Experience Cloud
Experience Cloud is Salesforce's product for building customer-facing portals, partner portals, employee communities, and public websites that connect external users to Salesforce data.
Definition
Experience Cloud is Salesforce's product for building customer-facing portals, partner portals, employee communities, and public websites that connect external users to Salesforce data. Formerly known as Community Cloud, Salesforce Communities, and earlier as Force.com Sites, the rebranded Experience Cloud bundles the platform's external-user features into a unified product. Customers log into Experience Cloud sites to check Case status, browse Knowledge, manage their account; partners use sites to register Leads, track Opportunities, access training; employees use sites for HR self-service or intranet-style communication.
Each Experience Cloud site is built from a template (Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, Build Your Own) plus pages assembled in Experience Builder (the Experience Cloud equivalent of Lightning App Builder). External users authenticate via licensed user records or via guest-user access for fully public content. Sharing rules, profiles, and permission sets control what data external users can see and modify. Experience Cloud is licensed per external user (Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps), with pricing per active user or per login.
How Experience Cloud connects external users to Salesforce
Templates and the Experience Builder
Every Experience Cloud site starts from a template. Customer Service for support portals with Case management and Knowledge. Partner Central for partner relationship management with Lead distribution and deal registration. Help Center for self-service Knowledge plus chat. Build Your Own for fully custom sites with bring-your-own design. Experience Builder is the page designer: drag standard Lightning Components onto pages, configure properties, build navigation menus, customize branding through Theme Layouts. Most sites use a template as a starting point and customize from there.
External user licenses and authentication
External users need a license. Customer Community is the cheapest, supporting Case management and read-only access to most other objects. Customer Community Plus adds role-based sharing and is appropriate for B2B portals. Partner Community grants access to Leads, Opportunities, and Sales Cloud features. External Apps License (XAL) is for fully custom apps not built on standard portals. Authentication is via username/password (with MFA), SAML SSO, OpenID Connect, or social login (Google, Facebook, Apple). Each authentication option has its own configuration.
Sharing for external users
Experience Cloud users get records via the standard sharing model with adjustments. Sharing Sets grant access based on a relationship between the external user''s Contact and the target record. Account-based sharing rules grant access to all records related to the user''s Account. Manual sharing and Apex-managed sharing work the same way. The complexity is matching the sharing rules to the actual access pattern; most production Experience Cloud deployments spend significant time tuning sharing during initial implementation.
Guest user access and public pages
Some Experience Cloud content is public: marketing landing pages, knowledge articles for product documentation, contact-us forms. Public pages serve through the Guest User license, which has its own profile and sharing model. The Guest User has historically been a source of security vulnerabilities; Salesforce introduced strict Guest User Sharing Rules and CRUD/FLS hardening to lock down public access. Audit Guest User permissions carefully because exposed records via the Guest User have been the cause of multiple highly publicized Salesforce data leaks.
Branding, themes, and CMS
Experience Builder supports per-site branding: logos, color palettes, font choices, CSS overrides. Theme Layouts handle the global page chrome (header, footer, navigation). Salesforce CMS provides a content repository for images, videos, articles, and structured content that surfaces across multiple sites. For complex visual designs, the Lightning Design System Skinning Kit lets developers override more aggressively. Most production sites end up with a custom Theme Layout matching the corporate brand.
Performance, caching, and SEO
Experience Cloud sites use Lightning Experience caching plus a CDN for performance. Public pages can take advantage of aggressive caching; authenticated pages have shorter cache windows because content varies per user. SEO is supported through configurable meta tags, sitemaps, and Google Analytics integration. For sites that need to rank in search, Experience Builder is a reasonable platform; for absolute top-tier performance and SEO sophistication, headless-CMS architectures pulling Salesforce data via API often beat full Experience Cloud builds.
Common patterns and use cases
Customer self-service portal: Customers log in, view their Cases, browse Knowledge, submit new Cases, manage their account profile. Partner portal: Partners register Leads, collaborate on Opportunities, access marketing assets and training. Employee community: Employees collaborate via Chatter, access HR resources, file IT tickets. Public-facing knowledge base: SEO-friendly help articles available without login. Each pattern has different configuration needs but shares the Experience Cloud foundation.
How to build an Experience Cloud site
Building an Experience Cloud site is a multi-week to multi-month project depending on customization depth. The work spans template selection, page design, sharing configuration, authentication, branding, and content authoring. Plan carefully because rebuilding mid-project is expensive.
- Identify the audience and use cases
Who logs into the site? What do they need to do? Customers checking Cases, partners registering Leads, employees collaborating internally. Each audience drives a different template and license choice.
- Enable Experience Cloud and create the site
Setup > Digital Experiences > Settings > Enable. Then All Sites > New > pick a template. Provide a URL path and friendly name. The template determines the starting page set.
- Configure user licenses and authentication
Decide on Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, or External Apps License. Configure authentication: username/password with MFA, SAML SSO, OpenID Connect, or social login. Set up the login page.
- Build the page structure in Experience Builder
Open Experience Builder. Add pages, configure the navigation menu, and assemble pages from Lightning Components. Customize the Theme Layout to match the brand. Set up object pages for each sObject that external users should access.
- Configure sharing for external users
Build Sharing Sets, Account-based sharing rules, or other sharing mechanisms appropriate to the use case. Test access carefully because too-permissive sharing leaks data; too-restrictive sharing breaks the user experience.
- Customize branding and content
Upload logos, configure color palettes, customize the CSS overrides through Experience Builder. Author Knowledge articles or pull from Salesforce CMS. Build the navigation menu, footer links, and any custom landing pages.
- Test as external users
Create test external user accounts. Log in as each persona and verify the experience: navigation works, data is visible, forms submit correctly, sharing matches expectation. Test on desktop and mobile.
- Activate and promote
Activate the site through Experience Builder. Configure the custom domain (DNS, SSL certificate) so users access via your brand''s domain rather than the Salesforce default. Promote to existing customers, partners, or employees.
Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, or Build Your Own. Drives initial page set and component library.
Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps License. Affects pricing and capability.
Username/password, SAML SSO, OpenID Connect, social login. Pick based on user population and identity strategy.
- Guest User access has been the source of multiple Salesforce data leaks. Audit Guest User profile permissions, Guest User sharing rules, and Apex sharing logic carefully before exposing any record to public access.
- External user licenses are per active user or per login. Pricing scales with user count and login frequency. Plan licensing carefully because miscalculating produces budget surprises.
- Sharing for external users is its own discipline. The Sharing Set and Account-based sharing rule patterns differ from internal sharing. Test access combinations thoroughly during initial deployment.
- Performance varies with template choice. Some templates render slower than others on mobile devices. Test page load times across realistic user devices before launch.
- Custom domain configuration involves DNS records, SSL certificate management, and DNS propagation timing. Plan the domain cutover during low-traffic windows because misconfiguration produces immediate user-visible errors.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
- Experience BuilderSalesforce Help
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Experience Cloud.
- Create an Experience Cloud SiteSalesforce Help
- External User SharingSalesforce Help
- Guest User Best PracticesSalesforce Help
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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