A community in Salesforce is a branded, external-facing website built on top of a Salesforce org — used to give customers, partners, or employees authenticated access to a curated slice of Salesforce data and features through a customized web experience. In 2020 Salesforce rebranded Communities to Experience Cloud; the term “community” is still used inside the product (in URLs and license names) but the broader product is now Experience Cloud.
What a community typically delivers
Depending on the audience:
- Customer community — self-service support: case management, knowledge base, account info.
- Partner community — deal registration, lead distribution, pricing tools, training.
- Employee community — internal collaboration, HR resources, project rooms.
- Public site — unauthenticated help center indexed by search engines.
What makes it “a community” vs a normal website
A few key properties:
- It runs on Salesforce — your CRM data is accessed natively, no integration layer.
- It has its own URL — typically
https://yourcompany.my.site.com/community-nameor a custom domain. - It uses community licenses — Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps.
- It honors the standard security model — profiles, permission sets, sharing rules apply, with community-specific extensions like Sharing Sets and Share Groups.
- It’s built with Experience Builder — a visual drag-and-drop tool — using Lightning Web Components or Aura templates.
Where it sits in the broader product family
“Communities” today is the runtime feature; “Experience Cloud” is the marketing brand of the same product. Pre-2013, the equivalent was called Customer Portal or Partner Portal (now retired). For new builds, you always use Experience Cloud — Salesforce no longer creates portals.
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Experience Cloud and Trailhead — Experience Cloud Basics. Last reviewed 2026-05-17.