Unlimited user licensing means one flat platform fee covers every person in your organisation, from the CEO to your most remote frontline worker. No per-seat charges. No licensing caps. No bill shock when headcount grows. For Australian organisations with large, distributed, or mixed workforces, the financial and operational case for this model is substantial.
Most intranet vendors do not publish their pricing. That is by design. The per-user, per-month model is a negotiation, and it moves in favour of whoever knows the benchmarks going in. By the time you factor in growth, frontline access, and annual price increases, the cost gap between a per-seat platform and an unlimited licensing model can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars over a three-to-five year period.
This article walks through exactly how unlimited licensing creates ROI, what the numbers look like in practice, and how to build the internal business case to get it approved.
What does per-user intranet licensing actually cost?
Per-user pricing charges your organisation a set fee for each employee who has access to the platform. That fee compounds quickly. At scale, the cost becomes a significant line item, and it grows every time you hire.
Third-party benchmark data places major enterprise intranet platforms including Staffbase and Unily in the $12 to $20 per user per month range for standard deployments. Workvivo's business plans start at $20,000 annually for organisations with 250 to 2,000 employees. Source: Valuebound, 2026
Run those numbers for a 500-person organisation at $15 per user per month and you are looking at $90,000 a year before any implementation, support, or customisation costs are added. Grow to 1,000 people and the bill doubles. Bring on contractors or casual staff and you face a choice: pay more, or leave people out.
Hidden costs compound the problem further. Per-seat platforms often charge separately for additional modules, integrations, storage, and support tiers. The quote you receive at the start of a vendor conversation is rarely the number you pay in year two or three.
How to calculate your true per-seat cost
- Take your current or projected full-time headcount.
- Add contractors, casual staff, and volunteers who need platform access.
- Multiply the total by your vendor's per-user monthly rate.
- Add implementation, support, and integration costs.
- Apply a 10 to 15 per cent annual price increase over five years.
- Compare that total against a flat unlimited licensing fee.
Who gets left out with per-user pricing?
Per-user pricing creates a financial incentive to restrict access. The higher your user count, the higher your bill, so organisations often draw an invisible line around who gets a login. The people most likely to fall outside that line are the ones who need platform access the most.
In Australian industries like retail, healthcare, aged care, construction, and not-for-profit, a significant portion of the workforce operates outside a traditional desk environment. These are frontline workers, casual staff, contractors, and volunteers. They rarely have a corporate email address. They rotate across sites. They are exactly the people your internal communications need to reach, and they are the first ones excluded when licensing costs per head.
Research from Coveo found that the average employee spends 3.6 hours per day searching for information at work. For IT workers, that figure rises to 4.2 hours. That is the equivalent of nearly half a working day spent hunting for answers rather than doing the work itself. Source: Coveo / VentureBeat
When frontline workers cannot access the intranet, they fall back on word of mouth, personal messaging apps, or nothing at all. Policies get missed. Compliance gaps open up. Safety information does not reach the people who need it on the floor. The cost of that exclusion is real, even if it does not appear on a licensing invoice.
For organisations subject to Australian privacy requirements under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, ensuring consistent, verified communication across the entire workforce is not just a cultural goal. It is a governance requirement. A platform that locks out half your workforce because of licensing economics actively works against that obligation.
What is unlimited user licensing and how does it change the maths?
Unlimited user licensing is a flat-fee pricing model where the platform cost stays the same regardless of how many people in your organisation use it. One annual fee. Every employee included. No per-seat calculations, no growth penalties, no access tiers.
The financial logic is straightforward. A per-seat model charges you more as your organisation grows. An unlimited model does not. The cost per user actually decreases over time as your headcount increases, because the flat fee is divided across a larger base.
For a 300-person organisation that grows to 600, a per-seat model doubles your licensing spend. Under unlimited licensing, your platform cost does not move. That difference, compounded across a five-year contract, represents a material saving that belongs in any business case you put in front of finance.
Cost predictability also matters to finance teams and boards. Unlimited licensing converts a variable cost that fluctuates with headcount into a fixed operating expense. That makes budgeting straightforward and removes the anxiety of a surprise invoice every time you run a hiring campaign.
What does the ROI of unlimited licensing look like in practice?
The ROI case for unlimited licensing sits across five distinct areas. Each one is measurable. Together, they build a compelling argument for any organisation evaluating intranet investment.
1. Direct cost savings against per-seat alternatives
The most immediate saving is the licensing gap itself. For a 500-person organisation comparing a $15 per user per month platform against a flat unlimited fee, the annual difference can reach five to six figures. Over three years, with typical headcount growth and price escalation clauses, that gap widens considerably.
2. Full workforce inclusion without extra cost
When every employee is covered under the same flat fee, organisations stop making access decisions based on cost. Frontline workers, casual staff, and contractors all get a login. Internal communications reach the full workforce. Policy acknowledgements, compliance training, and safety updates land where they need to, without workarounds.
GJK Facility Services, one of Australia's largest facility services providers, deployed the Elcom platform across a workforce of more than 2,500 field staff. Many of those employees had no corporate email address. The unlimited licensing model meant every one of them could be included from day one, giving the organisation a single source of truth and mobile self-service access for the first time.
3. Productivity gains from better information access
Organisations with high employee engagement experience 17% higher productivity. Source: Flip / Gallup, 2025
When all employees have platform access, they spend less time hunting for documents, chasing colleagues for information, or relying on outdated email threads. Time saved on low-value information tasks is time redirected toward productive work. Across a workforce of several hundred people, even a 15-minute daily saving per employee adds up to thousands of hours annually.
4. Reduced tool sprawl and system consolidation
Organisations running separate tools for their intranet, document management, forms, onboarding, and learning management often pay for overlapping functionality across multiple vendors. Consolidating onto a single platform with unlimited user access removes those redundant subscriptions and the integration overhead that comes with maintaining them.
St Ignatius College used the Elcom platform to eliminate six redundant systems. The saving was not just financial. It reduced IT administration overhead, simplified staff training, and removed the friction of employees moving between disconnected tools to complete basic tasks.
5. Engagement and retention impact
Companies with highly engaged workforces have 23% higher profits. Source: Gallup
Employee engagement drops when people feel disconnected from their organisation. Frontline workers who cannot access the intranet are precisely those most at risk of disengagement. Replacing a single employee can cost up to 70 per cent of their annual salary in recruitment and onboarding costs. An intranet that reaches everyone reduces that risk, and the ROI from even modest retention improvements can exceed the platform cost entirely.
Unlimited vs per-user licensing: a direct comparison
The table below maps the key differences between the two models across the dimensions that matter most to finance, IT, HR, and internal communications teams.
| Factor |
Per-user licensing |
Unlimited licensing |
| Annual cost at 500 users |
$90,000+ (at $15/user/month) |
Fixed flat fee, regardless of user count |
| Cost as headcount grows |
Increases with every new hire |
Stays the same |
| Frontline worker access |
Often excluded to manage cost |
Fully included at no additional charge |
| Budget predictability |
Variable, tied to headcount |
Fixed operating expense |
| Contractor and casual access |
Extra cost per user or excluded |
Included within the flat fee |
| Growth penalty |
Yes. Costs rise as you scale |
No. Cost per user decreases at scale |
| Module and feature access |
Often tiered by package |
Full platform access for all users |
Is unlimited licensing only relevant for large organisations?
Unlimited licensing delivers its strongest ROI advantage to organisations that are growing, have high proportions of non-desk workers, or carry a mixed workforce of permanent staff, contractors, and casuals. That description fits a large number of mid-sized Australian organisations, not just enterprise operations.
A 200-person healthcare provider adding 50 staff per year will pay 25 per cent more on a per-seat platform after year one and 50 per cent more after year two. Under unlimited licensing, the cost does not move. For organisations in growth phases, that predictability has real value when presenting a business case to a board or finance committee.
Smaller organisations also benefit from full workforce inclusion. A not-for-profit with 150 full-time staff and 100 volunteers cannot afford to license every volunteer on a per-seat model. Unlimited licensing means the volunteer coordinator, the weekend shift worker, and the seasonal campaign team all have access to the same information as head office staff.
How do you build the ROI business case internally?
A strong business case for unlimited intranet licensing frames the investment in language that resonates with finance, IT, and the executive team. The goal is to translate platform features into measurable outcomes and cost comparisons that make the decision straightforward.
Steps to build your intranet ROI business case
- Document your current annual spend across all tools the intranet would replace or consolidate.
- Calculate what a per-seat alternative would cost at your current headcount, then project it across three and five years at realistic growth rates.
- Quantify the cost of information access problems: time spent searching, email volume, compliance incidents, onboarding inefficiencies.
- Estimate the productivity value of time saved if employees spend 15 to 30 fewer minutes per day on information tasks.
- Factor in the retention risk of disengaged or excluded frontline workers and the recruitment cost of replacing them.
- Compare the flat unlimited licensing fee against the five-year total of the per-seat alternative.
- Present the cost delta as the minimum ROI, then layer in productivity and engagement upside.
Elcom client BetterHR achieved ROI within 12 months of deployment. The combination of system consolidation, reduced administrative overhead, and full workforce inclusion on a flat licensing model meant the platform paid for itself inside the first year.
The people to involve in building the case are IT, HR, Internal Communications, and Finance. Each stakeholder has a different lens. IT cares about integration complexity and admin overhead. HR focuses on onboarding, compliance, and engagement. Communications wants reach and content management ease. Finance needs a number that is credible, conservative, and clearly presented.
What should you look for in an unlimited licensing intranet?
Not every vendor offering unlimited licensing delivers the same value. The licensing model matters, but so does the depth of the platform, the quality of local support, and whether the total cost of ownership holds up once you look past the headline fee.
Here are the questions worth asking before you commit to a platform.
Questions to ask intranet vendors about unlimited licensing
- Does unlimited really mean unlimited, or are there thresholds, module limits, or support tiers that add cost?
- Is the platform built for employees without corporate email addresses?
- Where is your data hosted? Is it in Australia?
- Do you have local implementation and support teams in the same time zone?
- What does the total cost of ownership look like over five years, including implementation, training, and ongoing support?
- Can the platform handle website, intranet, portal, and mobile from a single licence?
- What does your onboarding and change management process look like?
Elcom is an Australian-built platform with 25+ years in the local market. The unlimited licensing model covers the entire Elcom platform, including intranet, website, portal, learning management, and mobile app capabilities. Data is hosted in Australia. Implementation, training, and support are delivered by an in-house team based in Australia, in your time zone.
In a recent survey of 2024 clients, Elcom was rated 9 out of 10 for strong implementation support and post-project customer service. That consistency of support across the full client lifecycle is part of what makes the total cost of ownership calculation land differently than it does with international platforms building local presence from scratch.
There is no corporate email requirement for frontline worker access. Accounts are created within the Elcom platform itself, which means field staff, retail workers, aged care workers, and volunteers can all have a login without needing an M365 licence. For organisations in industries where a large share of the workforce sits outside the traditional office environment, that capability alone changes the ROI calculation significantly.
For organisations looking to consolidate multiple systems onto a single platform, Elcom's all-in-one approach also reduces the vendor management overhead and the integration complexity that comes with running separate tools. The Archdiocese of Sydney used the Elcom platform to significantly reduce internal email volume across a large, distributed organisation. Northcott, a major not-for-profit operating across 160 locations in New South Wales and the ACT, found that frontline staff could access critical information quickly after a period of rapid growth.
If you are evaluating intranet platforms and the licensing model is part of the conversation, the ROI case for unlimited licensing is strongest when you factor in your full workforce, your growth trajectory, and the true five-year cost of a per-seat alternative. For most Australian organisations with mixed or distributed workforces, that calculation points clearly in one direction.
Book a demo to see how Elcom's unlimited licensing model works in practice, or request a consultation to talk through the numbers for your specific organisation.
Together with Elcom, we have created an internationally award-winning Intranet - ‘Cabinet’. From design to functionality, it has delivered a fresh new platform to engage with our staff. The support from the sales team, project managers and ongoing support desk, has been excellent.
Cabrini
Read the case study