Best SharePoint Templates in 2026: 11 Intranet Examples With Live Demos
Unlock the full potential of your SharePoint environment. This guide covers the 11 best SharePoint template examples for 2026 — each with a live demo — plus strategic insights on building a digital workplace employees actually want to use.
Looking for SharePoint Template Examples? This guide includes 11 essential templates with live demos!
By Luisa Silva, Growth Manager at ShortPoint • Last Updated: February 26, 2025 • 12 min read
Introduction
Finding the right SharePoint templates can be the difference between an intranet people rely on every day and one that collects dust. This guide covers 11 of the best SharePoint page templates for 2026 — from employee onboarding hubs and HR resource centers to newsletter layouts and knowledge bases — each with a live demo you can preview right now.
Whether you're browsing free SharePoint templates from the Microsoft Lookbook, looking for SharePoint design ideas to refresh an outdated site, or planning a full intranet overhaul, we'll break down what works, where standard SharePoint site templates fall short, and how to build branded pages without writing code.
The bar has risen. Microsoft's continued investment in SharePoint Online, Copilot integration, and AI-powered features means employees now expect consumer-grade experiences at work. Templates that looked modern in 2024 may already feel dated — and a poorly designed intranet is not just an aesthetic problem, it's a productivity and adoption problem.
This guide is for leaders and teams who want to go beyond the basics. We'll explore the business case for strategic templates, highlight the essential types every organization needs, uncover the limitations of standard options, and show how to transform your SharePoint environment into a dynamic digital experience.
What Are SharePoint Page Templates? (OOTB vs. Custom in 2026)
A SharePoint template is a pre-built framework for a page or site that defines layout, features, and structure — giving teams a consistent, rapid starting point for building. Microsoft offers various SharePoint Online templates for common uses, from team sites to communication hubs.
The most common mistake? Viewing a template as a finished product instead of a starting point. While a template gets you roughly 60% of the way there, the remaining 40% — customization, branding, integration, and user experience refinement — is what drives adoption and ROI. Relying solely on basic Microsoft SharePoint templates often results in a "sea of sameness" and low engagement, because every site looks the same and lacks the personality and functionality teams need.
Out-of-the-Box vs. Custom Templates
Your first decision is between out-of-the-box (OOTB) templates and custom ones.
OOTB Templates
Like those in the SharePoint Look Book, are great for rapid, simple deployments.
Pros:
- No additional cost
- Easy to apply
- Supported by Microsoft
Cons:
- Limited design flexibility
- Minimal branding options
- May not fit complex business processes
Custom Templates
Built from scratch or with advanced frameworks like SPFx for exact specifications.
Pros:
- Complete design control
- Tailored to your workflows
- Reflects your unique corporate brand
Cons:
- Requires significant developer resources
- Longer development time
- Higher initial cost and ongoing maintenance
Both OOTB and custom templates are designed to deliver a structured intranet experience, ensuring information is organized and easy to navigate.
Fortunately, you don't have to choose between rigid solutions and costly development. A third option exists: using a design platform, such as ShortPoint , to enhance OOTB templates without writing a single line of code!
SharePoint Site Templates vs. SharePoint Page Templates: A Critical Distinction
Understanding the difference between site templates and page templates is key to effective governance and design.
Site templates are blueprints for an entire site, including homepage, lists, libraries, structure, and navigation (e.g., "Team Site" or "Communication Site").
Page templates are layouts for a single page within a site (e.g., a "Project Update" page template for consistent updates).
Strategically using both is key: use SharePoint communication site templates for main hubs and departmental pages, then empower content creators with well-designed page templates for consistency. It's a "both/and" approach for a well-managed intranet.
How to Choose the Right SharePoint Template
Selecting the right template is a foundational step in building an intranet that truly serves your organization's needs. With a wide array of SharePoint templates available, it's essential to start by clarifying the primary purpose of your pages.
Are you looking to share company news and updates? A communications-focused template is ideal for broadcasting announcements, events, and leadership messages. If your goal is to support onboarding, an employee onboarding template provides the structure new hires need.
Think about the type of content you'll be sharing—whether it's news, resources, forms, or project updates—and how users will interact with the pages. SharePoint intranet templates can be tailored to match your company's brand, creating a consistent and professional look across all pages. This not only reinforces your brand identity but also makes navigation intuitive for users.
Looking for SharePoint template examples? Jump directly to our 11 essential templates ↓
Why Your SharePoint Intranet Design Matters More Than Ever
Strategic use of SharePoint intranet templates goes far beyond launching a page — it's about building a digital workplace that empowers your people and accelerates your business. Thoughtfully designed templates create a unified, professional intranet that's easy to navigate and supports seamless communication.
Modern SharePoint templates help establish a strong brand presence internally, ensuring every page reflects your company's identity. This consistency is crucial for building trust and making your intranet the go-to destination employees visit each day.
Boosting Employee Engagement and Adoption
An unusable, unappealing, or irrelevant intranet will be ignored, hindering engagement and profitability. Strategic templates help by:
- Creating a Consumer-Grade Experience: Employees gravitate toward intranets that feel as polished and easy to use as their favorite personal apps.
- Delivering Personalized, Relevant Content: Site pages can surface information relevant to a user's role, department, or location, making the intranet an indispensable resource.
Cool SharePoint site designs inspire employees and transform static intranets into dynamic, interactive hubs. They're the perfect space to launch initiatives and keep everyone aligned with company updates.
Ensuring Brand Consistency and Governance
Your intranet is a powerful internal branding tool that should reflect your company. Uncontrolled departmental site creation leads to chaos and diluted brand identity. Templates are your first line of defense for governance:
- Brand Enforcement: Pre-configured templates ensure new sites automatically include your logo, colors, and fonts, creating a cohesive digital environment. Want full control? Explore the ShortPoint Theme Builder —a powerful tool to design, customize, and enforce brand consistency across all your SharePoint sites.
- Content Structure: Defining layout and web parts in a template guides content creators to standardize information, improving quality and predictability.
Accelerating Deployment and Reducing IT Overhead
For IT leaders, constant "build me a site" requests are a bottleneck. A robust library of pre-approved, feature-rich templates empowers departments to self-serve, drastically reducing IT burden.
- Faster Time-to-Value: A Project Manager can spin up a project site from a template in minutes, complete with pre-configured document libraries, task lists, and Teams integration.
- Reduced Support Tickets: Intuitive, well-designed sites lead to fewer "how-to" questions. Standardizing with templates makes support teams experts on fewer configurations.
Investing in a strategic template library pays exponential dividends in saved IT hours and accelerated business agility.
ShortPoint: From Months to Weeks for Intranet Deployment
3 Months
Traditional Build
2 Weeks
With ShortPoint
From vision to launch in a fraction of the time—ShortPoint empowers any team to create beautiful, branded intranet experiences without writing a single line of code.
Small Businesses
Quick to launch, easy to maintain
Mid-sized Teams
More complexity, more collaboration
Enterprises
Fully governed, highly scalable
11 Best SharePoint Template Examples (With Live Demos)
To help you get started, here are 11 of the best SharePoint template examples that address the core needs of most organizations. Each template below includes a live preview — and a platform like ShortPoint can help you build, customize, and deploy these far beyond standard capabilities.
1. SharePoint Employee Onboarding Template
A central hub for all new hire resources and needs. This template eliminates the chaos of manual onboarding processes, giving HR teams a centralized hub where employees access roadmaps, team contacts, documents, and resources — guiding them from first login to first milestone.
With Microsoft Copilot: Pair this template with a Copilot Agent so new hires can ask "Who's my buddy?" or "Where's the benefits form?" and get instant answers from your onboarding content.
View Template2. SharePoint Intranet Homepage Template
A modern homepage for news, tools, people, and events. A focused hero section lets people filter by department, with department updates, company news, and core apps for hybrid work front and center. People cards, top resources, and an events panel keep everything one click away.
With Microsoft Copilot: Add a Copilot Agent to your homepage so employees can ask "What's happening this week?" or "Show me the latest from Marketing" and get AI-summarized updates.
View Template3. Best Onboarding SharePoint Template
A structured, step-by-step visual roadmap for new hire success. This template focuses on clarity and connection, guiding new hires through their critical first weeks with a visual timeline, integrated document access, and direct links to mentorship.
With Microsoft Copilot: Connect a Copilot Agent to help new hires find onboarding documents faster — using natural language questions instead of navigating folder structures.
View Template4. SharePoint HR Template
Your all-in-one hub for HR resources, news, policies, and tasks. Features a visual onboarding roadmap, sections for news, policies, and company values, a directory to meet the HR team, and dedicated resources for remote work.
With Microsoft Copilot: Add a Copilot Agent so employees can ask policy questions conversationally — "How many vacation days do I have?" or "What's the process for parental leave?" — reducing HR ticket volume.
View Template5. SharePoint Document Library Template
Faster document findability with search, filters, and categories. Centralizes forms, policies, templates, guides, reports, and compliance documents with department shortcuts, integrated search, an FAQ section, and Quick Actions for common tasks.
With Microsoft Copilot: Pair with a Copilot Agent to let employees summarize policies or ask questions about document content on demand — no manual browsing required.
View Template6. Intranet Homepage Template
Drive internal communication and corporate transparency instantly. Centralizes critical employee information with a prominent news and events section, quick-access resource links, integrated document libraries, video highlights, and a spotlight for new team members.
With Microsoft Copilot: Add a Copilot Agent that generates quick summaries of news posts and page content, giving employees a fast "what you need to know" briefing.
View Template7. HR SharePoint Site Template
A dynamic, searchable hub connecting employees with HR resources. Features a universal search bar, quick links to Employee Directory and Onboarding Support, categorized document tabs for Policies, Forms and Benefits, plus dynamic widgets for newest joiners, news, and birthdays.
With Microsoft Copilot: Connect a Copilot Agent for faster employee self-service — natural language questions replace browsing through document tabs and folders.
View Template8. SharePoint Community Site Template
A community hub for news, learning, profiles, and events. Brings updates, people, and resources together with hero tiles, news streams, embedded social feeds, Learning Opportunities banners, and celebrations for birthdays and work anniversaries.
With Microsoft Copilot: Pair with a Copilot Agent that can summarize community discussions and surface trending topics for members.
View Template9. Staff Onboarding Template
A centralized, engaging welcome hub for every new hire. Transforms a standard SharePoint page into a navigable resource center, consolidating documents, team introductions, and company culture in one place.
With Microsoft Copilot: Add a Copilot Agent so new employees can ask "What should I do in my first week?" and receive guidance based on your onboarding content.
View Template10. SharePoint Company News Feed Template
A company feed for streams, projects, launches, and updates. Features a friendly hero banner, three content streams for what matters now, a leadership ticker, feature banners for major launches, and an "Innovation in Action" spotlight.
With Microsoft Copilot: Connect a Copilot Agent to generate summaries of recent company news — helping leadership quickly brief stakeholders or prepare talking points.
View Template11. SharePoint Knowledge Base Template
Centralize documents, FAQs, and updates for teams. This knowledge portal guides users from discovery to action, eliminating scattered information with customizable visuals, structured sections, and responsive design across all devices.
With Microsoft Copilot: Pair with a Copilot Agent that answers "How do I…?" questions by reasoning over your knowledge base content — reducing support requests.
View TemplateSharePoint Design Ideas Beyond Templates
Templates are a starting point — but the best SharePoint intranets go further. Here are some of the most popular SharePoint design ideas our customers are implementing in 2026 to create cool SharePoint site designs that stand out:
- Interactive Office Maps. Embed clickable floor plans or campus maps directly into SharePoint pages, letting employees find meeting rooms, desks, and facilities at a glance. Perfect for hybrid workplaces where space is booked dynamically.
- Dynamic Project Dashboards. Pull real-time data from Planner, Power BI, or project management tools and display progress, timelines, and KPIs directly on a SharePoint page — no separate login required.
- Personalized "My Hub" Pages. Give every employee a customized landing page that surfaces content relevant to their role, department, and location. Upcoming reviews, team announcements, assigned tasks — all in one view.
- Live Social Feeds From Viva Engage. Embed Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) feeds directly onto your homepage or community page, keeping the social pulse of your organization visible and encouraging participation.
- CEO & Leadership Communication Hubs. Create a dedicated space for executive messages, town hall recordings, strategic updates, and Q&A — making leadership visible and accessible across the organization.
- Department Microsites. Go beyond a single department page. Build mini-intranets for Marketing, Engineering, Sales, or any team — each with its own branded look, resource library, and news feed, all governed by a consistent site template.
These ideas work best when paired with a design platform like ShortPoint that lets non-technical teams build and iterate without developer dependencies. Learn how ShortPoint Connect integrates with your existing systems →
SharePoint Lookbook Limitations: Why Free Templates Fall Short
The SharePoint Lookbook offers inspiration and shows what's possible — but it's not a strategy. For leaders, it presents a paradox: it shows a beautiful destination but doesn't give you a practical vehicle to get there. Its templates are often rigid, difficult to brand, and miss the deep integration modern intranets demand.
The "Good Enough" Intranet Problem
Relying solely on free SharePoint templates from the Lookbook often creates a "good enough" intranet. It functions. It checks a box. But it fails to inspire or engage. This approach saves time upfront but costs dearly in the long run through low adoption, missed productivity gains, and a disengaged workforce. Your digital workplace should be a competitive advantage, not just a utility.
The Hidden Costs of Custom Development
When standard templates fall short, custom SharePoint development is often the next consideration. While it offers flexibility, it carries significant hidden costs for CIOs and IT Directors:
- High Initial Outlay: Custom SharePoint Framework (SPFx) development is expensive, requiring specialized, in-demand skills.
- Long Timelines: Custom intranet projects can take months, delaying time-to-value.
- Maintenance Burden: Custom solutions require ongoing maintenance, updates, and testing with every SharePoint update, creating a permanent developer dependency.
- Lack of Agility: Business changes become new development requests, leading to more sprints and delays. Marketing and HR can't make simple design changes independently.
This creates a dilemma: standard options are too rigid, and custom options are too slow and expensive.
Shortpoint: Intranet Design Comparison
| Feature | Out-of-the-Box | ShortPoint | Custom Development |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $$ | $$$ | $$$$ |
| Time to Implement | ✓ Fast | ✓ Fast | ✗ Slow |
| Design Flexibility | ✗ Limited | ✓ Full | ✓ Full |
| Ease of Use | ✓ Simple | ✓ Simple | ✗ Complex |
| Low Maintenance | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| No-Code Updates | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Copilot Compatible | ✓ | ✓ Embed via Theme Builder | ✓ |
Want to add Copilot to your intranet? See how to embed a Copilot Agent on any SharePoint site using ShortPoint Theme Builder →
ShortPoint: Build Custom SharePoint Designs Without Code
ShortPoint is a design platform that sits on top of SharePoint, bridging the gap between limiting OOTB templates and expensive custom development. It transforms any standard SharePoint page template into a fully-branded, interactive, and deeply integrated digital experience. Think of it as providing high-end architectural design and smart home technology for your SharePoint foundation.
Design Without Developers
With ShortPoint, your IT, communications, and marketing teams can become master site designers without writing code:
- Live-Mode Editor: Instantly see real-time design updates as you build. Use a visual, drag-and-drop editor to add pre-built SharePoint design elements like image sliders, tabs, and accordions — without writing a single line of code.
- Theme Builder for SharePoint: Gain full control over site branding — from fonts and colors to layout styles — ensuring every intranet page reflects your company's identity.
- Reusable SharePoint Templates: Design once, use everywhere. Save any page as a template and instantly apply it across departments, ensuring consistent design and faster deployment.
- Accessibility Built In: ShortPoint includes accessibility features with customizable widgets that help your intranet meet modern compliance standards — including screen reader-friendly layouts and both free and paid accessibility options.
Connect Everything: Seamless Integrations
A modern intranet needs to pull data and content from the systems employees use daily. ShortPoint's Connect feature allows you to:
- Surface Data From Multiple Sources: Connect to SharePoint lists, document libraries, Microsoft Graph API, Power BI reports, and external systems via REST API. Display real-time data directly on your intranet pages.
- Extend With Microsoft Graph API: Pull data from across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem — Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, Azure AD — and display it directly on your SharePoint Online pages.
- Keep Content Dynamic: By connecting to live data sources, your intranet content is always fresh and relevant, encouraging users to return frequently.
Quick Takeaways
- Templates Are a Start, Not an End: View SharePoint page templates as a foundation to build upon, not a finished product.
- Focus on Business Value: A strategic template approach boosts employee engagement, ensures brand consistency, and reduces IT overhead.
- Free Templates Have Limits: The Microsoft SharePoint Lookbook is inspirational, but OOTB templates are often too rigid for the unique needs of your business.
- Custom Code Is Costly: Full custom development is expensive, slow, and creates a long-term maintenance burden for IT.
- A Design Platform Is the Bridge: Tools like ShortPoint empower you to create custom, branded experiences without the need for developers.
- Your Intranet Is an Experience: The ultimate goal is to move beyond static pages and create a dynamic, engaging digital workplace that employees love.
Conclusion: Your Intranet Is More Than a Page — It's an Experience
We've covered SharePoint templates from basic definitions to strategic imperatives for intranet design. As a leader, you know technology's true value lies in adoption and problem-solving. A generic, out-of-the-box intranet won't cut it in 2026 — it won't inspire teams, reflect culture, or deliver the productivity gains expected from your Microsoft 365 investment.
The limitations of standard templates and the prohibitive costs of custom development have long forced compromise. But you no longer have to choose between a rigid system and a resource-draining project.
By leveraging a design platform like ShortPoint, you gain control. Empower your creative teams to build beautiful, on-brand pages while freeing IT for strategic initiatives. Transform your SharePoint foundation into a truly connected, dynamic, and engaging digital employee experience.
Don't settle for "good enough" — build the intranet your employees deserve.
Frequently Asked Questions About SharePoint Templates
Yes. Microsoft provides free SharePoint templates through the SharePoint Lookbook and built into SharePoint Online. These OOTB templates cover common use cases like team sites, communication sites, and department pages. However, free templates offer limited design flexibility and minimal branding options — which is why many organizations pair them with a design platform like ShortPoint to customize the look, feel, and functionality without starting from scratch.
The best SharePoint page templates for 2026 cover the core needs of modern digital workplaces: an intranet homepage, employee onboarding hub, HR resource center, document library, knowledge base, internal newsletter, communication site, community hub, landing page, company news feed, and department site. The most effective templates also integrate with Microsoft 365 Copilot for AI-powered search and content summarization.
The SharePoint Lookbook (also called the SharePoint Look Book) is Microsoft's gallery of site design inspiration and templates for SharePoint Online. It showcases what's possible with SharePoint's modern experience, including templates for departments, events, learning, and more. While it's a great source of inspiration, the Lookbook's templates are static starting points — they offer limited customization and can be difficult to brand to your company's specific identity.
In SharePoint Online, you can create a page from a template by navigating to your site, clicking "New" > "Page," and selecting from available templates. Microsoft provides several built-in page templates, or your organization may have custom templates saved. For more advanced templates with custom branding and interactive elements, ShortPoint lets you save any page design as a reusable template that anyone in your organization can apply — without needing developer skills.
Absolutely. ShortPoint works seamlessly with your existing SharePoint environment. You can start with a blank page or an existing page and use ShortPoint to redesign and enhance it without losing any content.
Not at all. ShortPoint is designed for business users. If you can use PowerPoint or Word, you can use ShortPoint. Its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface empowers users in Communications, HR, and Marketing to create and edit pages without writing any code or submitting an IT ticket.
The Lookbook provides static, inspirational images and basic templates. ShortPoint is a dynamic, hands-on design platform. With ShortPoint, you can take the idea of a Lookbook design and actually build it, brand it perfectly to your company, connect it to live data from other systems, and save your creations as new, reusable templates for your organization.
SharePoint site templates define the overall structure of an entire site — including navigation, default pages, web parts, and permissions. Page templates define the layout and content structure of a single page within a site. You typically start with a site template (like a team site or communication site) and then use page templates to build individual pages within that site. Both can be customized with ShortPoint.
Some popular ideas our customers implement include creating interactive office maps, building dynamic project dashboards that pull data from Planner and Power BI, designing personalized "My Hub" pages for employees, embedding live social media feeds from Viva Engage directly onto their homepage, and building dedicated leadership communication hubs.
Luisa Silva
Growth Manager, ShortPoint
Luisa is the Growth Manager at ShortPoint. She translates customer insights and ShortPoint solutions into practical, no-code guides for SharePoint and Microsoft 365 intranets. Focusing on intranet design, HR, knowledge hubs, and internal comms, her work is all about helping you achieve faster launches and higher adoption rates.
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