SP Online Team Sites are Site Collections?

Question

I know this is a quite basic question, but I found myself confused when someone asked me if the new Team Sites in SharePoint Online are the equivalent of site collections in the usually accepted sense.

Also, would be great if someone could tell me the difference between creating a site collection from the SharePoint Admin Center and creating a Team Site from the top SharePoint page.

I want to be able to explain the two points above when asked, so if someone could tell me in plain terms, it would be great. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

1) Yes, they are indeed site collections.

But in addition to being a SharePoint site collection, whenever a modern team site is created, it will also automatically provision associated Office 365 groups (owners, members, visitors) along with Planner for task planning & management, One Note notebook, Shared Mailbox, a default Document library and ability to associate a Microsoft Team "team" with this O365 group. It will also show up in your Microsoft Outlook.

2) When you create a team site from admin center > new private site collection, it will create a classic team site in SharePoint only. Unlike modern team site, it doesn't have associated Office 365 group integration.