Definition
Custom Labels is a user-defined extension of the Salesforce platform that administrators or developers create to meet specific business requirements not addressed by standard functionality. It allows organizations to tailor Salesforce to their unique processes and data needs.
Real-World Example
At their company, an admin at Redwood Financial leverages Custom Labels to ensure the Salesforce org runs smoothly and securely. They configure Custom Labels during a scheduled maintenance window, test it in a sandbox first, and then deploy to production. The result is tighter security and a more streamlined experience for all 200 users in the org.
Why Custom Labels Matters
Custom Labels in Salesforce are text values that can be referenced from Apex code, Visualforce pages, Lightning components, and validation rules. They serve as a centralized store for user-facing text strings that may need to change without code deployments or that need to support multiple languages through translation. Each Custom Label can store up to 1,000 characters and supports translations for any language Salesforce supports. This matters because hard-coding text strings directly in Apex or components makes maintenance difficult and internationalization impossible — when you need to update a message or support a new language, you would have to modify and redeploy every piece of code that contains the text.
As organizations expand globally, Custom Labels become essential infrastructure for multi-language support. Salesforce's Translation Workbench works directly with Custom Labels, allowing translators to provide localized versions of each label without any developer involvement. Beyond translation, Custom Labels also serve as configuration values that admins can update through Setup without touching code — changing an error message, updating a disclaimer, or modifying an email template subject line all become admin-manageable changes. Organizations that skip Custom Labels and hard-code text strings create technical debt that compounds over time, especially when regulations require specific legal language that needs periodic updates across multiple UI surfaces simultaneously.
How Organizations Use Custom Labels
- GlobalTrade Corp — GlobalTrade Corp operates in 12 countries and uses Custom Labels for all user-facing text in their custom Lightning components. When they expanded to Japan, the localization team translated 340 Custom Labels into Japanese using Translation Workbench without any developer involvement. The Japanese interface went live in two weeks instead of the three months it would have taken to modify and redeploy every component individually.
- Redwood Financial — Redwood Financial stores regulatory disclaimer text in Custom Labels that appear on their Visualforce PDF quote documents. When compliance requirements change, the legal team provides updated text to the admin, who updates the Custom Label in Setup. The change immediately reflects across all quote documents, email templates, and portal pages that reference the label — no code deployment needed.
- Apex Healthcare — Apex Healthcare uses Custom Labels for all error messages and validation text in their custom Apex code. When user testing revealed that validation messages were confusing, the UX team rewrote them in plain language and the admin updated the Custom Labels directly. Thirty-seven error messages were improved across the entire application in one afternoon without a single line of code being modified or deployed.