Experience Cloud is the modern brand name (since 2020) for what was previously called Communities and, before 2013, Customer Portal / Partner Portal. It’s Salesforce’s platform for building branded external sites — customer self-service portals, partner enablement sites, employee hubs, public help centers, and microsites — directly on top of a Salesforce org, with native access to the CRM data model, security model, and Lightning Web Components.
What’s included
A Salesforce org with Experience Cloud enabled gets:
- Experience Builder — the visual drag-and-drop site designer.
- Templates — Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center, Build Your Own (Aura), Build Your Own (LWR), Microsites, Aloha.
- CMS (Salesforce CMS) — manage images, structured content, and translations across multiple sites.
- Lightning Web Runtime (LWR) — the modern, high-performance runtime for pure-LWC sites.
- Experience Cloud licenses — Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps, plus Login-based variants of each.
- Site-specific security — Sharing Sets, Share Groups, community-specific role hierarchy.
What it’s for
- Self-service customer portals — case management, knowledge base, account info.
- Partner enablement sites — deal registration, leads, opportunities, training.
- Employee hubs — collaboration, HR resources, project rooms.
- Public help centers — unauthenticated knowledge articles indexed by search engines.
- Industry-specific external apps — patient portals (Health Cloud), member sites (Financial Services Cloud), citizen portals (Public Sector Solutions).
Why the rebrand from Communities
The product had grown beyond “communities” — Salesforce wanted a broader name that covered self-service portals, microsites, and headless/embedded experiences. “Experience Cloud” emphasizes the digital experience layer, not just the social/community aspect that the original 2013 product had centered on.
Quick interview answer
“Experience Cloud is the modern name for Salesforce Communities, rebranded in 2020. It’s the platform for building branded external sites — customer portals, partner portals, employee hubs, public help centers — on top of a Salesforce org. You design sites with Experience Builder, choose from templates like Customer Service, Partner Central, or Build Your Own (LWR), and external users log in with community licenses (Customer Community, Partner Community, etc.). It replaced the older portal framework in 2013.”
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Experience Cloud and Trailhead — Experience Cloud Basics. Last reviewed 2026-05-17.