vs buy · Last reviewed May 2026

Build a bespoke intranet, or buy a productised one?

Quick answer: A bespoke SharePoint intranet typically costs £30,000-£200,000+ and runs 3-6 months before users see it. Athena's productised platform delivers a fully branded intranet in under an hour via the Orchestrator wizard, for £290/month per tenant. Bespoke wins when your requirements are hyper-specific and a product can't meet them. Athena wins for most SMB and mid-market organisations whose intranet needs match what 19 premium webparts cover.

Most teams who commission a custom intranet do so because they didn't realise a productised path existed. A few teams genuinely need bespoke. This page helps you tell which one you are.

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Side by side

The economics, end to end.

Capability	Athena platform	Custom build
Up-front cost	£0 (subscription model)	£30,000-£200,000+
Subscription / ongoing	£290/month per tenant	15-25% of build/year maintenance
Time to first usable deployment	Hours (Orchestrator wizard)	3-6 months typical
Customisation ceiling	19 webparts + theme system + SPFx extension	Anything technically possible
Ongoing updates	Monthly platform updates included	Bespoke: you commission each
Vendor dependency	The Athena platform vendor	The consultancy that built it
“What happens at year 3”	Continuous updates; admin maintains configuration	Original consultancy may be unavailable; code is harder to extend

When custom genuinely fits

Where bespoke is the right call.

Highly specific regulatory workflows

For example, MHRA / GxP audit trails, financial services compliance flows, or aerospace document control. Athena's webparts cover most general use cases but not bespoke regulatory builds.

Integration with proprietary legacy systems

Internal ERPs, mainframe systems, custom databases. SPFx supports these but the development effort is outside Athena's productised scope.

Executive-team design requirements that demand creative work

Distinctive identity work, custom animations, brand-led storytelling. Athena's 25-palette design system is broad but opinionated; if your brand demands something specific outside it, custom creative work is justified.

Very large enterprises with internal SharePoint engineering teams

At enterprise scale, in-house development capability often makes bespoke economical. Athena is typically a better fit for SMB and mid-market.

Honest

The build-vs-buy reality.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

A bespoke SharePoint intranet build typically costs £30,000 to £200,000+ depending on scope, complexity, and the consultancy delivering it. Most builds also incur ongoing maintenance costs of 15-25 percent of the build cost per year.

Try the platform path first.

Athena Essentials is £290/month per tenant. 21-day free trial, full webpart library. If a productised intranet meets your needs, you've saved £30k+. If not, you've lost nothing.

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Built by Lewis Enright Limited, United Kingdom. Last reviewed May 2026. References describe typical mid-market consultancy pricing and project timelines at time of writing; bespoke quotes vary significantly by scope and consultancy. See the architecture guide →