Customer Community, Partner Community, Community Plus, login-based and volume-based models. Selection framework, cost optimisation, and governance for IT leaders, procurement, and ITAM teams.
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 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 |
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. Choosing the wrong model leads to escalating costs, underutilised licences, or functional limitations that undermine the business case for Experience Cloud.
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.
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 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.
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.
Our independent Salesforce advisory team analyses your Experience Cloud licence assignments, identifies over-provisioned users, recommends the optimal licence model for each user segment, and negotiates volume discounts and contractual flexibility. Fixed-fee engagements with guaranteed ROI.
Salesforce Licence Optimisation Service →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 to 5 login breakpoint. The commonly cited rule of thumb: if an individual user logs in more than 4 to 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 get named licences, infrequent users get 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) |
Use our Salesforce assessment tools to evaluate your Experience Cloud licence assignments, identify over-provisioned users, analyse login frequency distributions, and model the cost impact of switching between named and login-based models.
Start Free Assessment →1. 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 to 60% by eliminating unnecessary authentications, directly reducing login-based licensing costs.
2. 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.
3. 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.
| 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 |
1. 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 named-licence users who log in fewer than 4 times per month (candidates for login-based conversion), login-based pools that consistently underperform their allocation (candidates for reduction), and 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.
2. 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 to 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.
3. 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: start with a conservative allocation and negotiate elastic growth provisions allowing mid-term increases without renegotiation. Include true-down rights at each anniversary for populations that shrink. 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.
4. 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.
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 to 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 to 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 in every Experience Cloud agreement: true-down rights, elastic growth provisions, licence type conversion rights, and escalator caps.
Engage independent advisory for Experience Cloud deals exceeding $500K annually. The licensing model complexity and Salesforce’s negotiation tactics justify expert guidance.
The fundamental difference is feature access and cost. Customer Community is the lowest-cost option, providing basic self-service capabilities (case submission, knowledge article access, and account management) without role-based hierarchy, advanced sharing, or reports. It scales to 10+ million users. Partner Community is the highest-cost option, providing full access to sales objects (Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns), reports, dashboards, and role-based sharing. It scales to approximately 2 million users. Customer Community Plus sits between them, offering reports, dashboards, and advanced sharing without sales object access. The selection should be driven by what users actually need to do, not by a desire to provide the “best” experience. Over-licensing with Partner when Customer Community is sufficient wastes 60 to 80% per user.
The decision is driven by login frequency. The commonly cited breakpoint is 4 to 5 logins per month: if individual users log in fewer than 4 to 5 times per month, login-based licensing is typically cheaper. Above that threshold, named licences provide better value because the per-login costs exceed the flat named-user fee. For large B2C populations (hundreds of thousands or millions of registered users) where only a small percentage log in each month, login-based licensing can deliver dramatic savings. You pay for actual usage rather than the entire registered base. For B2B partner users who log in daily, named licences are almost always more economical. Salesforce allows both models simultaneously, so the optimal strategy is a hybrid: named licences for frequent users, login-based for the long tail of occasional users.
A login is counted each time an external user authenticates to an Experience Cloud site. However, multiple logins by the same user on the same calendar day count as only one login, so a user who logs in, logs out, and logs back in the same day consumes only one login credit. If the same user logs in on a different day, that counts as a separate login. The daily-unique counting method makes login-based licensing more predictable than pure per-event counting. Salesforce provisions user accounts at a 20:1 ratio to purchased logins: purchasing 1,000 monthly logins allows up to 20,000 user accounts to exist. Unused logins in a given month do not roll over to subsequent months.
Yes. Salesforce explicitly supports mixing licence types within the same org for Experience Cloud. You can have Customer Community users, Customer Community Plus users, Partner Community users, and login-based users all coexisting. This is the recommended approach for most enterprises: assign each user segment the most cost-effective licence type based on their actual needs and login frequency. For example, assign Partner licences to your 500 reseller reps who log in daily, Customer Community Plus to your 5,000 B2B clients who need reports, and login-based Customer Community to your 200,000 occasional end customers.
Five strategies. First, convert low-frequency named-licence users to login-based by auditing login history to identify users logging in fewer than 4 times per month. Second, downgrade over-licensed users by moving users from Partner or Plus to basic Customer Community if they only use case submission and knowledge. Third, leverage public (unauthenticated) access for knowledge articles and FAQs, reducing the number of logins required. Fourth, implement automated deactivation for dormant users so named licences assigned to users who have not logged in for 90+ days are reclaimed. Fifth, negotiate volume discounts and true-down rights in your contract to ensure you are not paying for capacity you do not use. These strategies can typically reduce Experience Cloud spend by 25 to 40% without any loss of user functionality.
Customer Community Plus is a mid-tier licence that provides the advanced features of Partner Community (reports, dashboards, role-based sharing, and advanced sharing rules) without access to sales objects (Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns). It is designed for external customers (not partners) who need more than basic self-service but do not need sales pipeline functionality. Common use cases: B2B customers who need to view reports on their service usage, large clients who manage multiple accounts and need role-based visibility, or customer advisory board members who need dashboard access. The per-user cost is higher than basic Customer Community but lower than Partner. Before purchasing Plus licences, verify that the specific features your users need are not available through other means. Sometimes custom Visualforce pages or Lightning components can provide the required functionality on basic Customer Community licences.
For any Experience Cloud deployment exceeding $500,000 annually or involving more than 100,000 external users, independent advisory consistently delivers significant ROI. Experience Cloud licensing is one of Salesforce’s most complex areas. The interaction between licence types, login counting, volume pricing, and feature-tier selection creates numerous opportunities for optimisation that are not obvious to teams negotiating with Salesforce directly. Independent advisors provide benchmark data on per-login and per-user rates from comparable engagements, licence type selection frameworks, usage analysis to identify over-provisioning, and negotiation tactics for volume discounts, true-down rights, and escalator caps. The advisory investment is typically recovered within the first quarter through licence optimisation alone.
Most enterprises over-provision Experience Cloud licences by 25 to 40%. Named licences assigned to dormant users, Partner licences given to basic-needs customers, and login-based pools sized for peak demand that never materialises. Our independent advisory team analyses your login frequency distributions, recommends the optimal licence model for each user segment, and negotiates volume discounts and contractual flexibility. Fixed-fee engagements with guaranteed ROI.