One of the most common questions when organisations start using Microsoft 365 is this: "What's SharePoint for if we already have Teams?" Or the other way around: "We have SharePoint — do we need Teams as well?"
The confusion is understandable because the two tools overlap in some areas. But they have distinct purposes — and understanding the difference is key to getting the most from Microsoft 365.
The short answer
Teams is for real-time communication and collaboration — conversations, meetings, calls, day-to-day teamwork.
SharePoint is for content management and organisation — documents, pages, intranets, structured company information.
The good news is you don't have to choose between them. They're designed to work together.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Teams is the communication hub of Microsoft 365. Inside Teams you can:
- Send messages to colleagues or groups (chat)
- Make video calls and hold meetings
- Organise teamwork by channels — one channel per project, department, or topic
- Share files in the context of a conversation
- Integrate third-party apps and tools
Teams is designed for real-time work — the conversation that needs a response today, the meeting this afternoon, the file you share in the middle of a discussion.
What is SharePoint?
SharePoint is the content management and collaboration platform in Microsoft 365. Inside SharePoint you can:
- Organise documents in libraries with metadata and versioning
- Create intranets and communication sites for the whole organisation
- Publish news, policies, and procedures
- Manage structured data lists
- Control access permissions with granularity
- Connect content to automation flows
SharePoint is designed for longer-lived content — the documents that get consulted for months or years, the corporate information the whole organisation needs to find.
The connection between the two
Here's the detail many people don't know: when you create a team in Teams, SharePoint automatically creates a site in the background.
Every file you share in a Teams channel is saved in a document library on that SharePoint site. You can access them from Teams or directly from SharePoint — they're the same files.
This means Teams is, in part, an interface on top of SharePoint for day-to-day teamwork. The advanced management of those same files — metadata, granular permissions, custom views — happens from SharePoint.
When to use Teams
Use Teams when:
- You need to communicate with a colleague or group in real time
- You have a meeting or call
- You're working on a project with a team and need a conversation space
- You're sharing a file in the context of a discussion
- You're coordinating a team's daily work
When to use SharePoint
Use SharePoint when:
- You're publishing content for the whole organisation — news, policies, procedures
- You're organising documents with metadata and need to filter or search them
- You're building an intranet or company portal
- You need granular permissions over who can see what
- You're managing structured data lists — client records, inventory, project tracking
- The content needs to be found by search or by Copilot
The most common mistake
The most common mistake is using Teams for everything — including document management. The result is files scattered across dozens of channels in different teams, with no metadata, no structure, impossible to find from global search.
Teams is excellent for sharing a file in the context of a conversation. But if that file needs to live in the organisation for months or years and be found by other people, it needs to be in SharePoint — with its library, its metadata columns, and the correct permissions.
A practical example
Scenario: your organisation is working on a proposal for a new client.
Teams: the sales team has a channel for that client where they discuss strategy, share quick drafts, and hold follow-up video calls.
SharePoint: the final, signed, approved proposal is saved in the Proposals library on the Sales site — with Client, Date, Status, and Owner columns — where any team member can find it months later by searching for the client name.
Both tools in the same workflow, each doing what it does best.
OneDrive — the third piece
To complete the picture, OneDrive is each user's personal storage. It's for:
- Your personal work files that you're not yet ready to share
- Drafts in progress
- Personal files that don't belong to any team
The practical rule:
- OneDrive — my personal documents or drafts
- Teams — collaborative working documents in the context of a conversation
- SharePoint — final documents, corporate content, information the whole organisation needs to find
The summary
| Teams | SharePoint | |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time communication | ✅ | ❌ |
| Video calls and meetings | ✅ | ❌ |
| Channel-based teamwork | ✅ | ❌ |
| Advanced document management | Basic | ✅ |
| Intranet and corporate communications | ❌ | ✅ |
| Metadata and content types | ❌ | ✅ |
| Advanced content search | Limited | ✅ |
| Granular permissions | Limited | ✅ |
| Copilot AI compatible | ✅ | ✅ |
The answer to "Teams or SharePoint" isn't to choose one — it's to use each for what it was designed for, knowing they're connected and complement each other.
Not sure how to structure Teams and SharePoint in your organisation? Get in touch and we'll work through it together.