Salesforce Communities is now called Experience Cloud. The product many teams still remember as the Customer Portal or Partner Portal was first consolidated into Communities, and then rebranded to Experience Cloud (shown as Digital Experiences in Setup) in 2020. So if you are setting up a customer or partner portal in Salesforce today, you are really building an Experience Cloud site — the steps and the UI have changed significantly from the old Customer Portal era.
This guide untangles the naming history first, then walks through building a site in the current interface.
Key takeaways
- Communities = Experience Cloud. The platform was renamed in 2020; an individual site is now an Experience Site, not a "Lightning Community."
- The Customer Portal and Partner Portal are retired and unavailable for new orgs — Experience Cloud replaces both.
- Setup starts under Setup → Digital Experiences → Settings, where you enable the feature and lock in a one-time experience domain.
- Templates split into LWR and Aura. Newer LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) templates load faster; older Aura templates ship more prebuilt portal components.
- Access is controlled by license type (Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, External Apps) plus profiles, permission sets, and sharing settings.
How did Salesforce portals evolve?
Salesforce consolidated several external-access products into one platform and renamed it over time: Customer Portal and Partner Portal → Communities → Experience Cloud. The table below maps the legacy names you may see in old docs to what they are called today.
| Legacy name | Current name | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Portal | Experience Cloud | Retired — not available for new orgs |
| Partner Portal | Experience Cloud | Retired — replaced by Experience Cloud |
| Communities | Experience Cloud | Current platform name (renamed 2020) |
| "Lightning Community" | Experience Site | Renamed — each site is now an Experience Site |
If you are new to the platform overall, our primer What Is Salesforce and What Does It Do? explains where Experience Cloud fits alongside Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.
How do you set up an Experience Cloud site?
The high-level flow is: enable the feature, create a site from a template, add members, configure guest-user sharing, brand it, then publish.
Step 1: Enable Digital Experiences
Go to Setup → Digital Experiences → Settings and select Enable Digital Experiences. You will be asked to set an experience domain (for example, yourcompany.my.site.com). Choose carefully — the domain is effectively permanent and all your sites live under it.
Step 2: Create a site and choose a template
Go to Setup → Digital Experiences → All Sites → New. Salesforce shows a template gallery, and this is the most important modern decision:
- LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) templates — faster, lighter pages built on Lightning Web Components. Examples: Build Your Own (LWR) and Microsite.
- Aura templates — the older runtime with more ready-made portal features. Examples: Customer Service (formerly Napili), Partner Central, and Help Center.
| Consideration | LWR | Aura |
|---|---|---|
| Page performance | Faster, lighter | Heavier runtime |
| Prebuilt components | Fewer (you build more) | More out of the box |
| Example templates | Build Your Own (LWR), Microsite | Customer Service, Partner Central, Help Center |
| Best for | New, performance-sensitive sites | Feature-rich support/partner portals |
Name the site and pick a URL path, then open it in Experience Builder.
Step 3: Configure membership and licenses
In Experience Workspaces → Administration → Members, add the profiles and permission sets that are allowed to log in. External users get access through a community license (see the license table below), assigned on the contact's user record.
Step 4: Set up the guest user and sharing
Public, unauthenticated visitors hit the site as the guest user. Grant only what they need: configure the guest user profile, and use sharing sets and sharing rules to expose the right records to logged-in external users without over-sharing. Tight sharing is the most common place portals leak data, so review it deliberately.
Step 5: Brand it in Experience Builder
In Experience Builder, use the Theme panel to set colors, logo, and fonts, then arrange pages (Home, Search, Login, Error, record pages) with drag-and-drop Lightning components and any custom components. For guidance on keeping customizations maintainable, see our Salesforce customization best practices.
Step 6: Activate and publish
Activate the site in Experience Workspaces, then click Publish in Experience Builder to push it live. Once published, anyone who visits your experience domain is routed to the site.
Which Experience Cloud license do you need?
External-user access is governed by license type. Pick based on what external users must do — not on seat count alone. (License pricing is handled by Salesforce directly; the table names capabilities only.)
| License | Best for | Typical access |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Community | High-volume B2C self-service | Cases, Knowledge, custom objects (no roles) |
| Customer Community Plus | Customers needing roles, reports, sharing | Adds roles, reports/dashboards, delegated admin |
| Partner Community | Resellers and partners running deals | Leads, opportunities, PRM features |
| External Apps | Light external apps beyond core CRM | Custom-object-centric apps with limited CRM access |
When the build is live, ongoing tuning, user management, and releases matter as much as the initial setup — our overview of Salesforce managed services and their business value covers what that looks like, and our Salesforce consulting and development services page explains how we help teams plan and run Experience Cloud.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Salesforce Communities the same as Experience Cloud?
Yes. Communities was rebranded to Experience Cloud in 2020 (it also appears as Digital Experiences in Setup). It is the same platform — only the name changed. An individual site that was once called a "Lightning Community" is now an Experience Site.
What happened to the Salesforce Customer Portal and Partner Portal?
Both were retired. The Customer Portal and Partner Portal were legacy products that Salesforce folded into Communities, now Experience Cloud. They are not available to create in new orgs; any new customer or partner portal is built as an Experience Cloud site.
Should I choose an LWR or Aura template?
Choose LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) for faster, lighter pages on new builds — for example Build Your Own (LWR) or Microsite. Choose an Aura template such as Customer Service, Partner Central, or Help Center when you want more prebuilt portal components out of the box. LWR is where Salesforce is investing, but Aura still has the richer ready-made feature set.
Which license do customer portals need?
It depends on what external users do. Customer Community suits high-volume self-service (cases and knowledge); Customer Community Plus adds roles, reports, and sharing; Partner Community is for partners working leads and opportunities; External Apps suits lighter, custom-object-centric apps. License costs come from Salesforce directly.
How many Experience Cloud sites can I create in one org?
A Salesforce org supports up to 100 Experience Cloud sites. Inactive, preview, and Force.com sites all count toward that limit, so plan accordingly if you maintain many environments or seasonal microsites.
Can I change the Experience Cloud domain after setup?
No — the experience domain you set when enabling Digital Experiences is effectively permanent and cannot be changed afterward. Individual site URL paths under that domain are flexible, but the root domain is not, so pick it deliberately before you enable the feature.