SFDCWallah

Sometimes these 3 concepts create confusion to understand, let’s take a brief idea about these concepts in Salesforce.

1. Portals:
   • An online support channel for the customers allowing them to resolve their inquiries without contacting a customer service representative.
   • Primarily, the Customer Portal lets the customers into your company’s internal processes (providing role-based access)
   • Gave them access to knowledge articles, case studies, and other similar data.
   • The Portal brought together all the info about the company and its products/services
   • Grant visibility of all company-customer interactions reflected in tickets, orders, bills.
   • It also supported reporting features and displaying other website content.
   • The primary limitation of a customer portal is that the portal user can only view their own account information.
   • Salesforce Customer Portal isn’t available for new organizations since Summer 13.
2. Communities:
   • Community is literally a next-generation portal that combines the functionality of the former Salesforce Customer and Partner Portals and provides some new features in addition
   • Sub-domain sites built with Community Builder (Lightning), standard Salesforce UI (Tabs), or custom Visualforce.
   • Communities can be created for connecting with customers, external partners, and employees.
   • Customer communities can be used for support and feedback.
   • Partner communities can be used for qualifying leads, tracking revenue and providing product information and training.
   • Internal employee communities can be resources for HR and IT information, as well as a place for discussion and collaboration.
   • Preconfigured Lightning Community templates with drag-and-drop components, or on standard Salesforce functionality and tabs.
   • Key features are:
     • Chatter
     • Social sign-in (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn)
     • Controlled customer access to the data
     • Going mobile (iOS and Android natives)
     • Storage of all incoming data in Salesforce
     • Enhanced case management
     • Improved branding and style configuration
     • Integration with Site.com CMS(You can show your company’s blog directly in the community)
3. Sites:
   • Salesforce Sites enables you to create public websites and applications that are directly integrated with your Salesforce organization—without requiring users to log in with a username and password.
   • Sub-domain sites that have no authentication built with Visualforce.
   • You can publicly expose any information stored in your organization through a branded URL of your choice
   • Data validation on collected information is performed automatically
   • You can also enable users to register for or log in to an associated portal seamlessly from your public site.
   • Few examples where you can use sites:
     • Publish a support FAQ
     • Create an ideas site
     • Create a store locator tool
     • Create a recruiting website
     • Publish a catalog of products

References:

• https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=networks_resources.htm&type=5
• https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sites_overview.htm&type=5
• https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=9060G000000IAeAQAW
• https://www.forcetalks.com/salesforce-topic/difference-between-communities-and-sites-in-salesforce/
• https://appsolvetech.com/what-is-salesforce-community-cloud-and-how-can-it-help-me/
• https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/salesforce-portals-and-communities