Use a team site when a group of people needs a place to do their work together, and a communication site when a small number of people need to publish information for the rest of the organisation. A team site comes with a Microsoft 365 group and can be connected to Microsoft Teams, so everyone in it can edit. A communication site has no group, and most people who visit it can only read.
Both are SharePoint sites with document libraries, pages and news, so it’s easy to pick the wrong one and only find out months later. You can’t convert a group-connected team site into a communication site, or the other way round, so the choice you make on the create screen is the one you live with. In SharePoint today that screen sits under Build in the app bar: select the Site card, then Team site or Communication site, and pick a template.
Team site vs communication site at a glance
| Team site | Communication site | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | A workspace for a group to collaborate | A place to publish and broadcast |
| Audience | The members of the team | The whole organisation, or a large part of it |
| Who creates content | Every member | A few owners and editors |
| Microsoft 365 group | Yes, one is created with the site | No |
| Microsoft Teams | A team can be added to it, and every team has one behind it | Can’t be connected as a team; pages can be added as tabs |
| Default permissions | Managed through the Microsoft 365 group: group owners and members become site owners and members | SharePoint Owners, Members and Visitors groups; read access is the usual default |
| Privacy setting | Private or Public at creation | No privacy setting; access comes from who you add |
| Typical uses | Department working files, project teams, committees | HR or IT hub, intranet home page, policies, company news |
| Navigation | Left-hand navigation, team-focused home page | Top navigation, full-width visual layouts |
| Templates | Standard team and other team templates | Standard communication, Showcase, Blank |
How does the audience differ?
In my video I used a people and culture team as the example. The team site behind their team in Microsoft Teams had 12 members. Every member could upload files, post in channels and add to the home page and news, and nobody outside the team could see any of it.
The same department also had a communication site called Contoso HR, with links to what people across the company come to HR for: tax forms, leave, insurance options, events, compensation and benefits, and the people and culture policies. Everyone in the company could read it, and a small group could edit it. The team worked in the team site and published the finished output (a policy, an update, a how-to guide) on the communication site.
Which site type connects to Microsoft Teams?
When you create a modern team site, a Microsoft 365 group is created with it, which gives the team a shared email address and calendar and one place to manage access. If the team works in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft recommends doing all permission management through Teams. How files, channels and sites line up is in how Teams and SharePoint work together.
If you start with a team site and want Teams later, a site owner selects Add real-time chat in the lower-left corner of the home page, then Add Microsoft Teams, picks the pages, lists and libraries to add as tabs, and selects Add Teams. Microsoft’s steps for creating a team from SharePoint say only group-connected team sites can do this.
A communication site isn’t connected to a Microsoft 365 group, and Microsoft’s group connection guidance states that connecting one isn’t supported. You can still bring a communication site page into Teams as a tab, which I cover in adding a SharePoint page as a Teams tab.
What permissions does each site start with?
Team site permissions come from the group, as in the table. Microsoft 365 groups have no view-only option, so anyone who should only read has to be added to the site’s Visitors group directly. Microsoft’s sharing and permissions guidance recommends against managing a group-connected site’s permissions separately from its group.
Communication sites use the three standard SharePoint groups: Owners, Members and Visitors. For a company-wide site you’d put a large security group, or everyone in the organisation, in Visitors and keep Members small. If a team in Teams maintains the communication site, Microsoft suggests adding that team’s Microsoft 365 group to the communication site’s Members group so the whole team can edit.
Where do hub sites fit?
Both kinds of site can be associated with a hub, and a SharePoint Administrator can turn either into a hub site; Microsoft recommends a communication site or a modern team site for the hub itself. A tenant can have up to 2,000 hub sites, with no limit on how many sites join each one. For the HR example, you could make the HR communication site the hub and associate the people and culture team site with it, so they share navigation and search.
Can you change one into the other?
Not for modern sites. There’s an admin PowerShell option to enable the communication site experience on a classic team site, but it only works on a top-level classic team site that isn’t connected to a Microsoft 365 group, and it can’t be undone. For a modern team site, create a new communication site and move the content across.
Which one I’d pick
If the people reading the site will also be writing in it, use a team site. If most of them will only read, use a communication site.
I’d give every group of people who produce work together a team site, and if they already work in Microsoft Teams, I’d create it from Teams so the channels, files and membership line up from day one. Each department, project or committee gets its own. I’d add a communication site when that group starts publishing to people outside it. HR, IT, finance and the intranet home page are the obvious ones, along with any policies or procedures the whole company reads, and only finished, approved content goes there.
What I wouldn’t do is open up a team site to the whole company because people need one document from it. Once everyone is a member, everyone can edit, and the team loses its working space. Running a project out of a communication site’s document library has the opposite problem: nobody gets a group, a shared calendar or a channel to talk in.
Frequently asked questions
Can a team site have pages and news like a communication site? Yes. In my video the people and culture team site had its own home page and news for its 12 members, added to their team in Teams as a tab. Communication sites add full-width layouts and the Showcase and Blank templates.
Who can create a hub site? A SharePoint Administrator or higher, from the SharePoint admin center or PowerShell. Owners of other sites can then associate their sites with the hub, unless the admin restricts that to named people.
Can I create a team site without a Microsoft 365 group? Only if your admin has set up classic site creation; Microsoft’s create a team site steps say no group is created in that case. Without the group the Add Microsoft Teams option isn’t available, so the site would need connecting to a new Microsoft 365 group first.
