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Team Site vs. Communication Site: Which one should I choose?

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This is an open-source article with the community providing support for it. For official Microsoft content, see Microsoft 365 documentation.

Choosing between a team site and a communication site should start with your intent and desired business outcomes. Though there are nuances to explore, at the most basic, think about these two use cases:

  • Connect, Collaborate, Create: When you want to create a place where the members of a work group or project team can collaborate on project deliverables, plan an event, track status, or exchange ideas, you want a Team Site. In a Team Site, all members are content authors where we jointly create and edit content. Think of team sites as a place where work gets done. My project team needs a place to collaboratively work on deliverables. Even though we have individual assignments, we're collectively collaborating to create one or more assets. Our project team needs a Team Site.

  • Showcase, Share, Story: When you want to "broadcast" a message, tell a story, share content for viewing (but not editing) to a large audience or the entire organization, or showcase services or people, you want a Communication Site. In a Communication Site, there will most often be a small number of content authors and a much larger number of content readers or consumers. Think about your corporate intranet. Even if you have collaborative parts of the intranet, the primary purpose of your intranet is to communicate a story such as corporate news or showcase services and information such as your benefits and policies. Your intranet sites are examples of Communication Sites.

  • Create, Store, Use, Permissions, Apps: When you use a store for SharePoint libraries and lists, without M365 groups services, you want a Team Site (not groups connected). With Teams Sites (not groups connected) you can use a store for all SharePoint based elements like documents, list items, news, docsets, and many more. You will not compete with the concepts of groups and SharePoint permissions. Any you can choose, where you want to see the SharePoint site navigation, on top or on left side. Use this kind of Team Site, when you create SharePoint based Apps with libraries, lists and other SharePoint topics or for a SharePoint list based Microsoft Power Apps.

When should I create a team site?

Create a team site for each discrete group of people or unit of work.

If you're a long-time user of SharePoint, you might be thinking that "team site equals sub-site." Resist the temptation to create team sites as sub-sites! Many governance decisions (for example, the ability to share content outside the organization and who has permission to invite new members to the team) are scoped to the site collection. For the most flexibility both today and in the future, each team should get their own site collection—which is exactly what happens when you create an Microsoft 365 Group or a team site from the SharePoint start page, assuming that your organization has enabled "self-service" site creation. When you provision a new Microsoft Teams or team site in Microsoft 365, you get a new site collection in your tenant.

If you do this right, you'll have many team sites. Why? Because you have a lot of projects and work teams—and each one of your projects or work teams will likely have different access and information management requirements. Even if the same work team works on lots of projects, you should still provision a unique team site for each unique project.

Collaborating with people outside the organization? Create a team site for each customer or partner.

Keeping in mind that many governance and security boundaries are scoped to the site collection, create a new team site for each of your different customers or partners if you have an extranet environment. This ensures that Customer or Partner A doesn't accidentally "see" any content or information from Customer or Partner B. By default, team sites are enabled with external sharing turned on. This can be changed by the SharePoint administrator in the Admin Center.

Each member has the same permissions.

While your team site has one or more Owners, typically every Member of the team has the same privileges in the site.

The SharePoint start page and the app bar bring your team sites together

Don't panic about how your users will possibly keep track of all of these team sites, because the SharePoint start page and the app bar have got your back!

The SharePoint start page in Microsoft 365 brings together, for each individual person, news from all of the team sites in which they're a member (and sites they're following), sites they visit frequently, and other news suggested by the Microsoft Graph. It also shows the most recent activity in the sites each person visits frequently.

The app bar's My sites shows each user's frequent and followed sites.

Together, these two navigation options provide personalized navigation for each user based on their own interests and activity - including all their team sites.

Examples of team site scenarios.

  • Project team working together to complete deliverables and manage tasks.
  • Holiday party planning committee planning the annual get-together. If you have work locations in multiple geographies, you may have many holiday party committees and each party committee team site might be in a different language.
  • Human Resources team members—everyone who works in HR.
  • Executive Committee—different leadership groups within the organization.
  • Extranet site to work with Partner A.
  • A different extranet site to work with Partner B.

When should I create a communication site?

Create a communication site to showcase, share, or tell a story.

Here's a way to think about the difference between a team site and a communication site. A team site is where the sausage is made—it's behind the counter and typically private. A communication site is where the sausage is sold—where it's visible to all our "customers" and where they come to buy our sausage. Typically, our customers don't want to know how we make the sausage (or how many times we had to edit that document to get it "ready to share"). They just want to get the finished product.

Communication sites have two distinct user personas.

Most often, a communication site has a small number of people with permission to author content and many people who only have permission to read content. Team sites use Microsoft 365 Groups for permissions. Communication sites use SharePoint groups.

Think about your team sites as where you collaborate and your communication sites as where you communicate.

As an example, consider your Human Resources (HR) department. Typically, HR has at least one team site where the members of the HR team can work on defining a new benefits program or crafting the announcement about an organizational restructuring. During the process of creation, the HR team works privately on a team site open just to the members of HR (or individual "friends of HR" who contribute to one or more specific documents). Once all the back and forth about the message or document or program is complete, the HR team is ready to share the information with the rest of the company.

When they're ready to share, the HR team moves the document to or writes the story in a communication site that is open to the entire organization. They use a communication site to share "team to organization" or "organization to employees" information. While in some cases they may solicit feedback on the information shared in their communication site (for example, with comments on the page), the content itself is typically editable only by a small number of authorized users.

Examples of communication site scenarios.

  • "Official" corporate news.
  • HR team communicating benefits and compensation information.
  • Travel team publishing guidelines about corporate travel.
  • Policies and procedures.

When should I create a team site (not groups connected)?

Create a team site (not groups connected) to create, store and use SharePoint elements and items.

A team site (not groups connected) is a long time kind of a SharePoint site, you know it when you work with SharePoint since on-prem time. It's similar to a communication site, but it's not a Team Site with M365 services, it's a SharePoint site only.

Differences to communication site:

  • Choose the place for the site navigation on top or left
  • With a default OneNote stored on the site
  • A team site can NOT BE a SharePoint landing page, for that, use a Communication Site!!
  • You can groupify and teamify a team site. Groupify a team site (not groups connected) to a groups connected team site and teamify to a Microsoft Teams

Differences to team site:

  • It's not connected with other M365 services like Exchange, Entra ID object per group
  • Team sites permissions based on M365 Groups, Members and Owners
  • Use SharePoint groups for permissions, not M365 groups with members and owners. You can use Entra ID groups in SharePoint groups.
  • Site navigation is left or on top, it's your choice

Work with SharePoint elements and itmes.

Your SharePoint site can have all different SharePoint elements and items, different, granular, permissions, news, themes and the site navigation on top or on left side and many more, all are based on native SharePoint, without Exchange or other M365 services.

Different SharePoint lists and libraries can have different permissions.

A Team site (not groups connected) is the perfect store to use SharePoint lists and libraries with different permissions. You can use different permission levels on different elements, also use approvals or other Microsoft PowerAutomate Flows into your SharePoint site. You can use SharePoint groups or security groups for permissions on sites or other SharePoint elements. Set permissions on different levels like sites, lists/libraries, folders or items, on items, it's not recommended. When you use Power Apps based on SharePoint site, it's a good choice to use this kind of site type.

So when do i take a team site (not groups connected)?

Use it, when you need a SharePoint site but you don't need M365 groups services. It's the place do create, work and use SharePoint elements and items, native, without M365 Groups. You can define your own permissions, you do not come into conflict with M365 group permission, it's an other concept.

Examples of team site (not groups connected) scenarios.

  • I need "only" a SharePoint site, without groups services
  • Sites for SharePoint based apps, also for Power Apps
  • A site with lists and libraries with a lot different permissions

Feature Comparison

Feature Team Site Communication Site Team Site (not groups connected)
Who creates the site? Site Owner (or Admins) Site Owner (or Admins) Site Owner (or Admins)
Who creates content? All members are content authors who jointly create and edit content. Small number of content authors and a much larger number of content readers or consumers. A defined group of members are content authors also different SharePoint lists and libraries can have different permissions
Security Microsoft 365 Groups SharePoint Groups SharePoint Groups
Default Setting for External Sharing External Sharing Enabled (but can be disabled by the SharePoint Admin) External Sharing Disabled (but can be enabled by the SharePoint Admin) External Sharing Disabled (but can be enabled by the SharePoint Admin)
Default Navigation Left Top Left (but can be changed to Top)
Multilingual features? Yes Yes Yes
When you create, you ALSO get … Planner board, OneNote notebook, Email address for the group, Shared Calendar, shared mailbox, opportunity to connect with a Microsoft Team (if the site wasn't created as part of provisioning a Microsoft Team) NOTHING but a SharePoint communication site! OneNote notebook

Principal author: Susan Hanley, MVP