Experience Cloud, the Salesforce product behind customer, donor, volunteer and partner portals, offers two ways to pay: per login or per member. Choosing wrongly can multiply your portal licence bill by two or three. The maths behind the choice is simple once you see it.
- Every licence type breaks even at 2.5 logins per user per month. Below that, pay per login. Above it, pay per member.
- Published list rates: Customer Community $2 per login or $5 per member, Customer Community Plus $6 or $15, Partner Community $10 or $25. Nonprofit rates are $0.50 or $1.25, $1.50 or $3.75, and $2.50 or $6.25.
- Licences are often the smaller portal cost. Building the portal takes about 250 hours for occasional use and 450 for regular use.
- Portals need an Enterprise-level edition, so Starter and Pro Suite cannot add one.
Two ways to pay for the same portal
Experience Cloud lets you give people outside your organisation a login to Salesforce: customers checking an order, donors updating a pledge, volunteers logging hours, partners registering deals. Salesforce sells it in two flavours. Login-based licences charge you each time a user logs in during the month. Member-based licences charge a flat monthly price per named user, however often they sign in. Your contract defines exactly what counts as one login, so read that definition before you model costs.
The published rates
| Licence type | Business: per login | Business: per member | Nonprofit: per login | Nonprofit: per member |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Community | $2.00 | $5.00 | $0.50 | $1.25 |
| Customer Community Plus | $6.00 | $15.00 | $1.50 | $3.75 |
| Partner Community | $10.00 | $25.00 | $2.50 | $6.25 |
List prices per month, as verified 29 September 2026. Real contracts are often negotiated below list.
Look at the pattern: in every row the member price is exactly 2.5 times the login price. That is not a coincidence, and it gives you a rule that holds for every licence type and for both business and nonprofit rates.
The 2.5-login rule
If a user logs in n times a month, login-based pricing costs them n times the login rate, and member-based costs a flat 2.5 times the login rate. They are equal at n = 2.5. A volunteer portal with 300 volunteers, priced at nonprofit Customer Community rates, makes it concrete:
| Average logins per volunteer per month | Login-based cost per month | Member-based cost per month | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $150 | $375 | Login |
| 2 | $300 | $375 | Login |
| 3 | $450 | $375 | Member |
| 5 | $750 | $375 | Member |
300 volunteers at nonprofit Customer Community rates: $0.50 per login, $1.25 per member.
At two logins a month the login model saves $75 a month. At three the member model does. The point is not the saving on 300 people, it is that the right answer flips on a single extra login, so the first thing to estimate is real usage, not user count.
Which licence type do you need?
- Customer Community for people who log in to see and update their own records: donors, members, clients, customers.
- Customer Community Plus when users need reports and role-based sharing, for example volunteers and applicants who see more than their own record.
- Partner Community for partners who work on your records alongside your team, such as reseller deal registration.
The estimator maps who your users are to the lightest licence that fits, because paying for Partner Community when Customer Community would do costs five times as much per login. Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking Max also includes 100 Customer Community Plus logins a month, which can cover a small applicant portal on its own.
What 2,000 external users cost a 50-person business
Take a 50-person business on Sales and Service Core with a customer portal. The estimator prices two usage patterns at offshore delivery and benchmark pricing:
| Pattern | Portal licence, per year (list) | Portal build | Year 1 total | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 logins a month, login-based | $48,000 | $16,250 | $213,543 | $517,378 |
| 2,000 members, member-based | $120,000 | $29,250 | $286,093 | $715,703 |
TwinStack Cost Estimator, 29 September 2026 data. Totals include the Core subscription for 50 staff users and implementation.
Mind the units. Row one is 2,000 logins in total each month, which is what 800 users signing in 2.5 times a month would generate. Row two is 2,000 named members. The business and the Core licences are identical, yet the portal model and the usage assumption together move the three-year total by almost $200,000. That is why a portal should never be added to a quote as a line item without checking how often people will actually sign in.
The cost people forget: the portal itself
Licences are only half the story. A portal is a build project: branding, navigation, secure data access, forms, and the sharing rules that stop one user seeing another's records. In the estimator a portal for occasional use is about 250 hours and one for regular use is about 450. That is $16,250 or $29,250 at $65 an hour, and $43,750 or $78,750 at $175 an hour. For a nonprofit with 500 occasional logins the build ($16,250) is several times the annual licence bill (about $3,000 at list).
Three gotchas before you buy
- Edition requirement. Experience Cloud needs an Enterprise-level edition. Starter and Pro Suite cannot add it, so a portal can force an upgrade to Core. See small business pricing.
- Guessing the login count. Pull real usage from a pilot or from your existing website analytics, then model low, expected and high.
- Legacy rates. Older nonprofit contracts sometimes carry lower login rates than today's list. If a renewal quote moves you to the current rate, model the change before you sign. We list more traps in hidden costs in a Salesforce quote.
For a nonprofit view of the same decision, read Salesforce nonprofit pricing. To price your own portal, open the estimator and choose how often external users log in.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between login-based and member-based Experience Cloud licences?
Login-based licences are billed per login each month, so cost follows how often people sign in. Member-based licences are billed per named member per month regardless of how often they use the portal. Login-based is cheaper for occasional users and member-based is cheaper for frequent ones.
When is an Experience Cloud member-based licence cheaper?
When the average user logs in more than 2.5 times a month. At $2 per login against $5 per member, three logins cost $6 on the login model and $5 on the member model. The ratio is the same for Customer Community Plus and Partner Community.
How much does an Experience Cloud portal cost to build?
In our estimator a portal for occasional use takes about 250 hours and one for regular use about 450. At $65 an hour that is $16,250 or $29,250, and at $175 an hour $43,750 or $78,750. Licences come on top of that.
Which Experience Cloud licence do I need?
Customer Community suits people who log in to see their own records. Customer Community Plus adds reports and role-based sharing. Partner Community suits partners who work on your records alongside your team. Choose the lightest type that fits what the users must do.
Is Experience Cloud cheaper for nonprofits?
Yes. Salesforce publishes lower nonprofit rates, for example $0.50 per login and $1.25 per member for Customer Community, against $2 and $5 for businesses.
How do I choose between login-based and member-based Experience Cloud licences?
Estimate how often each external user will sign in each month. Below 2.5 logins a month, login-based pricing is cheaper. Above it, member-based pricing is cheaper. The same break-even applies to Customer Community, Customer Community Plus and Partner Community.
Prices in this article are Salesforce list prices in US dollars, per user per month billed annually unless stated, as verified on 29 September 2026. Salesforce changes pricing, so confirm with Salesforce before you sign. Figures marked "estimator" come from the TwinStack Cost Estimator and are estimates, not quotes.
Model your portal both ways
Tell the estimator who logs in and how many. It picks the cheaper licence model and prices the portal build.