What is Salesforce Experience Cloud - Key Features, Working, Licenses, Use Cases

Salesforce Experience Cloud, formerly known as Community Cloud, lets businesses build secure, branded digital portals, help centers, and websites on top of their Salesforce CRM.¹ It started in 2013 as Salesforce Communities, became Community Cloud in 2014, and was renamed Experience Cloud in 2021.^2,3 Over the years, it has grown into the place where customers, partners, members, and volunteers log in to view and update the same records that the sales and service teams use, whether it is a case, an order, a registered deal, or an event booking.

This article provides a detailed overview of Salesforce Experience Cloud, focusing on how it fits into Salesforce CRM, how a site works (including guest user access), its key features, the things you can build with it, its AI capabilities and benefits, and its licenses and pricing model.

What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?

Experience Cloud is the Salesforce product for building websites that people outside a company log in to. Salesforce calls each one a site, while most people still call it a portal or a community.³

That said, it is more than just a website builder. Every site runs inside the same Salesforce org as the CRM. As such, a case opened on the portal is the same case that the service team works on, with nothing to sync in between.

Companies buy the licenses from Salesforce, and a consulting partner usually designs and builds the site. CRM-only consultancies like Vegacompass, an approved Salesforce Consulting Partner, build such portals for customers, partners, members, and volunteers.

How Experience Cloud fits into the Salesforce CRM ecosystem

Experience Cloud has no customer records of its own.

Each site shows the records that the other clouds hold:

• Cases and knowledge articles from Service Cloud
• Leads and deals from Sales Cloud
• Customer profiles from Data 360, to personalize what each visitor sees

Salesforce now sells the customer portal as Service Portal and the partner portal inside Partner Cloud.^4,5 To learn more about Service Cloud in detail, please read our article: What is Service Cloud in Salesforce? - Key Features, How It Works, Benefits, Use Cases.

How Does Salesforce Experience Cloud Work?

Every site is built and run from the same Salesforce org that holds the CRM data.

Below is how a site comes together:

• Template and Framework: The admin picks a ready-made template, such as Help Center on the low-code Aura framework, or Build Your Own (LWR), which runs on the faster Lightning Web Runtime but needs a developer.⁶
• Pages and Branding: Experience Builder lets the admin drag components onto each page and apply the company's colors and logo without code.
• Members and Licenses: Each person who logs in is a contact record turned into an external user with a license and a profile.
• Access and Sharing: The license, the profile, and the sharing settings decide which records each member can see or edit.
• Publishing: The site goes live on a Salesforce domain or on the company's own domain.

One thing to note is that a site that shares too little frustrates its members, and one that shares too much leaks data.

Guest Users and Data Security

A guest user is anyone who browses the site without logging in. In 2023, misconfigured sites at the State of Vermont and Huntington Bank exposed personal data to guests, and Salesforce said the cause was customer settings, not the platform.⁷

Today, "Secure guest user record access" stays on in every org with a site, so a read-only guest user sharing rule is the only way to open records to guests.⁸ That's why each such rule needs an owner and a regular review.

Key Features of Salesforce Experience Cloud

Below are the features that a typical site is built from:

• Content Management: Salesforce CMS lets a team create content once and publish it to several sites, or even to an email.⁹
• Audience Targeting: Different visitors see different pages, components, or branding on the same site.¹⁰
• Knowledge and Self-Service Cases: Members search the knowledge articles, open a case when the answer is missing, and track its status without calling anyone.
• Login, Registration, and Single Sign-On: Visitors can sign up on their own through a self-registration page, and returning members can log in through single sign-on.
• Multilingual Sites: One site can run in many languages, up to 40 on an LWR site, with a language selector for visitors.¹¹
• Mobile Publisher: The same site can be published as a branded app on the App Store and Google Play.⁴

Things You Can Build With Salesforce Experience Cloud (Use Cases)

Below are the sites that companies commonly build on Experience Cloud:

• Help Center: A public site where visitors search the knowledge articles without logging in, so common questions get answered before anyone opens a case.
• Customer Self-Service Portal: A logged-in site where customers open and track their cases, update their details, and message the support team.
• Partner Portal: Distributors and resellers register deals, pick up assigned leads, and request marketing funds in one place.⁵
• Customer Account Portal: Customers check their orders, quotes, and account details, which suits companies that sell to other businesses.
• Member and Volunteer Portals: Non-profits and associations let members register for programs and volunteers sign up for roles.
• Event and Campaign Microsites: Small sites for an event or a product launch, built on the Microsite (LWR) template, which can send each sign-up straight to the Lead object.¹²

Two of these appear in Vegacompass's published case studies, which report the following results:

• The Linq Systems support portal, delivered in partnership with Coresolute LLC, reduced the customer support load by 25%.
• The member and volunteer portals at Dementia Singapore improved event participation by 40% and increased volunteer engagement by 30%.

Experience Cloud and AI

AI works on an Experience Cloud site in two ways:

• It answers: An AI agent on the portal answers questions in plain language and resolves routine requests before a case reaches a person.
• It personalizes: Data 360 joins a visitor's records into one profile, so the portal can show the articles and next steps that suit that person.

Salesforce's own help agent, Casey, answers on the Service Portal and is priced per resolution rather than per seat.⁴ In Partner Cloud, Agentforce for Partners guides partners to product specs and sales programs.⁵

Please note that the agent answers from the knowledge articles and the records it can see. Any gap or error in them shows up as a weak or wrong answer in front of a customer. That's why the knowledge and the data come first, and the agent comes last.

To learn more about the agents in detail, please read our article: Guide to Salesforce Agentforce: Working, Key Features, Agent Types, Use Cases, Benefits.

Benefits of Salesforce Experience Cloud

Below are the main benefits of Salesforce Experience Cloud:

• Fewer Cases for the Service Team: Customers who find the answer themselves do not open a case, so agents spend their time on harder problems.
• No Double Entry: A form filled on the portal lands in the CRM as a record, so nobody re-types it from an email.
• Partner Pipeline in the Forecast: Partners register deals in the same org that sales uses, so the channel pipeline appears in the same reports.
• One Security Model: The portal follows the org's own login, profile, and sharing rules, so there is no second system to secure.
• AI That Improves With the Data: Agents and personalization run on the same records, so self-service gets better as the knowledge base and the data improve.

Experience Cloud Licenses and Pricing Model

Every member who logs in needs an Experience Cloud license, which sets the limits on the records they can reach.¹³

Below are the six license types:

• Customer Community: High-volume business-to-consumer (B2C) users who need cases and knowledge.
• Customer Community Plus: Adds roles, standard sharing, reports, and dashboards.
• Partner Community: Sales data, such as opportunities and campaigns, for partners.
• External Apps: Custom experiences, such as loyalty programs, with limited CRM objects.
• Channel Account: Priced per partner account instead of per person, with up to 40 users each.
• External Identity: Login and single sign-on only, with no CRM data.

Most come member-based, for one named user, or login-based, from a monthly pool where repeat same-day logins count once.¹³ Salesforce also sells packaged versions, such as Service Portal per login or per member, and Partner Cloud per member.^14,5

Please note that Salesforce changes these packages often, so its pricing page is the only reliable source for current costs.

Vegacompass: Salesforce Consulting Partner for Experience Cloud

Vegacompass has 11+ years of experience in CRM and digital transformation. Our goal is to help every organization become the best version of itself through CRM and AI. We also hold the Salesforce Consulting Partner status.

Our senior consultants plan and build such portals end-to-end, from the sharing rules to the agents.

We offer the following CRM consulting services:

• CRM Strategy (Marketing, Sales and Customer Service)
• Revenue Operations Consulting
• CRM Audit & Technical Debt
• Salesforce Implementation and Migration
• CRM Migration
• CRM Data Cleanup
• AI CRM Consulting

Get in touch

Please tell us where you are with Experience Cloud, whether you are planning a first portal or fixing an old one, and what your members struggle with today.

Click here to talk to a Salesforce consultant today and find out what your portal should show and to whom.

References

1. (2026). Experience Cloud. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=experience.networks_overview.htm&type=5
2. Miller, R. (August 27, 2014). Salesforce Community Adds Customers And Partners To Growing Cloud. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/salesforce-community-brings-customers-and-partners-to-growing-cloud
3. (2021). Hello Experience Cloud, Farewell Community Cloud. Salesforce Spring '21 Release Notes, Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_experiences_rebrand.htm&release=230&type=5
4. (2026). Autonomous Customer Self-Service Software. Salesforce. https://www.salesforce.com/service/customer-self-service/
5. (2026). Partner Cloud: Scalable Partner Ecosystem Platform. Salesforce. https://www.salesforce.com/ap/sales/partner-cloud/
6. (2026). Learn About Experience Cloud Frameworks and Templates. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.exp_cloud_plan_frameworks.htm&language=en_US&type=5
7. Krebs, B. (April 27, 2023). Many Public Salesforce Sites are Leaking Private Data. KrebsOnSecurity. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/many-public-salesforce-sites-are-leaking-private-data/
8. (2026). Secure Guest Users' Sharing Settings and Record Access. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.networks_secure_guest_user_sharing.htm&language=en_US&type=5
9. (2026). Salesforce CMS and the Digital Experiences App. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=xcloud.community_managed_content_overview.htm&type=5
10. (2026). Assign an Audience to a Page Variation. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_audiences_page_variations.htm&language=en_US&type=5
11. (2026). Create a Multilingual LWR Site. Salesforce Developers. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.exp_cloud_lwr.meta/exp_cloud_lwr/multilingual_lwr.htm
12. (2026). The Microsite Template. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.rss_microsites_lwr.htm&language=en_US&type=5
13. (2026). Experience Cloud User Licenses. Salesforce Help. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.users_license_types_communities.htm&language=en_US&type=5
14. (2026). Customer Self-Service Software Pricing. Salesforce. https://www.salesforce.com/service/customer-self-service/pricing/