Visualforce

Visualforce is Salesforce's legacy markup language for building custom user interfaces. It uses a tag-based syntax similar to HTML and can be paired with Apex controllers to create pages with custom layouts, logic, and data access. While still supported, Salesforce recommends Lightning Web Components for new development.

Visualforce was Salesforce's original UI markup language - a tag-based syntax similar to HTML, paired with Apex controllers, used for building custom pages with their own logic and layout. For years, it was the only way to build custom Salesforce UIs. Lightning Web Components has long since superseded it for new development, but Visualforce pages still ship in many orgs and many managed packages.

The reason Visualforce hasn't disappeared despite being legacy is migration cost and feature parity for specific use cases. Visualforce excels at PDF generation, certain forms of email composition, and some print-format scenarios where Lightning's component model doesn't fit naturally. New work should default to Lightning Web Components; existing Visualforce should be maintained where it works and migrated when the cost of migration is lower than the cost of continuing maintenance. Don't write new Visualforce in 2026 unless you have a specific reason; don't rewrite existing Visualforce just because it's older.