Community
Community is the legacy Salesforce name for what is now called Experience Cloud.
Definition
Community is the legacy Salesforce name for what is now called Experience Cloud. From 2013 to 2020, Salesforce branded the platform-as-a-platform feature for external-facing sites (customer portals, partner sites, employee communities) as Community Cloud. The branding shifted to Experience Cloud in 2020 to reflect the broader scope (digital experiences beyond traditional online communities) and the modern Lightning-based architecture. Existing documentation, training material, and customer conversations still use both terms interchangeably.
Community persists as a term in three contexts. First, the underlying Salesforce object is still named Network (created in the Community Cloud era) and visible in Setup as Communities or Digital Experiences. Second, the user license types retain Community names: Customer Community license, Customer Community Plus license, Partner Community license. Third, customer-facing documentation, Salesforce-built sample apps, and many older Trailhead modules still reference the term Community. Understanding both terms (Community and Experience Cloud) is essential for any Salesforce admin who deals with external user populations.
How Community became Experience Cloud in the Salesforce ecosystem
The Community to Experience Cloud rebrand
The 2020 rebrand from Community Cloud to Experience Cloud reflected a broader product strategy. The original Community Cloud was positioned for online communities and forums in the spirit of Lithium or Telligent. The platform evolved into a general-purpose external site builder supporting customer portals, partner sites, employee hubs, branded marketing sites, and Help Centers. The Experience Cloud rebrand captured the broader scope. The underlying technology (Lightning components, Visualforce templates, custom theming) carried over; the product name and marketing positioning changed.
License types still named Community
The license naming has not caught up with the rebrand. Customers buy Customer Community licenses for self-service customer sites, Customer Community Plus for richer customer access, Partner Community for partner-facing sites. These licenses are the foundational unit of external user identity in modern Experience Cloud deployments. The licensing model is per-user, often per-login (with login-based pricing), and meaningfully cheaper than full Salesforce licenses. The license type determines which features the external user can access.
Network object: the underlying data model
Every Experience Cloud site (formerly Community) is a Network record in the Salesforce data model. SOQL queries against Network return one row per site. The NetworkMember object links users to networks they belong to. NetworkSelfRegistration tracks self-service signups. The schema retains the Community-era naming despite the customer-facing rebrand. Developers writing custom code for Experience Cloud sites still work against Network and NetworkMember as the standard objects.
Templates: Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, Build Your Own
Experience Cloud ships with several templates. Customer Service is the most common, designed for self-service customer support with case logging, Knowledge browsing, and forum-style Q and A. Partner Central is designed for partner sites with lead routing, deal registration, and joint selling. Help Center is the SEO-friendly Knowledge browsing site for anonymous and authenticated users. Build Your Own is the blank template for custom deployments. Each template seeds pages, navigation, and a base configuration that the admin then customizes through Experience Builder.
Lightning Web Components and Experience Cloud
Modern Experience Cloud sites are built on Lightning Web Components. Custom LWCs can be dropped on Experience Cloud pages through Experience Builder, with the Lightning App Builder-style drag-and-drop UI. The lightningCommunity__Page target in LWC meta XML makes the component available for Experience Cloud placement. This is the modern path for custom UI on community sites. Older sites built on Visualforce templates still work but receive no new feature investment; migration to Lightning is the recommended path.
Self-registration and external user lifecycle
Customer Community deployments often allow self-registration: a visitor lands on the site, fills out a sign-up form, and the platform creates a Salesforce user record automatically. The self-registration flow can be customized through Apex (using the Auth.SelfRegistrationHandler interface) for branded onboarding and validation. After signup, the user lifecycle follows standard Salesforce patterns: deactivation, profile changes, password policies. The external population is governed by the same identity rules as internal users, with license-type-specific constraints.
Why both terms persist
The Salesforce ecosystem moves slowly on terminology. Customer documentation, Trailhead modules, blog posts, GitHub repositories, and Salesforce Account Executive conversations all use Community alongside Experience Cloud. The Network object, the Community licenses, and Setup pages still use Community-era naming. New Salesforce documentation prefers Experience Cloud, but legacy references are ubiquitous. Understanding both terms is essential. When in doubt, map Community to Experience Cloud and the modern context.
Building an external-facing site in Experience Cloud (formerly Community)
For new external-facing site deployments, use Experience Cloud (formerly Community) with the right template. The workflow is the same regardless of which name appears in the documentation you are reading.
- Confirm licensing for external users
Pick the Community license type matching the user population: Customer Community (basic), Customer Community Plus (rich), Partner Community (partner-facing). Confirm available license counts.
- Open Digital Experiences (formerly Communities) in Setup
Setup, Digital Experiences, All Sites. The page lists existing sites. Click New for a new deployment.
- Pick a template
Choose Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, or Build Your Own. Each template seeds a base configuration.
- Configure branding and pages
Open Experience Builder. Customize the logo, colors, fonts, page layouts, and navigation. Drop Lightning components for custom UI.
- Set up self-registration if needed
Configure the Login and Registration page in Experience Builder. For custom signup logic, implement Auth.SelfRegistrationHandler in Apex.
- Configure sharing rules and data access
Decide which data external users should see. Build sharing rules tying user records to the relevant business data through the user's contact or account.
- Launch and monitor
Activate the site. Send invitations or expose the public URL. Monitor adoption through site analytics and Login History reports.
The Salesforce-provided starting point: Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, Build Your Own.
Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community. The licensing model persists from the pre-rebrand era.
The underlying data model for each Experience Cloud site, still named Network in the schema.
Public signup flow that creates Salesforce user records automatically through standard or custom Apex logic.
The drag-and-drop site customization tool, replacing the older Visualforce template editing.
- Community is the legacy name. New documentation uses Experience Cloud. Both terms refer to the same feature. Map mentally when reading older material.
- The Network object retains its legacy name despite the Experience Cloud rebrand. SOQL queries and Apex code reference Network and NetworkMember, not Experience or related.
- Community license types are still named Community. The license model carries over from the Community Cloud era and remains the foundation of external user identity.
- Sharing rules for external user access need to be deliberate. Over-sharing leaks data; under-sharing creates "I cannot see my record" complaints.
- Older Visualforce-based community templates still work but are in maintenance mode. New deployments should use Lightning-based templates and Lightning Web Components.
Trust & references
This term has been renamed to Experience Cloud.
View current pageStraight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Community.
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
- Salesforce CommunitiesSalesforce Help
- Network Object ReferenceSalesforce Developers
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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