Employee Community Software vs Slack, Notion, and Intranets

When organisations start investing in employee communities, the first question is rarely “What platform do we need?”

It’s usually:

“Can we do this with the tools we already have?”

Slack.
Notion.
The company intranet.

At first glance, they seem sufficient. But as communities grow, each tool reveals sharp limitations.

This article compares employee community software with the tools most organisations try first—and explains when (and why) a dedicated platform becomes necessary.

The real question isn’t tools — it’s scale

Most tools work at small scale.

Problems appear when:

• Communities grow beyond a core group

• Participation needs to be sustained over time

• Leadership wants visibility and impact

• Community leads rotate or burn out

Let’s look at how common tools perform under pressure.

Slack: great for conversation, poor for continuity

Slack excels at:

• Real-time discussion

• Fast coordination

• Informal connection

But for employee communities, Slack breaks down quickly.

Where Slack falls short

• Conversations disappear over time

• Knowledge isn’t structured or preserved

• Event tracking happens elsewhere

• New members struggle to catch up

• No reliable way to measure engagement

Slack shows activity, not progress.

It works best as a conversation layer, not a system of record for communities.

Notion: great for documentation, weak for participation

Notion is often introduced to “organise” community resources.

It works well for:

• Static documentation

• Guidelines and playbooks

• Centralised knowledge

But employee communities are not documents.

Where Notion struggles

• No natural sense of membership

• Participation is passive, not social

• Events and discussions feel bolted-on

• Engagement signals are limited

• Requires heavy manual upkeep

Notion stores information, but it doesn’t activate communities.

Intranets: built for broadcasting, not belonging

Traditional intranets were designed for:

• Top-down communication

• Company-wide announcements

• Policy and compliance content

Some modern intranets look better—but the core model hasn’t changed.

Where intranets fall short

• Limited ownership for community leads

• Weak discovery and onboarding

• Low engagement over time

• Little sense of shared identity

• Minimal insight into participation

Intranets talk to employees.
Communities grow with employees.

What employee community software does differently

Employee community software is designed specifically for long-running, people-led initiatives.

Instead of adapting generic tools, it provides:

• A dedicated home for each community

• Clear membership and ownership

• Persistent conversations and resources

• Event visibility and attendance tracking

• Participation and engagement signals

• Continuity as leaders rotate

It treats communities as living systems, not content repositories or chat streams.

A simple comparison

⚠️ = possible with heavy workarounds

When “good enough” stops being enough

You don’t need employee community software on day one.

But you do need it when:

• Communities multiply or add chapters

• Events become regular, not occasional

• Leadership asks for impact and insights

• Volunteer leads start burning out

• Knowledge and momentum are being lost

At that point, continuing with improvised tools becomes the expensive choice.

The role of Slack, Notion, and intranets — redefined

This isn’t about replacing existing tools.

In effective setups:

• Slack remains the conversation layer

• Notion supports documentation

• Intranets handle company-wide communication

• Community software becomes the organising backbone

Each tool does what it’s best at.

Final thought

Employee communities don’t fail because organisations choose the wrong people or the wrong intent.

They fail because they’re forced to run on tools that were never designed for them.

As communities become more strategic, they need infrastructure that’s built for:

• People, not pages

• Continuity, not noise

• Insight, not anecdotes

That’s the gap employee community software exists to fill.