"What does an employee portal cost?" and "what does it cost to get an intranet built?" are, in practice, the same question: you want HR documents, onboarding, schedules and internal knowledge in one place, without your team searching endlessly through folders and inboxes. But what does such an environment cost? Here are concrete ranges for the three routes in 2026, including the costs that only surface later.
The three routes and their price tags
1. Development agency: €15,000 – €40,000
A custom employee portal from a development agency starts around €15,000 for a basic version (log in, HR documents, announcements) and climbs toward €40,000 once onboarding flows, schedule access or integrations with your HR system are added. At hourly rates of €80–€150, every change counts.
What's not in the quote: maintenance (often 15–20% of the build cost per year), extra work when HR processes change, and the lead time of three to six months.
2. Off-the-shelf SaaS: intranet suite per employee per month
Ready-made intranet suites (the SharePoint-likes) charge per employee per month. That looks clear-cut, but the real costs sit in the implementation: a suite like this has to be set up, and that's rarely an afternoon's work. Hidden implementation costs of €5,000 to €15,000 are more the rule than the exception, and your process still has to bend to the package.
What's not in the price: the implementation hours, the features you miss, and the exit costs if you ever want to switch (your data sits in their system).
3. AI-built custom: from €99 per month
The newest route: an AI development team like Turtleship builds a custom portal within a subscription. You start with a ready-made employee portal building block (log in, HR documents, onboarding, announcements) and build out from there step by step, toward schedule access or knowledge sharing — with an estimate before every step, so you're never caught by surprise.
The honest story: here too, a portal with many integrations and roles takes more build steps (credits) than a simple portal. The difference sits in the predictability — you see the estimate before you sign off — and in the absence of hourly rates, price-per-employee and hidden implementation costs.
The comparison at a glance
| Agency | Off-the-shelf SaaS | AI-built custom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Startup cost | €15,000–€40,000 | €5,000–€15,000 implementation | €0 (free start) |
| Ongoing | 15–20% maintenance/year | per employee per month | from €99/month |
| Lead time | 3–6 months | weeks (setup) | days (basic) – weeks |
| Fits your HR process | yes | partly | yes |
| Owner of code & data | usually you | the supplier | you |
| Changes | extra-work quote | wait for the roadmap | new request, estimate up front |
Worked example: 50 employees in your portal
Abstract ranges only become concrete once you run the numbers. Suppose you're an organization with 50 employees who request HR documents, view their schedule and share internal knowledge.
- Off-the-shelf SaaS: at an average €6 per employee per month you pay €300 per month, or €3,600 per year — plus a one-off implementation of €5,000 to €15,000. Structural, and the bill grows with every new employee.
- Agency custom: a one-off of around €25,000 for a portal of this size, plus 15–20% maintenance per year (€4,000–€5,000). The number of employees doesn't matter, but every change is an extra-work quote.
- AI-built custom: from €99 per month (€1,188 per year), regardless of the number of employees. Extensions go per build step, with an estimate up front.
Over three years: SaaS comes out around €10,800 plus implementation (so €15,800–€25,800), the agency around €38,000 (build plus maintenance), and the AI route starts at about €3,600. In fairness: a portal with many HR integrations takes extra build steps on the AI route and therefore costs more than the entry rate. But even with a generous margin, the difference stays an order of magnitude.
What to look for (whichever route you choose)
- Ask about the price of change number five. The build cost is one thing; what does it cost when, after three months, you want an onboarding flow or leave module? That's where the real difference between the routes sits.
- Employee data is the most sensitive category. Contracts, salary and sick leave fall under the strictest GDPR requirements. Hosting within Europe, role-based access and a GDPR-compliant setup should be standard, not optional.
- Do the exit math. Who owns the code? Can you take your HR data with you? A low entry price with lock-in is more expensive than it looks.
Conclusion
An employee portal or intranet no longer has to be a €30,000 project in 2026. The agency route still makes sense for very complex environments woven deep into your HR landscape with a generous budget. For most organizations the math is different now: an AI-built custom portal, from €99 per month, production-ready and yours. Set that against what having software built costs in general, and a portal subscription quickly comes out ahead.
Still managing those HR lists in Excel? Then the step to a portal is smaller than you think: read how you go from Excel to a web app. An employee portal, by the way, isn't the only building block: in the same way you set up a client portal or a supplier portal.
Curious how it works? Take a look at the employee portal page or start free and see a working foundation within days.