Marinda K.

Masterful Salesforce Scribe with an eye for detail

Updated: Jan 13th, 2025

What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?

Salesforce Experience Cloud, previously known as Community Cloud, is a tool for organizations to create branded online communities for their customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders. The Experience Cloud includes all features that were part of the Community Cloud but provides additional capabilities for mobile app development, analytics, and reporting.

Organizations can build digital experience apps, websites, portals, mobile apps, and other online spaces, such as the following:

Key Features of Experience Cloud

self-service customer support portals;

partners collaboration and knowledge-sharing portals;

lead generation and customer-engagement marketing portals;

onboarding, training, and communication portals for employees;

websites that provide sales teams with information and tools to enable sales; and

communication and collaboration intranets within an organization.

You can think of these Salesforce Experience Cloud examples as a business’s own private online space, kind of like a members-only club on the internet, to help them create engaging and personalized digital experiences while at the same time enhancing communication and collaboration. You can build different sites with different purposes that are directly integrated with your Salesforce CRM. Your employee portals can be inward-facing, your support portals can be client-focused, and your marketing portals can be accessed by anyone online.

A Salesforce Experience Cloud offers a Quick Start Implementation that helps you get your organization up and running with Salesforce Experience Cloud quickly.

How do I do Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation?

Plan what you want.

It is tempting to just jump right in and start building your portal, but we suggest that you take time to plan your implementation carefully. This includes defining your goals: What do you want to achieve with the site? Identify your target audience and what their needs might be. This will help you to determine the type of content and functionalities. Decide what the portal must look like, which pages should be included, and what content you may need. Also, consider developing a security plan to ensure that your data and information are protected.

Consider which pricing edition suits you the best.

Salesforce offers four editions:

1. Self-Service

The Self-Service edition has two options:

1. The Customer Community costs $2/login or $5/member/month. This edition requires an annual contract and includes the following:

Digital Experience Management

Customer Service and Account Portal Templates

Knowledge

Case Management

Lightning Flow Automation

2. Customer Community Plus costs $6/login or $15/member/month. This edition requires an annual contract and includes the same options as the Customer Community, plus the following:

Roles and Advanced Sharing

Delegated Administration

Customizable Reports and Dashboards

2. Partner Relationship Management

The Partner Relationship Management edition requires an annual contract and costs $10/login or $25/member/month* (billed annually) and includes the following:

Digital Experience Management

Partner Central Template

Lead Distribution & Deal Registration

Marketing Development Funds

Campaigns

Channel Analytics

Programs and Levels

3. External Apps

The External Apps edition requires an annual contract and costs $15/login or $35/member/month* (billed annually) and includes the following:

Digital Experience Management

Low-Code Builders and Platform

Identity for Customers and Partners

Additional Integration and Development Capacity

Partner Relationship Management

Case Management

Roles and Advanced Sharing

4. Salesforce Content Management System

The Salesforce CMS option is included in Experience Cloud purchases and has the following features.

Experience Builder

Content Records

Content Types

Content Served

Channels Supported

Headless APIs

Out-of-the-Box Integrations

Also, take into consideration that there are additional costs for individual licenses for users. The cost of Salesforce Experience Cloud licenses depends on the number of users, the features and functionality you need, as well as the duration of the subscription.

Enable Experience Cloud in your Salesforce.

Take time to understand the unique Experience Cloud offerings before you start. The interfaces are pretty intuitive, but you can avoid unnecessary time delays if you are familiar with the features and functionality.

Make sure that you also do the following:

Create or modify user profiles and permission sets to control access to the portal.

Set up community users, either by creating new records or linking existing Salesforce records to community profiles.

Create and organize content for your portal, such as articles, files, and custom objects.

Implement SEO best practices for your content to improve search engine visibility.

Customize the look and feel of your community using templates and themes.

Use Lightning App Builder to design custom pages and components.

Integrate Salesforce data and external systems to provide relevant information to users.

Configure data access and sharing rules to control what data community users can see.

Implement security measures to protect sensitive data.

Define roles and permissions to control access to specific areas and features within the portal.

Test the portal.

Once your site is designed and developed, you need to test it to make sure it works properly. Remember to test for high-volume visits and record creations. Get people who were not part of the creation process to try the portal. Fresh eyes can give unique feedback that those who are too closely involved may miss. Get a language specialist to proofread your site. Grammar and spelling errors detract from the value you are trying to add for your customers.

Launch!

Launch your Experience Cloud to your intended audience. Remember that initial training may be necessary. Your portal should have documentation to help users navigate and utilize the portal effectively.

Monitor and optimize the portal.

Your users will give feedback not only on your portal’s usability but also on other documentation that they may need. You will need to continually optimize the site based on feedback and the evolving needs of your business. A portal is not a static entity and will grow according to your business and user expectations.

We hope to see you soon!

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.