Community
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.
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.
In plain English
“A Community in Salesforce, now called an Experience Cloud Site, is a branded website you build on Salesforce so customers, partners, or other outside users can interact with your data. It's how external people get access to the right parts of your CRM through a portal that looks like your brand.”
Worked example
Bridgemont Capital launched a partner portal called the Investor Community on Salesforce - a branded external site where institutional investors can view their portfolios, raise service Cases, and access proprietary research. "Community" is the legacy name; Salesforce now calls it an Experience Cloud Site, but Bridgemont's URL and references in documentation still say "Investor Community." The site is built with the Customer Service template, gives each investor partition-isolated access via Sharing Sets, and is themed to match Bridgemont's corporate brand. Functionally identical to a modern Experience Cloud Site, just with the older terminology persisting.
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 to set up Community
Community is the legacy name for what's now called Experience Cloud Site — a branded external-facing portal built on Salesforce. The terminology shifted in 2019; "Community" persists in older docs and code references. New work uses Experience Cloud terminology and tooling. See experience-cloud-site for the modern setup flow.
- Recognize that Community = Experience Cloud Site
Salesforce renamed the feature in 2019. Old docs / training references to Community map to current Experience Cloud.
- For new portal work: follow Experience Cloud Site setup
Setup → All Sites → New, or Setup → Digital Experiences. See the experience-cloud-site how-to for the full flow.
- For existing Community sites: continue using them
Existing Community sites keep working. They are now technically Experience Cloud Sites — Salesforce migrated the underlying tech.
- Configure via Experience Builder
Drag components, theme, configure pages — same Experience Builder regardless of whether you call it Community or Experience Cloud.
- License-aware: Customer Community / Partner Community licenses still apply
License names didn't all rebrand. Customer Community license users access Customer Community-template sites; Partner Community for Partner sites.
Experience Cloud Site.
Customer Service / Partner Central / Build Your Own / Help Center / etc.
Customer Community / Customer Community Plus / Partner Community / External Apps.
- Community → Experience Cloud Site is a rename; the underlying feature is the same. Don't expect dual-pathing — use Experience Cloud terminology in current docs / configs.
- Aura-based Community templates and LWR-based Experience Cloud templates are different runtimes. Choosing a template is a one-way decision — switching means rebuilding.
- Existing Community URLs persist. Migrating to LWR templates may change URL patterns — coordinate SEO / inbound-link impact before any restructure.
How organizations use Community
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%.
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.
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.
Trust & references
This term has been renamed to Experience Cloud.
View current pageStraight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Community.
- Experience CloudSalesforce Help
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is a Community in Salesforce now called?
Q2. Who typically uses an Experience Cloud Site?
Q3. What two approaches can you use to build an Experience Cloud Site?
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