Customers, Chatter
Customers (Chatter) in Salesforce refers to external users who are invited to participate in specific Chatter Customer Groups without a paid Salesforce license.
Definition
Customers (Chatter) in Salesforce refers to external users who are invited to participate in specific Chatter Customer Groups without a paid Salesforce license. A Chatter Customer can post, comment, like, and share files inside the Chatter Customer Group they are invited to, but they cannot see any other Salesforce data: no records, no other groups, no profile pages beyond the ones explicitly shared. The feature exists for narrow external collaboration with vendors, partners, customers, or contractors who need to participate in a single project conversation without becoming a full Salesforce user.
Chatter Customers are licensed under the free Chatter External license, which Salesforce has continued to provide alongside the much broader Experience Cloud. The mechanic predates Experience Cloud and continues to be supported, though most modern external-collaboration deployments use Experience Cloud sites instead because they offer richer features (record access, branded UI, single sign-on). Chatter Customers are still the right pick for the narrow case of adding one person to one group and nothing else.
How Chatter Customers work in Salesforce
The Chatter Customer license
The Chatter External license is free of charge and grants the user access to specific Chatter Customer Groups. The license does not grant access to any Salesforce object, custom or standard. Chatter Customers are tracked as user records in Salesforce but show up under the Chatter External profile, which is locked from extending to other objects.
Chatter Customer Groups
A Chatter Customer Group is a Chatter group with the Allow Customers checkbox enabled at creation. The group owner adds Chatter Customer users by invitation. The group looks like any other Chatter group to internal users but is visually marked as having external participants. Posts in the group are visible only to group members; nothing inside the group is public.
What Chatter Customers can do
Inside their group, Chatter Customers can post, comment, like, share files (Content Documents), receive mentions, and receive email notifications. They can edit their own profile and see other group members. Outside the group, they cannot see Account records, Cases, Opportunities, or other Chatter posts. The license is intentionally narrow.
What Chatter Customers cannot do
Chatter Customers cannot access standard or custom Salesforce objects, run reports, see other Chatter groups, edit any records other than their own posts, or use the Salesforce mobile app for full record access. They can use the Chatter mobile interface to participate in their groups.
Difference from Experience Cloud
Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud) is the modern way to give external users a branded portal experience with controlled access to records. It supports far richer use cases: customer support portals, partner deal registration, employee self-service. Chatter Customers are simpler and free; Experience Cloud is more capable but requires per-user licensing. For pure conversation-only collaboration, Chatter Customers still works.
Adding and removing Chatter Customers
The group owner invites the customer by email address. Salesforce sends an invitation; the customer accepts and creates a Chatter Customer user account. Removal is done by un-inviting from the group or deactivating the user. There is no group-membership audit log out of the box; build a custom one if you need it.
When Chatter Customers still makes sense in 2026
For narrow, conversation-only collaboration with a small number of external participants (a contractor on one project, a vendor on one initiative), Chatter Customers is the right pick because it is free and instant to set up. For anything more (branded UI, record access, self-service workflows), use Experience Cloud. The two are not mutually exclusive; orgs can run both for different use cases.
How to set up and use Chatter Customers
Setup is a one-time admin enablement; ongoing operation is per-group invitations.
- Enable Chatter Customers in Setup
Setup, Chatter, Customer Groups, Enable Chatter Customers in Groups. The setting is org-wide.
- Create a Chatter Customer Group
From Chatter, New Group. Check Allow Customers. Set the group name, description, and access (Public, Private, Unlisted).
- Invite Chatter Customers
From the group detail page, click Add Member, then Invite Customers. Enter their email addresses. Salesforce sends an invitation email.
- The customer accepts
They click the email link, set a password, and access the group. They see only the group content, not the broader Salesforce.
- Manage the group
As group owner, post updates, share files, moderate discussion. The Chatter Customer participates like any other group member.
- Remove Chatter Customers when no longer needed
Either remove from the specific group (they lose access to that conversation) or deactivate the user (they lose access to all Chatter Customer groups across the org).
- Chatter Customers cannot see anything outside their groups. Posts in the group should never reference records outside the group context; the customer cannot click through.
- File sharing in Chatter Customer Groups uses Content Documents. File sharing settings (Public, Private) affect what the customer sees; pre-share files into the group rather than relying on group-level sharing.
- Chatter Customer users count against your Salesforce user limit for some purposes (license counts, search results) but not others (paid user quotas). Check the specific limit you are concerned about.
- Single sign-on for Chatter Customers requires custom setup. The default email-and-password flow is the path most orgs use.
- Experience Cloud overtook Chatter Customers for most use cases. If you need anything more than conversation, evaluate Experience Cloud instead.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Chatter Customer GroupsSalesforce Help
- Chatter OverviewSalesforce Help
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Customers, Chatter.
- User License Types Available in SalesforceSalesforce Help
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Customers, Chatter.
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.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What can Chatter Customers see in Salesforce?
Q2. When is Chatter Customer a good fit?
Q3. What's a better fit for larger-scale external collaboration?
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