Definition
A Community in Salesforce (now called an Experience Cloud Site) is a branded, external-facing web portal built on the Salesforce platform that extends CRM data and processes to customers, partners, or other external stakeholders. Communities enable self-service support, partner collaboration, knowledge sharing, case management, and custom business processes outside the internal Salesforce org.
Real-World Example
When an architect at Skyline Consulting needs to streamline operations, they turn to Community to extend their Salesforce implementation to meet growing business demands. Community provides the additional capability they need without requiring a separate third-party system, keeping everything within the trusted Salesforce ecosystem and reducing integration complexity.
Why Community Matters
Community is the older name for what Salesforce now calls Experience Cloud Sites: branded, external-facing web portals built on the Salesforce platform that extend CRM data and processes to customers, partners, employees, or other external stakeholders. Experience Cloud sites surface Salesforce data through customizable templates with the organization's branding, supporting use cases like customer self-service, partner deal registration, knowledge base browsing, employee community, and custom workflows for external users.
Experience Cloud sites are built using either the Lightning template approach (drag-and-drop visual page builders for common patterns) or with custom Lightning Web Components and the LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) framework for fully custom experiences. Each site has its own URL, branding, audience targeting, and security model, but it sits on top of the same Salesforce org as the internal experience, so the data and business logic are shared. Salesforce changed the name from Communities to Experience Cloud in 2020 to reflect the broader scope of digital experiences the product supports.
How Organizations Use Community
- •Skyline Consulting — Built a customer support Experience Cloud site for a client where customers log in to view their cases, browse Knowledge articles, and submit new cases. The site cut inbound support phone calls by 30%.
- •Vertex Global — Runs a partner portal as an Experience Cloud site where channel partners register deals, view co-marketing materials, and submit support requests. The portal is the primary touchpoint between Vertex and their 200+ partners.
- •NovaScale — Built a custom employee experience on Experience Cloud for a client whose internal users access HR data, time-off requests, and company announcements through a single branded site rather than multiple internal tools.