What it is
Experience Cloud is Salesforce's platform for building customer portals, partner communities, and self-service sites — the digital front door for external users. Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud) lets you build branded digital experiences for customers, partners, and employees. It supports self-service portals, knowledge bases, case submission, partner deal registration, and community forums — all connected to your Salesforce data.
Why it matters
Experience Cloud is how your external users interact with Salesforce. For Agentforce, it is a primary deployment channel — you can embed AI agents directly into Experience Cloud portals so customers get instant, intelligent self-service.
Key components
- Customer portals
- Partner communities
- Knowledge base
- Embedded agents
- Branding and templates
How it connects
Agentforce agents can be embedded in Experience Cloud pages. Customers interact with agents in the portal context, and the agent has access to their account data, cases, and entitlements.
Good to know
Experience Cloud requires per-user login licenses for authenticated access. If licensing cost is a concern, consider alternatives like the SF Support Portal Template which runs on existing Service Cloud licenses.
Related terms
Agentforce
Salesforce's AI agent platform that enables businesses to build, customize, and deploy autonomous AI agents across sales, service, marketing, and commerce.
Knowledge Management
The systems and processes for organizing, storing, and making business information accessible to AI agents so they can provide accurate, contextual answers.
Service Cloud
Service Cloud is Salesforce's customer service platform that helps businesses manage and enhance their customer support operations.
Experience Cloud in practice
Articles from the Funnelists Team that put this term to work.

How Salesforce LWC Limits React Development for Modern Frontends
Salesforce solution architects often hit walls trying to bring React into LWC. This post explains the historical limits, the new native path with Multi-Framework, and clear criteria for choosing between the two.

What Is a BYO Key AI Portal, and Why Do IT and Security Buyers in Financial Services Want One?
A BYO Key AI portal runs its assistant on your own LLM provider key, so your company picks the model, pays for inference directly, and works under its own contract. Here is why IT and security buyers at financial services firms ask for one.

What Does Custom Salesforce App Development Cost a Build-vs-Buy IT Leader Compared With Licensing a Portal?
Custom Salesforce app development costs what its scope costs, while portal licensing grows with every user you invite. A Build-vs-Buy IT Leader's guide to the real cost drivers and when to license, use a template, or build in React.

How Do SF Platform Architects Build Headless Salesforce Experiences with Multiple Frameworks?
SF Platform Architects build headless Salesforce experiences by exposing core data through APIs and composing frontends from React, LWC, Vue and more—without framework lock-in.

