What is a Root site? What is a Home site? What is a HUB site in SharePoint Online?
How to distinguish what is what, how to structure the sites, how do they work…? Many questions can be raised for these 3 types of sites, especially since these sites in SharePoint Online have distinct purposes, although they can sometimes overlap depending on the company’s configuration settings.
So, let’s make it simple and start from the very beginning.
Root site
When you purchase your Microsoft 365 subscription and set up Your environment, the system creates the Root site in SharePoint Online (SPO) by default.”It acts as the primary entry point for the organizational SharePoint environment, and the URL typically follows this structure: https://yourcompanyname.sharepoint.com. Many organizations decide to use the Root site as the main Home site/Hub, or you may say intranet landing page for the whole organization.
Home Site
The Home site is a communication site that serves as the official landing page for your company’s intranet. This site can be any communication site that you choose (you can have just one home site at a time). The Home site is registered by your SharePoint Administrator in the Admin Center. More information you may read on the Microsoft Official site: Plan, build, and launch a home site for your organization | Microsoft Learn
Many organizations decide to use the root site as their home site.
“Regarding the ways of creation: The system creates the Root site as the default site, and the SharePoint Administrator creates the Home site through the Admin Center.
Hub Site
“This SharePoint site connects related sites to simplify management and enhance user experience when navigating across these sites. The Hub site offers a shared navigation (all associated sites share the same top navigation), enhanced search (it expands the search scope, which means that it provides search results for all associated sites), branding (all the connected sites inherit the theme from the Hub site which means they share the same consistent branding).
A SharePoint Online Administrator can register any modern site as a Hub site through the admin center. “Other team or communication sites can easily associated with or disassociated from the Hub. The maximum number of Hub sites you may have is 200.
Here is a table which includes comparison between these sites:
Feature | Root Site | Home Site | Hub Site |
| Definition | The primary entry point for the organizational SPO environment (It can be configured to be a Home site). | The official landing page for your intranet, providing an engaging experience. The Root site is often used as a home site. | A central point to connect multiple related sites, offering shared navigation and branding. |
| Purpose | Contents information and links leading to various intranet resources. | Landing page for the organizational intranet. | Connect sites for better and consistent user experience. |
| URL | https://yourcompanyname.sharepoint.com | Any communication site, depending on the name you choose to be a part of the URL. | Any modern site, depending on the name you choose to be a part of the URL. |
| Customization | In case it is a classical site, it will be with basic capabilities, and when modernized it will have improved features. | Possibility for great customization with enhanced features for engagement and mobile integration. | Shared navigation, good search scope, unified branding across associated sites. |
| Navigation bar | Default navigation for SPO environment. | Seamlessly incorporates the SharePoint app bar, ensuring uniform navigation throughout the SPO environment. | Shared top navigation for all associated sites. The navigation is customizable. |
| Style, branding | Basic branding for classical sites, modernized for a better experience. | Improved branding and customization. | Shared theme and branding across all associated sites (the sites inherit the Hub theme and branding). |
| Search engine | The whole complete SPO environment. | Specific to the Home site and its content. | The Hub and all associated sites. |
| News | Standard SharePoint news and events features. | Personalized content for users. | Incorporates news and events from all associated sites (user can select from which associated sites or from all associated sites). |
| Permissions and site creation | Default SharePoint permissions. You have 1 root site created by the system. | Standard SharePoint permissions with home site capabilities. You can have 1 home site at the same time. Home site can be changed if needed (from the Admin Center). | Standard SharePoint permissions with hub site capabilities. You can have up to 200 Hubs in your organization (Hubs are registered in the admin center). |
If we want to summarize this in one sentence and make it sound not very complex, we might say: the Root site is the default entry point, the Home site is the official intranet landing page, and the Hub site helps organize and connect related sites for a unified user experience.
Now, let’s see a real life example. Here is a screenshot of how it looks in the admin center for our organization. The system created Corner1980 as the Root site.
Then, you can see that we have registered this site as a Home site:
On the next screen shot you may see how the Root site of SPO landing page looks like:
Here, you may see the Root site, which we have registered as a Home site and also a Hub in order to connect other sites to it.
In fact, many organizations choose to do this (using root site as home site and register it as a Hub), because it allows them to centralize their SharePoint environment, combining the functionalities of all three types of sites.
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