Skip to main content

Site

A site is the fundamental building block of SharePoint - a secure container that brings together pages, document libraries, lists, and permissions for one team, department, project, or purpose. Every intranet is a collection of sites connected by hubs, and every Microsoft Teams team is backed by one. SharePoint offers three site types - a group-connected Team Site, a standalone Team Site, and a Communication Site - and choosing the right one up front matters, because sites cannot be converted from one type to another later.
Related Features
Channel Sites, Communication Site, Hub Site, Site Collection, Site Owners, Site Templates, Team Site

Common Use Cases

  • Team collaboration spaces: a central location for teams to work on documents
  • Department portals: HR, IT, Finance, or Marketing sites for structured information sharing
  • Intranet architecture: building blocks for hub sites and organizational intranets
  • Project workspaces: temporary or long-term sites for project execution
  • Knowledge repositories: centralized locations for policies, procedures, and guidance
  • Microsoft Teams backing sites: file and content storage for Teams channels

Benefits

  • Security boundary: each site carries its own permissions and access control, so sensitive content stays contained within the site that holds it
  • Purpose-built types: three site types match the container to the job: group-connected Team Sites for collaboration, Communication Sites for publishing, and standalone Team Sites for tighter permission setups
  • Microsoft 365 integration: group-connected Team Sites plug straight into Teams, Outlook, and Planner, and files shared in Teams channels land in the site automatically
  • Everything included: every site ships with pages, document libraries, lists, and navigation out of the box, so a new workspace is usable in minutes
  • Scalable intranet design: flat sites joined by hubs grow with the organization; you can add or retire a site without restructuring the whole intranet
  • Independent lifecycle: each site can be created, renamed, archived, or deleted on its own schedule without affecting any other site

Choosing the Right Site Type

  • Group-connected Team Site: built for collaboration; it ships with a shared mailbox, calendar, and Planner, can be connected to Microsoft Teams, and manages access through Microsoft 365 Group membership
  • Standalone Team Site: the same collaboration features inside SharePoint, but no Teams, mailbox, or Planner; permissions use the standard SharePoint groups
  • Communication Site: built for broadcasting to a wide audience: intranet homepages, department portals, and news, where a few authors publish and everyone else reads
  • Rule of thumb: if people will work on content together, pick a Team Site; if a few people will publish to many, pick a Communication Site

Limits and Nuances

  • No site-type conversion: a Communication Site can never become a Team Site or gain a Microsoft 365 Group, so get the choice right before you build
  • Group features are exclusive: only group-connected Team Sites include Teams, a shared mailbox, a group calendar, and Planner; the other two site types never get them
  • Two permission models: group-connected sites manage access through group Owners and Members, while Communication Sites and standalone Team Sites use the Owners, Members, and Visitors SharePoint groups
  • Deletion is a package deal: deleting a group-connected Team Site deletes the Microsoft 365 Group with it, including the team in Teams, the shared mailbox, and any Planner plans
  • Capacity and hubs: each site holds up to 25 TB and a tenant supports up to 2 million sites (drawing from a shared pool, or manual per-site limits), and a site can belong to only one of up to 2,000 hubs
  • Avoid subsites: modern guidance is a flat architecture of separate sites joined by hubs, because subsites lock you into shared permissions, shared lifecycle, and no way to move them later
  • Govern creation and ownership: by default every user can create sites (restrict who can self-create to avoid sprawl), and every site needs a named owner, since ownerless sites are the root of most cluttered tenants
  • URL changes are disruptive: a site can be renamed and old links redirect, yet embedded references and integrations may need updating, so plan renames carefully

Common Questions About Sites

What is a site in SharePoint?

A site is SharePoint’s core container – a secure workspace that holds pages, document libraries, lists, and its own set of permissions. Everything in SharePoint lives inside a site: your intranet homepage is a site, each department portal is a site, and every Microsoft Teams team has a site behind it storing its files. Sites are then connected by hub sites to form an intranet.

What are the three types of SharePoint sites?

There are three: a Team Site connected to a Microsoft 365 Group, which adds Teams, a shared mailbox, and Planner; a Team Site without a group, which offers SharePoint collaboration only; and a Communication Site, designed for publishing news and information to a broad audience. All three share the same modern pages, libraries, and web parts – the difference is purpose and permissions.

Should I create a Team Site or a Communication Site?

It comes down to direction of information. If a group of people will create and edit content together – a project, a department’s working files – choose a Team Site. If a few people will publish content for many to read – an intranet homepage, an HR portal – choose a Communication Site. Greg Zelfond walks clients through exactly this decision at the start of every implementation, because it cannot be reversed later.

Can I convert a Team Site to a Communication Site?

No. SharePoint has no mechanism to convert between site types in either direction, and a Communication Site can never be connected to a Microsoft 365 Group. If a site was created as the wrong type, the practical fix is to create a new site of the correct type and move the content over. That is why the site-type decision deserves real thought up front.

How do sites and hub sites fit together?

Modern SharePoint architecture is flat: instead of nesting subsites, you create separate sites and associate them to a hub. The hub provides shared navigation and branding and rolls up news and content from its associated sites, forming the intranet. A site can join only one hub at a time, and a tenant supports up to 2,000 hubs, which is plenty for almost any organization.

How much can a SharePoint site store?

Each site can hold up to 25 TB of content, and a Microsoft 365 tenant supports up to 2 million sites. By default all sites draw from a shared tenant-wide storage pool, and admins can set per-site limits in the SharePoint admin center. In practice, storage is rarely the constraint – keeping site creation, ownership, and lifecycle under control matters far more.