Yammer
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Get started with Viva Engage for just $2/month and bring your team together in a familiar social workspace
redeem nowWe start with direct ratings from our readers, then look at what real users are saying in practitioner forums and community spaces. We pair that with search demand data and profession-level persona analysis.
Editorial note: this was originally published in august of 2024
quick take
based on real user feedback, community sentiment, pricing value, and fit for target audience. see our full methodology
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Yammer, now known as Microsoft Viva Engage, is a corporate social networking platform that helps teams communicate and share knowledge within organizations. It's part of the Microsoft 365 suite and works to create a more connected workplace environment.
The platform functions like a private social network for businesses, letting employees post updates, share files, and join topic-based communities. Teams can use it to reduce email clutter, organize discussions, and keep everyone up to date with company news.
Key features include community spaces for department-specific discussions, live events that can host up to 10,000 viewers, and AI-powered content suggestions that show users the most relevant information. The platform also works smoothly with other Microsoft tools like Teams and SharePoint.
Companies can access Yammer through various Microsoft 365 subscriptions, with specific Viva Engage plans starting at $2 per user monthly. The platform's mobile apps for iOS and Android help teams stay connected on the go, while built-in moderation tools let administrators keep discussions appropriate and productive.
Organizations typically use Yammer to:
• Share company updates and announcements
• Connect employees across different departments
• Build communities around shared interests
• Collect feedback and ideas from staff
• Recognize employee achievements
While similar to public social networks in its design, Yammer focuses specifically on workplace communication and collaboration. Its familiar interface makes it easy for most employees to start using it right away.
monthly search interest
9.9k/mo now
Yammer search interest has been in near-continuous decline since mid-2023, falling from over 60,000 monthly searches to under 10,000 today. That's an 84% drop, and it doesn't look like a category contraction. It looks like a product that's being quietly sidelined as Microsoft consolidates internal comms under Teams and the broader Viva suite. If you're evaluating it now, you're not catching a hype wave; you're picking up a legacy product that Microsoft maintains but no longer actively champions.
Whether Yammer's worth your time depends almost entirely on your role and how your organization uses Microsoft 365. Pick your role below to see the honest breakdown.
overall sentiment
select your role to see what people like you are saying
Communication Manager
positiveIf you're managing company-wide announcements for a large organization, Yammer does the core job: one place to broadcast, a social format that gets more engagement than a mass email, and analytics on who's actually reading. The interface is familiar enough that you won't fight adoption. The real headache is notification volume on the receiving end, which can train employees to tune out the feed over time.
strengths
concerns
Remote Team Manager
positiveYammer works well for keeping distributed teams connected to company culture, especially if your organization already lives in Microsoft 365. The async format suits different time zones, and the integration with Teams and SharePoint means you're not adding another tool. The risk is that important updates get lost in a busy social feed, so you'll need to be deliberate about what goes in Yammer versus what goes directly in Teams.
strengths
concerns
HR Professional / People Operations
mixedYammer's peer recognition features are a genuine plus for culture programs, and it's easy to share achievements across departments. But if you need proper engagement metrics, recognition workflows, or tools that track participation over time, it'll fall short. Dedicated employee engagement platforms handle HR-specific needs that Yammer's general social feed was never designed for.
strengths
concerns
Knowledge Worker / Department Employee
mixedAs the person on the receiving end, Yammer is another feed to manage in a workday that already has too many notifications. If your organization uses it well, it can keep you connected to things happening outside your immediate team. If it's poorly moderated or competes with Teams for the same conversations, it becomes noise you'll learn to ignore. Whether it's worth engaging with depends almost entirely on how your organization sets it up.
strengths
concerns
“Yammer occupies an awkward position: it's included in Microsoft 365 plans, which means most organizations already have it, but that also means there's little pressure on Microsoft to make it genuinely good.”
Community discussion around Yammer is thin, which is itself telling. The main content surfacing in searches for "Yammer review" is largely competitor comparison posts rather than genuine user advocacy. What does exist online paints a consistent picture: Yammer works well enough if your organization is already deep in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, but it struggles to justify its place when Teams sits right next to it in the same suite. The most common criticisms online centre on notification overload, important updates getting buried in social feeds, and a general sense that the tool tries to be a corporate Facebook without quite nailing either the social or the productivity angle. The sharp decline in search interest since mid-2023 isn't just a naming-change artefact from the rebrand to Microsoft Viva Engage. It tracks with a real pattern of organizations quietly deprioritizing the platform.
At $2 per user per month for the Microsoft Viva Employee Communications and Communities plan, the standalone price looks reasonable on paper. But if you're already paying for Microsoft 365 E1 at $10.50 per user per month, Yammer's core functionality is already bundled in. The honest pricing verdict: don't pay the $2 add-on unless you specifically need the premium Viva Engage features. For most organizations, what's included in an existing Microsoft 365 plan is sufficient, and even that may be underused.
Communication Managers at large organizations who need to broadcast announcements across departments without managing individual email lists will get the most from it. Remote Team Managers in Microsoft 365-heavy environments also benefit, since the Teams and SharePoint integrations reduce friction. It's a weaker fit for HR professionals who need dedicated engagement metrics or recognition workflows.
First, notification management is genuinely poor. High-volume organizations end up training employees to ignore the feed, which defeats the purpose of company-wide communications. Second, it competes directly with Microsoft Teams for attention without clearly winning on either async communication or structured channels. Third, HR and People Operations teams will find it lacks the dedicated recognition and engagement analytics that tools like Workvivo or Viva Insights provide separately.
They're solving slightly different problems. Chanty is a direct Teams-style messaging tool with task management built in, aimed at smaller teams who want a single communication layer without Microsoft's complexity. Yammer is specifically a company-wide social network designed for broadcast communications and culture-building at scale. If you're a mid-size team looking for fast, focused chat with lightweight project tracking, Chanty is the cleaner choice. If you're a large organization needing top-down broadcasting and community spaces, and you're already on Microsoft 365, stick with Yammer. Don't use Chanty to replace Yammer unless you're also replacing your broader Microsoft stack.
This is the core question for Communication Managers, and the answer is: partially. Yammer handles broad company announcements and discussion threads well, and the social format does increase visibility compared to a company-wide email. But employees still expect email for formal policy updates or anything that requires acknowledgement. You'll likely end up running both, which is exactly the notification fragmentation problem that makes internal comms harder, not easier. Use it to reduce email volume, not eliminate it.
toolsforhumans editorial team
Reader ratings and community feedback shape every score. Since 2022, ToolsForHumans has helped 600,000+ people find software that holds up after launch. how we research →
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