Salesforce Experience Cloud Consulting Services
Unboxx plans, builds and supports Experience Cloud portals your customers and partners will log into. One team handles strategy, implementation, integration, migration and support after launch.
Nobody wants to phone your support line to ask where their order is. They want to log in, look, and get on with their day. Your partners feel the same about leads and deal paperwork.
Salesforce Experience Cloud is built for exactly this, and it works well when the site has been planned, built and secured properly. That's what Unboxx does. We provide Salesforce Experience Cloud consulting services across the whole lifecycle: strategy, implementation, custom development, integration, migration, security and support after launch. Maybe you're launching your first customer portal. Maybe you've got a community nobody logs into. Either way, we can help.
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
Salesforce Experience Cloud is the part of Salesforce you use to build branded portals, communities and websites on top of your CRM data. Customers, partners, employees and other external users log in and see whatever records you've chosen to share with them. Accounts, cases, orders, knowledge articles, that sort of thing.
The useful bit is that it runs on the same platform as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, so nothing is copied into a separate system. When a customer raises a case in the portal, your support agent is looking at that same case a second later.
What is an Experience Cloud site in Salesforce?
A site is one portal, community or website inside your Salesforce org. You build it in Experience Builder, the drag-and-drop design tool, and each site gets its own template, theme, pages, navigation, components, audience and login method.
You aren't limited to one. A manufacturer might run a dealer portal, a customer support portal and a supplier portal side by side, all three reading from the same CRM.
Is Salesforce Experience Cloud the same as Communities?
Pretty much, yes. Salesforce renamed Community Cloud to Experience Cloud, and what used to be called "communities" are now Experience Cloud sites. The old name hasn't gone away completely. It still shows up in license names like Customer Community, which is why your team might say "our Salesforce community" while your admin says "our Experience Cloud site". Same thing.
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud used for?
Mostly, it's used to give people outside your business a secure window into Salesforce. What that window shows depends on who's looking through it:
Customer and account portals, where customers see their orders, invoices and cases
Self-service and support portals with knowledge articles, FAQs and case tracking
Partner portals, where dealers, distributors and resellers manage leads and opportunities
Supplier and vendor portals for onboarding, documents and requests
Member, student and patient portals, for organizations that serve people rather than accounts
Employee communities for internal help and collaboration
Discussion forums where users answer each other's questions
Some of these users are guests browsing public pages. Others are authenticated users with their own data behind a login. Working out which is which, and what each should see, is most of the job.
What Salesforce Experience Cloud consulting services does Unboxx provide?
Our Salesforce Experience Cloud services run from the first planning workshop to support long after launch. Hire us for the whole project, or just the piece you're stuck on.
How does our Experience Cloud strategy and consulting work?
We don't open Experience Builder on day one. First comes discovery and assessment: who is the portal for, what do they need to do there, and what can your org already support?
Out of that we write an Experience Cloud roadmap and architecture covering site structure, licenses, data model and integrations. This advisory work is useful whether you're starting from nothing or stuck with a portal that underperforms. You come away with a plan and a scope everyone has agreed to.
What do our Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation services include?
This is the setup itself. We enable digital experiences in your org, choose the template that fits, configure pages in Experience Builder, set up users and sharing, and deploy from sandbox to production.
It suits you if you want a standard customer or partner portal live without heavy custom work. What you get is a branded, working site built on standard Salesforce features, which makes life easier every time Salesforce ships an update.
When do you need custom Experience Cloud development?
You need it when the standard components run out. A custom order tracker, a quote builder, a multi-step application form: these need code. Our developers write Lightning Web Components for the front end and Apex for the back-end logic.
We're sparing with it, though. Every custom component is something you'll maintain and upgrade for years, so we only build one where it's worth that.
Which portals can Unboxx build for you?
We build customer portals, partner portals, self-service portals and B2B portals, plus dealer, distributor, supplier, vendor, member and employee portals.
The type matters less than the question we ask at the start of each one: what does this person need to get done in under a minute? For a partner, that's registering a deal or updating a lead. For a customer, it's checking a case or finding an invoice. We design around those tasks and then connect the portal to the right CRM objects.
How far can Experience Cloud customization go?
It goes further than most people expect. In Experience Builder we customize themes, branding, navigation, page layouts and components until the site looks like your company. That covers custom pages, different menus for different audiences and UI changes to match your brand guidelines.
Our test is simple. A visitor shouldn't be able to tell where your website ends and your portal begins.
What can Experience Cloud integrate with?
It can connect to almost anything with an API. On the Salesforce side, we connect your site to Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Salesforce CPQ. Beyond Salesforce, we handle ERP integration, payment gateways and third-party apps, using REST and SOAP APIs or MuleSoft.
Why bother? Because a portal that only shows half the story sends people back to email. With the integrations in place, a customer can open an ERP invoice, pay it and raise a case about it without leaving the page.
How do we handle Experience Cloud migration?
We do it in stages, and never straight into production. We migrate legacy portals, older Salesforce communities and standalone websites to Experience Cloud, and we bring the data, users, content and knowledge articles along. If a merger or a cleanup calls for a Salesforce org migration, we do that too.
Each migration has a mapping plan, a test run in a sandbox and a cutover plan. On day one your users should log in and find their history intact.
How will your users sign up and log in?
Login is the first thing users judge you on, and a clumsy one loses them before they've seen anything else. We set up registration and login flows, single sign-on (SSO) with your identity provider, OAuth, social login and multi-factor authentication.
Ideally that means one secure login across your website, portal and apps. Fewer passwords, fewer "I can't get in" tickets.
How do we keep your Experience Cloud site secure?
Portal security is really one question asked thousands of times: who can see what? We answer it with profiles, permission sets, sharing sets, sharing rules and role hierarchies, configured so each external user sees their own records and nobody else's.
Guest user access gets locked down. Data visibility gets reviewed. If your industry requires particular compliance settings, we configure those as well. And we write the whole model down, because a security setup that lives in one admin's head is a risk on its own.
How does customer self-service work on Experience Cloud?
A customer searches your knowledge base or reads the FAQs. If that doesn't solve it, they create a case and track it through to resolution. Partners can do the same with their own requests.
Behind the scenes we connect the portal to Service Cloud cases and Knowledge, then tune search so the right article comes up first. Get that part right and self-service takes routine questions off your agents' plates.
How do we manage content with Salesforce CMS?
Salesforce CMS exists so your marketing team can publish without waiting on a developer. We set up the content workspaces, collections, publishing steps and digital asset management, then surface that content on your site pages. We can personalize it by audience too, so a distributor and an end customer land on the same page and see different banners, news and documents.
What does good Experience Cloud UX design look like?
It looks simple, mostly. Our UX and UI design work covers navigation design, responsive layouts, mobile experience and accessibility, which means the site has to work on a phone and for people using assistive technology.
Before we build, we test designs against real tasks. If someone can't find "track my case" in a few seconds, the design goes back for another round.
What can you automate in your portal?
You can automate most of the repetitive steps. With Salesforce Flow we automate customer and partner onboarding, user provisioning, notifications, case routing and approval workflows. Picture a new partner who registers, gets approved, receives a login and lands on a welcome page, all without anyone on your team touching a keyboard.
Can you add AI and Agentforce to Experience Cloud?
Yes. We connect Agentforce and Einstein features to your site, which gives users AI-powered self-service: an AI agent that answers questions from your knowledge base, intelligent search and personalized recommendations.
Our advice is to start small. Give the agent one narrow, useful job, like answering order status questions, and expand once its answers have proved reliable.
How do we test your site before go-live?
Our QA covers functional, integration, performance, security and regression testing, plus accessibility checks. Then your own team runs user acceptance testing with real scenarios. All of it happens in a sandbox before production deployment, and release management keeps the changes orderly.
How do we improve a portal that's already live?
We start by watching how people use it. Experience Cloud optimization covers page speed, search results, mobile usability, accessibility and community engagement, and we use your site data to find where users drop off. If logins are low, or people still email support for things the portal should handle, this is the service to ask about.
What do our Experience Cloud support and managed services cover?
After launch we can stay on as your admin and support team. Managed services include maintenance, technical support, bug fixes, enhancements, performance and security monitoring, and preparation for each Salesforce release. The practical advantage is that we already know your site, so you never have to explain it to someone new.
Not sure which of these you need? Book a free consultation with Unboxx. We'll look at your org and tell you where to start.
Book a free consultationWhich industries use Experience Cloud portals?
Any organization with people outside it who need information can use one. A healthcare provider might want a patient portal linked to cases and knowledge. A manufacturer might want dealer and distributor portals tied to Sales Cloud opportunities. In education it's student portals for applications, requests and answers, and in financial services and insurance it's secure account and claims portals. Nonprofits run member portals and communities. SaaS and technology companies run support portals and customer communities.
Unboxx can build any of these, and the same goes for retail, government and professional services. The platform doesn't change from one industry to the next. The data model, the security and the wording do.
Healthcare · patient portals
Manufacturing · dealer portals
Education · student portals
Financial services · account portals
Insurance · claims portals
Nonprofits · member portals
SaaS · support communities
Retail
Government
Professional services
How does a Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation work, step by step?
Here's the short version of our Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation guide. There are six steps:
We talk to stakeholders and users, review your org and agree on goals and scope.
We map the architecture, security model and user journeys, then produce wireframes.
We configure the site in Experience Builder and develop any custom components.
We connect your other systems and bring over data, users and content.
We run QA, then you run user acceptance testing.
We deploy to production, onboard users and stay on for improvements.
You'll see a working site in a sandbox early on. That's deliberate: your feedback should arrive before the budget is spent.
Want to see what this would look like for your business? Talk to our team and we'll walk you through a plan.
Talk to our teamHow much does Salesforce Experience Cloud cost?
Salesforce Experience Cloud pricing comes in two parts: the licenses, and the work to build the site.
Salesforce sells the licenses. What you pay depends on the license type (customer, partner or external apps) and on whether you pay per member or per login. Per-login pricing tends to suit large audiences who visit now and then. Member-based pricing suits regular users. Salesforce publishes current rates on its pricing page, and they change, so check there or ask us.
The consulting side depends on how many sites and audiences you have, how much custom development and integration you need, whether there's a migration involved, and how much support you want afterward. Tell us what you need and Unboxx will send a clear, itemized quote.
Why choose Unboxx for Salesforce Experience Cloud consulting services?
We think of your portal as a product your users have to like. A project can finish on time and still produce a site nobody visits, so every decision we make traces back to a task someone needs to finish.
A few habits follow from that. We reach for standard features first and write custom code only where configuration can't do the job, which keeps your maintenance down. We design external access at the start, because security patched in just before launch tends to have gaps. And we explain things plainly, so you always know what we're building, why, and what it costs.
You also deal with one team for strategy, build, integration, migration and managed services.
For an industrial distributor, we launched a partner portal where dealers register deals and track orders themselves. Within the first quarter, most order-status emails to the sales desk had moved into the portal.
Example project: dealer portal on Experience Cloud
What else do people ask about Salesforce Experience Cloud?
How do you enable Experience Cloud in Salesforce?
Go to Setup, search for Digital Experiences and open Settings. Tick Enable Digital Experiences, choose your domain name and save. You can then create your first site from the All Sites page. One warning: take your time over the domain, because it appears in your site URL. This step is part of our implementation service, along with the license checks that come before it.
How do you create an Experience Cloud user in Salesforce?
Start from the contact record and make sure the contact belongs to an account. Choose Enable Customer User or Enable Partner User, pick the license and profile, and save. Partner users have one extra requirement: the account must be enabled as a partner first. That's fine for a handful of people. For larger audiences we set up self-registration or automated provisioning, so nobody is doing this one contact at a time.
How do you view an Experience Cloud enabled contact in Salesforce?
Open the contact record and look at the action menu. A contact who already has a login shows View Customer User or View Partner User where the enable option would be. To see everyone at once, build a report or list view of users filtered by license or profile.
How do you change the URL for a Salesforce Experience Cloud page?
In Experience Builder, open the Pages menu, select the page, edit the URL field in its properties and publish. The site's own URL path is a separate setting, found in Administration. And if you want a branded address such as portal.yourcompany.com, that needs a custom domain. Before changing anything, think about who has bookmarked the old address and plan your redirects.
Can you brand the Salesforce Experience Cloud new member email?
Yes. Go to the site's Administration workspace and open Emails. There you can set the sender name and address, add your logo and footer text, and choose which template the welcome email uses. If the default layout is too plain for you, we build custom email templates that match your brand.
Adobe Experience Cloud vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud: where does Salesforce Experience Cloud fit?
The names trip a lot of people up. Adobe Experience Cloud is Adobe's marketing and content suite. It includes Adobe Experience Manager and competes with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Salesforce Experience Cloud is a different product altogether: it builds portals and communities on your CRM. They can work together, though. An Adobe Experience Manager integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a common setup, and we can connect either one to your portal.
How do you convert Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning Experience?
Begin with Salesforce's Lightning Experience readiness check. It flags the features, Visualforce pages and custom buttons that need work. Fix or rebuild those, pilot with a small group, then switch users over in waves. If you have an older portal built on Visualforce, it can move to a current Experience Builder template at the same time.
How long does a Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation take?
That depends on scope. A single portal on a standard template is a much shorter project than a multi-audience site with custom components, ERP connections and a migration. We won't guess before discovery. After it, you get a timeline with milestones you can hold us to.
Ready to get started with Salesforce Experience Cloud consulting services?
Portals get ignored for dull reasons. The login is awkward, the search returns the wrong article, or half the data people need lives somewhere else. All of that is fixable, and most of it is avoidable with good planning.
Unboxx provides Salesforce Experience Cloud consulting services from the first workshop to long-term support. Contact Unboxx today to book your free consultation, and let's build a portal your users will thank you for.