Difference Between Team Site And Communication Site

Introduction

SharePoint Sites are used to organize various types of content. SharePoint sites are essentially containers for information to store and organize things in SharePoint.

There are four types of sites in SharePoint Online,

  1. Teams Site (with Office 365 group)
  2. Communication site
  3. Modern Team Sites (without Office 365 group)
  4. Classic (Legacy) sites

The differences between Team and Communication sites varies far more than just in their look and feel,

Team site

Specific to a particular team or workgroup.

Communication site

Not specific to any team, rather they will be for the entire organization.

Layout

Team site - Contains left-hand navigation. The advantage to the team site provides an additional structured approach to links.

Communication site - No left-hand navigation. The advantage to the communication sites is the full-width sections. 

Access

Team site - Public by default.

Communication Sites - Private by default.

Default Apps

Team site - A shared Documents, Calendar, One Note, Planner tasks board, the mailbox is created automatically when a new modern team site is created.

Communication site - No shared apps are created automatically when a communication site is created.

Office 365 groups

Team site - Automatically creates Office 365 groups.

Communication site - Office 365 groups are not automatically created.

Top Navigation

Team site - No default top navigation.

Communication site - Default top navigation.

Pages Library

Team site - The web part page, wiki page, site page, are present in Pages Library.

Communication Site - Content type and pages are present in Page Library.

Security

Team site - Microsoft 365 Groups

Communication site - SharePoint Groups

External Sharing

Team site - External sharing enabled (but can be disabled by the SharePoint Admin)

Communication site - External sharing disabled (but can be enabled by the SharePoint Admin)

Summary

Most of the users are not able to decide whether to create a SharePoint Team site or a communication site. Thus, in this article, we have introduced the difference between Team Site and Communication Site in Sharepoint. 

Thank you for reading and I hope you learned something!