The Short Answer
The Salesforce Certified Experience Cloud Consultant exam (EX-Con-101) has 60 scored multiple-choice/multiple-select questions plus up to 5 unscored, a 105-minute time limit, a 62% passing score, a US$200 registration fee (US$100 to retake) and one prerequisite: the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator credential. Its questions align to the Winter '23 release (checked in October 2026 against the official Experience Cloud Consultant exam guide and Trailhead Academy).
This is the exam for people who design and build customer, partner and self-service sites on Salesforce. The heaviest sections are Administration, Setup, and Configuration (25%), Sharing, Visibility, and Licensing (17%) and Branding, Personalization, and Content (15%). It was called Community Cloud Consultant before Salesforce renamed Community Cloud to Experience Cloud, and most of its questions come down to one decision: which license, sharing tool or template fits the scenario.
Exam Details at a Glance
| Detail | Experience Cloud Consultant (EX-Con-101) |
|---|---|
| Questions | 60 scored multiple-choice/multiple-select, plus up to 5 unscored |
| Time limit | 105 minutes |
| Passing score | 62% |
| Registration fee | US$200 (JPY 30,000), plus applicable taxes |
| Retake fee | US$100 (JPY 15,000), plus applicable taxes |
| Prerequisite | Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator |
| Release alignment | Winter '23 |
| Delivery | Proctored, online or at a testing center |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Languages | English, Japanese, French, Spanish |
| Maintenance | A yearly Trailhead maintenance module |
Sources: the exam guide for format, score, fees, prerequisite, release and maintenance, and Trailhead Academy for the exam code, level and languages, both checked in October 2026.
62% of 60 is about 38 correct answers, and 105 minutes for up to 65 questions is roughly 1.6 minutes each. That's comfortable for short client scenarios, so use the spare time to reread "choose 2" questions. On maintenance, the guide's wording currently points to the Platform Administrator maintenance module, so keep your Platform Administrator credential current too. For fees and retake rules across every Salesforce exam, see Salesforce certification cost and retake fees.
Who the Experience Cloud Consultant Certification Is For
Salesforce recommends 6 months of hands-on experience administering or developing on Experience Cloud and expects consultative skills at a technical level, per the exam guide. Typical roles it lists include consultants, solution and technical architects, business analysts, Salesforce developers and administrators, experience designers, and Experience Cloud site managers.
The guide is also clear about what it doesn't expect: detailed SEO knowledge, implementing Knowledge itself, expertise in Agentforce Service, writing HTML and CSS, visual design, and training users. That tells you where not to spend study time.
Because you must hold Platform Administrator first, the exam assumes you already know profiles, permission sets, roles, org-wide defaults and sharing rules. If that credential is still ahead of you, start with the Salesforce Administrator certification guide. If you're choosing between consultant credentials, which Salesforce certification to get first maps the paths.
The Eight Exam Sections and What They Test
All weights come from the official outline.
Administration, Setup, and Configuration: 25%
The biggest section: implementing channel sales with Partner Relationship Management (PRM), deployments and migrations between environments, enabling and activating a site, delegated external user administration, building a public site, setting up Topics, and ticketing and Agentforce Service capabilities in a site.
Watch for: who can be a delegated external user administrator. Salesforce allows it for Partner Community, Customer Community Plus and some legacy portal licenses, not the plain Customer Community license (Delegate Site Administration to an External User). If a scenario asks a customer's own manager to add and deactivate their colleagues, the license has to support it.
Sharing, Visibility, and Licensing: 17%
User and object visibility, declarative sharing options, external account relationships, choosing external license types, the security model for a use case, and roles for external users.
Watch for: sharing sets versus share groups versus sharing rules. A sharing set gives site users access to records tied to their own account or contact, and you can have one sharing set per profile (Create a Sharing Set). Share groups go the other way: they share records owned by high-volume users with other users, and they aren't available to Customer Community Plus or Partner Community users (Use Share Groups). High-volume users don't have roles, which is why they need these tools at all.
Branding, Personalization, and Content: 15%
Changing a site in Experience Builder, what site search can do, bringing Salesforce CMS content into a site, and making Knowledge articles visible to the right audiences.
Watch for: article visibility has more than one lock. An article must be published to the right channel, the user needs access through data category visibility, and a guest user needs the guest profile set up for it. Questions often fix one and leave another broken.
User Creation and Authentication: 13%
Ways to create users (manual, Data Loader, self-registration, Just-in-Time provisioning), setting up a user correctly for a site, Single Sign-On options, enabling partner and customer users, and granting site access through profiles and permission sets.
Watch for: the contact comes first. An external user is created from a contact on an account, so a self-registration or JIT scenario that ignores the account is usually the wrong answer.
Templates and Themes: 10%
Choosing a theme, choosing a template, packaging and exporting a template, and Lightning Bolt Solutions.
Watch for: current template names. Salesforce's template guide lists Customer Account Portal, Partner Central, Customer Service, Help Center, Build Your Own (Aura), Build Your Own (LWR) and Microsites (LWR). Koa and Kokua are retired. Help Center fits a public knowledge base, Partner Central fits channel sales, and Customer Service fits case-plus-Knowledge self-service (it needs Chatter turned on).
Experience Cloud Basics: 8%
Why a company builds a site for a given use case, the common personas (customers, partners, employees), the types of external accounts, and Experience Workspaces.
Customization Considerations and Limitations: 7%
One objective: the limitations that apply across all sites. Know the shape of the limits, such as the 100-site maximum that counts active, inactive and preview sites, and when a requirement pushes you past declarative tools.
Adoption and Analytics: 5%
Experience dashboards and insights, moderation, and adoption and engagement practices such as reputation levels and gamification.
Picking the Right External License
License questions show up across several sections, so it's worth one table. Everything below is from Salesforce's Experience Cloud User Licenses page, checked in October 2026.
| License | Best used for |
|---|---|
| Customer Community | Business-to-consumer sites with many users who need cases or Knowledge; works with person accounts |
| Customer Community Plus | Business-to-consumer sites that need reports, dashboards and standard sharing; works with person accounts |
| Partner Community | Business-to-business sites that need sales data, such as PRM; can't be used with person accounts |
| Channel Account | Partner sites priced by number of partner accounts (up to 40 users per account, pooled) |
| External Apps | Custom experiences for any external stakeholder with limited CRM object access; works with person accounts |
| External Identity | Identity only: single sign-on and passwordless login for customers and partners |
Each community license comes in a member-based and a login-based version. Login-based licenses count one daily unique login per user, so they suit large audiences who log in rarely. Member-based suits people who log in often. A typical exam question gives you the audience size, how often they log in and whether they need reports, roles or sales objects, and asks for the cheapest license that meets every requirement.
Guest users are the other half of the security model. Salesforce's guest user profile best practices say guest org-wide defaults are always Private, guests get records only through Read Only guest user sharing rules, and they should never have View All, Modify All, update or delete permissions. Any answer that opens records broadly to unauthenticated visitors is wrong.
A Four-to-Six-Week Study Plan
- Read the exam guide once. Note the "Given a scenario" objectives: they're where most questions come from.
- Take a baseline. Try the 18 free Experience Cloud Consultant practice questions to see the scenario style and find weak sections.
- Work the official trailmix. The credential page links Prepare for Your Salesforce Experience Cloud Consultant Certification.
- Build a site in a free Developer Edition org. Enable Digital Experiences, create a Customer Service site and a Build Your Own (LWR) site, turn on self-registration, and log in as an external user to see what they can and can't reach. Hands-on time is what the 6-month experience requirement is really about.
- Make a sharing cheat sheet. One row per tool (org-wide defaults, external roles, sharing rules, sharing sets, share groups, guest sharing rules, external account hierarchies) and which licenses can use it.
- Spend the most time on Administration, Setup, and Configuration. Walk through PRM lead distribution and deal registration, change sets for site deployment, and activating a site.
- Practice under time. Book the exam when you're comfortably above 62% and can explain why each wrong option is wrong. Our guide to answering Salesforce scenario questions helps with the "choose 2" format.
Experience Cloud Consultant Practice Exam on Certifyforce
Certifyforce has a practice bank for this exam, written to the official outline and checked against Salesforce Help and Trailhead. It isn't affiliated with Salesforce, and it contains no recalled exam questions or brain dumps.
- The Experience Cloud Consultant practice exam: 300 reviewed questions across all eight sections, with timed 60-question exams weighted like the real one, section practice, and an explanation and source for every answer. The pack is US$19 on the pricing page.
- 18 free practice questions with answers and explanations, no account needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many questions are on the Experience Cloud Consultant exam?
60 scored multiple-choice/multiple-select questions plus up to 5 unscored ones, in 105 minutes, with a 62% passing score, per the exam guide.
How much does the Experience Cloud Consultant exam cost?
US$200 (JPY 30,000) plus applicable taxes, and a retake costs US$100 (JPY 15,000), per the exam guide.
Do I need the Platform Administrator certification first?
Yes. Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator is the only prerequisite, and you need it before you can register.
Is Community Cloud Consultant the same certification?
Yes. Community Cloud Consultant is the old name. Salesforce renamed Community Cloud to Experience Cloud, and the credential's Trailhead page is now trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/experiencecloudconsultant.
Is the Experience Cloud Consultant exam hard?
It's rated intermediate. People who know Experience Builder well but haven't set up external sharing often struggle most with licensing and sharing questions, which run through several sections.
Does the Experience Cloud Consultant certification expire?
Only if you skip maintenance. The exam guide asks you to complete a maintenance module on Trailhead once a year; check your due dates on your Trailhead profile.