Communication Site vs Team Site in SharePoint: Differences and When to Use Each

Communication site vs team site comes down to who writes and who reads. A team site is a Microsoft 365 group-connected workspace where every member edits, while a communication site broadcasts news to a large audience that mostly just reads.

In this tutorial, I’ll explain the communication site vs team site differences in SharePoint Online: groups and Teams, permissions, navigation, templates, the third option without a group, PnP PowerShell, and how to pick the right one.

Here’s the quickest way to see which type each of your sites is:

Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://<tenant>-admin.sharepoint.com" -ClientId $clientId -Interactive

# Communication sites
Get-PnPTenantSite -Template SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0 | Select-Object Title, Url

# Group-connected team sites
Get-PnPTenantSite -GroupIdDefined $true | Select-Object Title, Url, Template

The first command lists every communication site in the tenant. The second lists sites backed by a Microsoft 365 group, which are your modern team sites.

What Is a Team Site in SharePoint?

A team site is a shared workspace for a group of people who produce work together. If you’re new to the platform, start with my overview of what SharePoint is and how it works.

When you create a team site, SharePoint also creates a Microsoft 365 group. That group gives the team a shared Outlook inbox and calendar, Planner tasks, a OneNote notebook and the site’s document library.

Here’s the Team site tab in the Select a site template dialog on our tenant. Microsoft’s own description says it’s integrated with Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams:

The dialog shows templates from your organization at the top and Microsoft’s templates below. Every option on this tab creates a group-connected site.

This is our SPGuides Team Site after creation. Look at the header and the left side of the page:

The Teams icon next to the site name, the Private group label and 5 members all come from the Microsoft 365 group. The navigation runs down the left side, with Conversations, Notebook and Calendar links.

What Is a Communication Site in SharePoint?

A communication site is a publishing site. A few authors create news, pages and resources, and many people across the company read them.

Typical examples are an intranet home page, an HR portal, an employee resource center or an event site. You’ll find more site-building guides in my SharePoint tutorials hub.

On the Communication site tab, Microsoft says most users have read-only access and the site isn’t connected to Microsoft 365 Groups or Teams:

Microsoft’s communication site templates on our tenant were Standard communication, Brand central, Crisis management, Department, Event, Human resources, Leadership connection and Learning central.

Here’s our SPGuides News communication site. The layout looks very different from the team site:

Navigation sits across the top, there’s a Site access link instead of a members count, and the page opens with a full-width Hero web part. That full-width canvas is a big reason people pick communication sites for portals.

What Is the Difference Between a Team Site and a Communication Site?

Here’s how the two compare on the points that matter when you set up a new site:

Area	Team site	Communication site
Purpose	Collaboration inside a team or project	Broadcasting news and information
Who edits	Every member	A few owners and authors
Microsoft 365 group	Yes, created with the site	No, and you can’t connect one
Microsoft Teams	Can be connected to a team	Not connected; add pages as tabs
Permissions	Group owners and members, plus visitors	SharePoint groups: owners, members, visitors
Privacy setting	Private or public	None; access is by sharing
Navigation	Left (quick launch) by default	Top (horizontal) by default
Template ID	GROUP#0	SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0
Typical use	Projects, departments, committees	Intranet, HR portal, news, events

If you’re also deciding how sites relate to each other, my post on hub sites vs subsites covers the structure side of the same decision.

A quick way to tell them apart in the browser: a team site has a left menu and group details in the header, while a communication site has a top menu and a Site access link.

Microsoft 365 Group and Microsoft Teams Connection

The Microsoft 365 group is the biggest technical difference. It’s what links a team site to Outlook, Planner and Microsoft Teams.

Membership works both ways. When you add someone to the team site, they join the group, and anyone added to the group gets access to the site.

Every team in Teams stores its files in a SharePoint team site. If you create a team in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint builds the site for you, and each standard channel becomes a folder in its Documents library.

It also works the other way around. On a group-connected team site, you can add Microsoft Teams to the existing site, and SharePoint connects it to the new team. Private and shared Teams channels get their own separate channel sites.

A communication site has no group. Microsoft documents that connecting a communication site to a Microsoft 365 group isn’t supported, so you can’t add Teams to it the same way.

You can still show communication site pages inside Teams by adding them as a SharePoint or Website tab. For a fuller comparison of the two apps, see Microsoft Teams vs SharePoint.

Permissions and Sharing: Team Site vs Communication Site

Both site types have Site owners, Site members and Site visitors groups. What changes is where those people come from.

Team site permissions

On a team site, owners and members come from the Microsoft 365 group. In our SPGuides Team Site, I opened Settings > Site permissions and the Add members dropdown:

Add members to group gives someone full group membership, including the inbox, calendar and Teams. Share site only gives access to the SharePoint site without adding them to the group.

Group owners become site owners automatically. I cover what that role can do in my SharePoint site owner guide.

Communication site permissions

A communication site uses classic SharePoint groups only. Here’s the same panel on SPGuides News, where there’s just a Share site button:

The panel lists Site owners with full control, Site members with limited control and Site visitors with no control over the site. When you share, you pick Read, Edit or Full Control, and Read is the default.

For a news site, I keep most of the company as visitors and add only the authors as members. My guide on SharePoint permissions best practices explains why fewer editors is safer.

If you need finer control, such as letting authors add pages but not delete lists, read Contribute vs Edit permissions before you create a custom level.

Navigation, Layout and Web Parts

A team site starts with the left navigation (quick launch), which suits a working site with many lists and libraries. You can switch it to horizontal navigation in Change the look if you prefer.

A communication site starts with top navigation and full-width sections. That makes room for big banners, news rollups and image galleries.

Most modern web parts work on both site types. The difference is the starting layout:

• Team site home: News, Quick links, Activity and Documents, so members see recent work first.
• Communication site home: Hero, News, Events and Quick links, laid out for readers.

If you want a card-style feature story on either site, try the Editorial Card web part. It works well on communication site home pages.

Team Site and Communication Site Templates

Each site type comes with its own set of Microsoft templates. You pick one when you create the site, and you can apply a different one later from Settings > Apply a site template.

Team site templates focus on work, such as Standard team and Project management. Communication site templates focus on publishing, like Department, Human resources, Event and Crisis management.

Applying a template only adds pages, lists and web parts. It doesn’t change the site type, so a team site stays a team site. To reuse your own layout across sites, build a custom site template in SharePoint Online.

What About a Team Site Without a Microsoft 365 Group?

There’s a third option that many people miss. A team site without a Microsoft 365 group has the team site layout but no group, no shared inbox and no Teams link.

Admins create it from the SharePoint admin center under Browse more sites, or with PnP PowerShell. It uses SharePoint groups for permissions, just like a communication site.

I use it when a team needs a working site with lists and libraries, but the company doesn’t want another group in Outlook and Teams.

Create a Team Site or Communication Site Using PnP PowerShell

New-PnPSite creates all three types. The -Type parameter decides which one you get:

Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com" -ClientId $clientId -Interactive

# Team site with a Microsoft 365 group (uses -Alias, not -Url)
New-PnPSite -Type TeamSite -Title "SPGuides Team Site" -Alias "SPGuides"

# Communication site
New-PnPSite -Type CommunicationSite -Title "SPGuides News" -Url "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuidesNews"

# Team site without a Microsoft 365 group
New-PnPSite -Type TeamSiteWithoutMicrosoft365Group -Title "SPGuides Projects" -Url "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuidesProjects"

Each command returns the URL of the new site. The TeamSite type creates a Microsoft 365 group, so your app registration needs the Group.ReadWrite.All permission in Microsoft Graph.

I walk through every parameter, including owners and time zone, in my post on how to create a site in SharePoint Online using PnP PowerShell.

For the team site, you can confirm who landed in the new group with a script to get Microsoft 365 group members using PowerShell.

When Should You Use a Team Site vs a Communication Site?

I ask one question first: will most visitors edit content, or just read it? If most people edit, it’s a team site. If most people read, it’s a communication site.

Choose a team site when

• A project group like Megan Bowen’s marketing team co-authors files every day.
• You want a shared calendar, inbox, Planner board and a Teams chat for the same people.
• The content is private to the team, and members should add lists and libraries.
• The site has a clear end date, such as a project that wraps up in 12/2026.

Choose a communication site when

• Alex Wilber’s HR team publishes policies and benefits news to the whole company.
• You’re building an intranet home page, department portal or event site.
• A few authors write, and hundreds or thousands of people read.
• You need full-width pages with a Hero web part and a polished design.

Team sites tend to multiply, so plan their lifecycle. When a project ends, archive or delete the site and its group, and keep libraries tidy with these document library best practices.

On a communication site, keep pages stable. If members should edit lists but not pages, you can set SharePoint pages to read-only for members.

How Team Sites and Communication Sites Work Together

Most companies need both. The HR department might run a communication site for the whole company and a private team site where HR staff draft documents.

The cleanest way to tie them together is a hub site. You register one site as the hub, often the communication site, and associate the team sites with it.

Associated sites share the hub navigation and theme, and news from them can roll up to the hub’s home page. Microsoft recommends this flat structure over creating subsites in SharePoint.

Hub association never changes permissions. A private team site stays private even when it’s linked to a company-wide hub.

Can You Convert a Team Site to a Communication Site?

Not for a modern team site. There’s no switch that turns a group-connected team site into a communication site, or a communication site into a team site.

The one exception is a classic team site. A SharePoint admin can add the communication site experience with this cmdlet:

Connect-SPOService -Url "https://<tenant>-admin.sharepoint.com"
Enable-SPOCommSite -SiteUrl "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/SPGuidesArchive"

It gives the site full-width pages and horizontal navigation. The template stays STS#0, and permissions don’t change.

Microsoft lists strict requirements, and the change can’t be undone:

• The site must be a classic team site (STS#0) that isn’t connected to a Microsoft 365 group.
• It must be the top-level site of the site collection, not a subsite.
• SharePoint Server publishing features must never have been turned on.
• You need full owner permission on the site.

For every other case, create a new site of the right type and move the content. If you only want a different look, try these SharePoint customization examples first.

If you’re planning a new SharePoint site, I’d read these next:

• Extract SharePoint Site Owner Email Using Power Automate [From a Group-connected Site]
• Add SharePoint Site Owners using REST API in Power Automate
• How to Use SharePoint Group Calendar Web Part?
• Get SharePoint Folder Permissions Using PnP PowerShell

Frequently Asked Questions