Choosing external licenses by access and volume
How to pick Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, Channel Account, External Apps or External Identity from the objects, sharing, reports, platform capacity and user volume a site needs, and how member-based and login-based licenses are counted and billed.
Given a set of requirements, evaluate which external license type(s) to use.
~8 min read · 8 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Evaluate which external license type or types fit a set of requirements: the objects users touch, whether they need roles, standard sharing and reports, extra platform capacity, person accounts and the expected user volume.
- Tell a license from the SKU that sells it, especially Partner Community bought through the PRM SKU versus the External Apps SKU.
- Choose member-based or login-based licensing and explain daily unique logins, the 1-to-20 provisioning ratio and annual overage calculation.
- Explain what a license does not do: it isn't tied to one site, legacy portal licenses still work, and internal licenses don't belong to external users.
Key terms: role-based license (Customer Community Plus, Partner Community or Channel Account; each user holds an external role); SKU (the product Salesforce sells, which contains one or more licenses); daily unique login (one login counted per user per day, however many sites they visit); External Identity (a standalone license for identity services only); account role optimization (ARO) (a shared person role for single-user accounts).
Key facts
- Detail
- Partner Community and Channel Account only
- Detail
- Customer Community Plus, Partner Community, Channel Account
- Detail
- External Apps, Customer Community, Customer Community Plus; not Partner Community
- Detail
- 100 for External Apps and Partner Community via External Apps SKU; 10 otherwise
- Detail
- Priced per partner account, up to 40 pooled users each
- Detail
- 1+ million role-based; 10+ million with ARO; 100+ million Customer Community or External Apps
- Detail
- 1,000 monthly logins provision 20,000 login licenses
- Detail
- Measured over 12 months from contract start; entitlements roll over
- Detail
- Sharing sets, not sharing rules
- Why does account role optimization matter for a role-based license at multi-million scale?
- When should Partner Community be bought through the External Apps SKU rather than the PRM SKU?
- Who must change the account or contact on a case owned by a Customer Community Plus user?
- How many login licenses do 500 monthly logins provision?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Experience Cloud Consultant pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 37 lessons of the Experience Cloud Consultant guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Inline practice questions and one-click topic practice (8 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
- An AI tutor that answers from the guide
- Unlimited timed practice exams