Understanding the Five External User Licence Models
Salesforce's Experience Cloud licensing divides into two fundamental categories: member-based (named user) licences that assign a licence to each specific external user with unlimited logins, and login-based (consumption) licences that charge per authentication event. Within these categories, Salesforce offers five primary licence types — each with different feature access, cost structures, and scaling characteristics.
| Licence Type | Model | Target Use Case | Feature Level | Scale Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Community | Named user (per member) | B2C self-service — support cases, knowledge, account management | Basic — limited sharing, no role hierarchy | 10+ million users |
| Customer Community Plus | Named user (per member) | B2C/B2B customers needing reports, dashboards, advanced sharing | Mid-tier — roles, reports, dashboards, sharing rules | ~2 million users |
| Partner Community | Named user (per member) | B2B partners — resellers, distributors, franchisees | Full — leads, opportunities, campaigns, reports, roles | ~2 million users |
| Login-Based (all types) | Per login event (daily unique) | Large populations with infrequent access | Matches the corresponding named licence type | Scales with usage, not user count |
| External Apps | Named user or login-based | Custom applications, commerce portals, API-heavy integrations | Custom objects, extra API calls, additional storage | ~2 million users |
| Key principle | The right licence type is determined by who the users are, what they need to do, how often they log in, and how many there are | |||
Customer Community Licence — B2C Self-Service at Scale
The Customer Community licence is designed for high-volume B2C scenarios — support portals, self-service communities, knowledge bases, and account management portals where millions of end customers need basic access. It is the lowest-cost named-user licence in the Experience Cloud portfolio.
Massive Scale
Customer Community licences can support 10+ million users per org — making them suitable for consumer-facing portals where the registered user base is enormous but individual engagement is typically low (a few sessions per year per user). The scale is achieved through architectural simplifications: no role-based hierarchy, limited sharing model, and simplified data access.
Lowest Per-User Cost
The per-user-per-month cost is the lowest of all Experience Cloud licences, making it economical for broad populations. However, "low per-user" multiplied by millions of users still represents significant spend — which is why login-based alternatives should be evaluated for populations with low engagement rates.
Limited Functionality
Customer Community users cannot access standard Salesforce reports, dashboards, or role-based sharing. They rely on simplified sharing sets rather than the full Salesforce sharing model. This is sufficient for case submission, knowledge article access, and basic account self-service — but insufficient for users who need analytics, cross-account visibility, or collaborative features.
Upgrade Path
If a subset of Customer Community users needs richer functionality — reports, dashboards, advanced sharing — they can be upgraded to Customer Community Plus licences. Salesforce allows mixed licence types within the same org, so you can keep the majority on basic Customer Community while upgrading power users to Plus.
Partner Community Licence — B2B Collaboration
The Partner Community licence provides the richest feature set for external users — comparable to an internal Salesforce user, but scoped to the partner's data. It is designed for distributors, resellers, franchisees, and vendors who need to collaborate on sales processes, manage leads and opportunities, and view analytics.
Full Sales Object Access
Partner Community users can access Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns, Accounts, and Contacts — the core Salesforce sales objects. They can create, update, and manage records relevant to their role, register deals, update pipeline, and collaborate with your internal sales team. This makes Partner licences essential for channel sales programmes where external partners are an extension of your revenue organisation. Up to three roles per account are supported, enabling role-based hierarchy within each partner organisation.
Reports, Dashboards, and Advanced Sharing
Partner users can run reports and view dashboards — critical for partners who need to track their pipeline, monitor deal progress, and analyse performance. They also have access to advanced sharing via roles and sharing rules, providing visibility controls that match the complexity of B2B relationships. This feature set is what differentiates Partner licences from Customer Community and justifies the higher per-user cost.
"Partner Community licences cost more per user than Customer Community — but the return on functionality is also higher. These users drive revenue and require robust access. The CIO's job is to ensure only genuine partner personnel are assigned these licences, and that the investment is justified by the channel revenue they support."
Customer Community Plus — The Mid-Tier Hybrid
Customer Community Plus fills the gap between basic Customer Community and Partner licences. It is designed for external customers (not partners) who need richer functionality — advanced sharing, role hierarchies, reports, and dashboards — typically in B2B customer scenarios or complex B2C environments where customers manage multiple accounts, view detailed reporting, or need collaborative case management.
When to Use Community Plus vs Partner
The key distinction: Partner licences grant access to sales objects (Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns); Community Plus does not. If your external users need to manage sales pipeline, register deals, or collaborate on opportunities, they need Partner licences. If they need reports, dashboards, and advanced sharing but not sales object access, Community Plus is the cost-effective choice. Many organisations over-licence by assigning Partner licences to external users who only need Community Plus capabilities — a CIO-level governance issue that directly impacts spend.
Login-Based Licensing — Pay for Usage, Not Accounts
Login-based licensing is Salesforce's consumption model for Experience Cloud. Instead of paying per named user, you purchase a monthly allotment of logins (authentication events). Salesforce provisions user accounts at a 20:1 ratio — purchasing 1,000 monthly logins allows up to 20,000 user accounts to exist.
How Logins Are Counted
Each time an external user authenticates, one login credit is consumed. However, multiple logins by the same user on the same calendar day count as only one login. A user logging in, leaving, and returning the same day does not double-charge. If they return on a different day, it counts as another login. This daily-unique counting method makes login-based licensing predictable for planning purposes.
The 4–5 Login Breakpoint
The commonly cited rule of thumb: if an individual user logs in more than 4–5 times per month, a named licence is typically more cost-effective than login-based pricing. Below that threshold, login-based is cheaper. This breakpoint drives the fundamental selection decision: frequent users → named licence; infrequent users → login-based. CIOs should analyse actual login frequency distributions across their user population before committing.
Mix Named and Login-Based
Salesforce allows simultaneous use of named and login-based licences within the same org. This means you can assign named licences to heavy users (partners, power customers) while placing the large population of occasional users on login-based pools. This hybrid approach optimises cost for each user segment — the CIO's most powerful licensing strategy for Experience Cloud.
| Scenario | Registered Users | Monthly Active (Logins) | Named Licence Cost | Login-Based Cost | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail self-service portal | 1,000,000 | 50,000 | $$$$ (pay for 1M) | $$ (pay for 50K logins) | Login-based |
| Partner deal registration | 2,000 | 1,800 (daily use) | $$ (pay for 2K users) | $$$ (pay for ~30K+ logins) | Named (Partner) |
| B2B customer portal | 50,000 | 8,000 | $$$ (pay for 50K) | $$ (pay for 8K logins) | Login-based or hybrid |
| Franchise management | 500 | 450 (daily use) | $ (pay for 500 users) | $$ (pay for ~9K+ logins) | Named (Partner) |
| Decision driver | Compare registered users × named rate vs expected monthly logins × login rate for each user segment | ||||
High-Volume and Volume-Based Considerations
Leverage Public (Unauthenticated) Access
Not all community interactions require authentication. Public knowledge articles, FAQ pages, and informational content can be accessed without login — consuming zero licences. Design your Experience Cloud site to offload informational needs to public access, requiring authentication only for personalised actions (viewing account-specific data, submitting cases, managing orders). This strategy can reduce login volume by 30–60 % by eliminating unnecessary authentications, directly reducing login-based licensing costs.
Negotiate Volume Discounts for Large Populations
When committing to large numbers of logins or named users — particularly in the hundreds of thousands to millions range — negotiate volume-based pricing with Salesforce. Per-login rates decrease at higher volumes, and Salesforce's commercial team has flexibility to structure deals that provide economies of scale. For organisations expecting 100+ million external identities (consumer-facing platforms), Salesforce may offer custom pricing arrangements. Use your volume commitment as leverage — Salesforce values large-scale deployments for their logo value and reference potential.
External Apps Licences for Custom/API-Heavy Use Cases
If your Experience Cloud deployment is primarily custom objects and API integrations rather than standard Salesforce objects, evaluate External Apps licences (Starter and Plus). These provide additional platform resources — more API calls, extra storage — designed for custom application scenarios. External Apps licences scale to approximately 2 million users and are available in both named and login-based models. They are particularly relevant for commerce portals, custom self-service applications, and integrations where standard Community licences may not provide sufficient API capacity.
Selecting the Right Model — Decision Framework
| Selection Criteria | Customer Community | Community Plus | Partner Community | Login-Based |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| User type | End customers (B2C) | B2B customers, advanced B2C | Resellers, distributors, partners | Any external user type |
| Login frequency | Regular (weekly+) | Regular (weekly+) | Frequent (daily) | Infrequent (< 4–5/month) |
| Feature needs | Cases, knowledge, account self-service | + Reports, dashboards, roles, sharing | + Leads, opportunities, campaigns | Matches corresponding type |
| User population | Millions | Hundreds of thousands | Thousands | Millions (but low engagement) |
| Cost per user | Lowest | Mid | Highest | Variable (usage-dependent) |
| Best strategy | Mass self-service | Advanced customer collaboration | Channel revenue enablement | Large dormant populations |
Cost Management Strategies
Monitor Active Usage and Login Consumption
Implement monthly usage reporting comparing provisioned licences against actual logins. Salesforce provides login history data that can be analysed to identify: (1) named-licence users who log in fewer than 4 times per month (candidates for login-based conversion), (2) login-based pools that consistently underperform their allocation (candidates for reduction), (3) licence types that exceed the functionality users actually access (candidates for downgrade). Establish a quarterly licence review with stakeholders from IT, procurement, and business owners to action these findings.
Right-Size Functionality to Licence Needs
The most common Experience Cloud over-spend is assigning Partner or Community Plus licences to users who only need basic Customer Community access. Audit the actual feature usage of your external user population: if users are only submitting cases and reading knowledge articles, they do not need reports, dashboards, or sales objects. Downgrading from Partner to Customer Community can reduce per-user cost by 60–80 %. Conversely, if Customer Community users are requesting functionality they cannot access, upgrading a targeted subset to Plus is more cost-effective than upgrading the entire population.
Avoid Overprovisioning and Underutilisation
Many organisations provision Experience Cloud licences based on projected user growth rather than actual demand. Salesforce's annual escalator applies to the contracted volume, not actual usage — meaning you pay for unused licences throughout the term. Strategies: (1) start with a conservative allocation and negotiate elastic growth provisions allowing mid-term increases without renegotiation, (2) include true-down rights at each anniversary for populations that shrink, (3) use login-based models for uncertain populations where growth projections are unreliable. Never commit to multi-year volumes based on optimistic forecasts without contractual flexibility to adjust.
Governance and Accountability
Assign clear ownership for Experience Cloud licence management — typically a shared responsibility between IT (technical configuration and access control), procurement (commercial terms and spend management), and the business owner (user population management and justification). Implement automated provisioning workflows that assign the correct licence type based on user role rather than defaulting to the highest tier. Establish deactivation policies for external users who have not logged in for 90+ days (named licences) to free up licence capacity.
✅ CIO Recommendations — Experience Cloud Licensing
- Segment your external user population by type (customer vs partner), login frequency (daily/weekly/monthly/occasional), and feature requirements (basic vs reports vs sales objects) before selecting licence models
- Use login-based licensing for any user segment where fewer than 4–5 logins per month is the norm — particularly large B2C populations where only a fraction engage regularly
- Mix licence types within the same org: named licences for frequent users, login-based for occasional users, Customer Community for basic needs, Plus or Partner only where the feature set is justified
- Leverage public (unauthenticated) access for knowledge articles, FAQs, and informational content to reduce login volume by 30–60 %
- Negotiate volume discounts for large populations — per-login and per-user rates decrease at scale. Use multi-year commitment as leverage for deeper discounts
- Audit licence assignments quarterly to identify over-provisioned users (Partner licences assigned to basic-needs users), underutilised named licences (low login frequency), and login-pool capacity mismatch
- Include contractual flexibility — true-down rights, elastic growth provisions, licence type conversion rights, and escalator caps — in every Experience Cloud agreement
- Engage independent advisory for Experience Cloud deals exceeding $500K annually — the licensing model complexity and Salesforce's negotiation tactics justify expert guidance