Free Community Edition: Available Reports and the 20-Site Limit

Last updated: 2026-10-15

The plain-language limits for SharePoint Essentials Toolkit Community Edition: available read-only reports at full depth, up to 20 site collections, with separate editing and connectivity rules.

Cognillo · By David Cooper

The plain-language limits for SharePoint Essentials Toolkit Community Edition: available read-only reports at full depth, up to 20 site collections, with separate editing and connectivity rules.

What can the free Community Edition report on?

Community Edition runs any available read-only report at full depth within its 20-site allowance, with no row, item or user caps. It includes permissions, sharing links, inventories, storage, links, content search and activity reports, plus exports, schedules and monitors. Sign-In Activity Reports are Beta; Field Inventory Reports are Coming soon and are not currently available.

  1. Get the free Community license; it never expires.

  2. Select a supported report and review its scope and connection requirements.

  3. Use the current comparison to distinguish available reports from Beta and Coming soon entries.

What exactly does “up to 20 sites” mean?

The Community allowance is 20 site collections per tenant, shared across all Community keys, with 20 per license key and at most 20 per job. Subsites count with their parent site collection. Another free key does not increase the tenant allowance. First report, task or Explorer change permanently counts the site collection; subsequent runs reuse that slot.

  1. Choose the site collections you intend to use before the first report.

  2. Check both license-key and tenant usage on the License page.

  3. Contact support@cognillo.com about removals or additional sites.

Does discovering or adding a site use the allowance?

No. Discovering sites, adding or searching sites and accounts, and testing connections do not consume Community site slots. Running the first report or task, or making an Explorer change, does. Explorer asks for confirmation before a change consumes an uncounted site collection. Once counted, the site remains counted even when a report job finishes.

  1. Discover and inspect candidate sites without starting a report or change.

  2. Review the site allowance before running the first job.

  3. Use the License page to confirm the recorded count.

What are the Community editing and copy limits?

Community allows up to 10 changes per Apply from supported report action panels. Find & Replace works only on lists with fewer than 100 items, while read-only searching has no item cap. List copying uses the Native API; Migration API requires Enterprise. Version history and multiple source lists require Professional or Enterprise, and copying item permissions requires Enterprise.

  • Enterprise is required for Bulk Edit, account add/remove/clone, administrator add/remove and orphan cleanup.

  • Read-only reporting limits and editing limits are separate; available reports are not reduced to a sample of rows.

Does Community Edition work offline or need updates?

Community must reach licensing.cognillo.com and does not support offline activation. If connectivity is temporarily lost, its last confirmed licensing answer covers already-counted sites for up to seven days; new sites cannot be added offline. Available updates are mandatory. Anonymous crash and usage data is sent, while site URLs and tenant hosts are hashed before licensing transmission.

  1. Allow the licensing service over HTTPS from the toolkit computer.

  2. Install available updates and confirm the License page status.

  3. For an offline-activation requirement, review the paid-edition options instead of relying on the temporary cached answer.

Sources and next steps

Start with the Community Edition reporting limits and SharePoint Essentials Toolkit.