Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Communities) is Salesforce's portal product that lets firms create external-facing websites and client portals connected to CRM data. In wealth management, it's used for client portals where investors can view account information, documents, and communications. At $25–$60 per user per month — on top of existing Salesforce licensing — the cost scales quickly for firms with thousands of client households. And because it's built on Salesforce's platform, customization still requires Salesforce consultants.
The Experience Cloud Problem
The Per-User Cost Compounds Fast
Salesforce Experience Cloud pricing starts at $25 per user per month for the Customer Community tier and climbs to $60 per user per month for Customer Community Plus. For a firm with 2,000 client households, that translates to $600,000 to $1,440,000 per year in portal licensing alone — before a single line of customization code is written.
The math is uncomfortable when you say it plainly: you are paying Salesforce per-client licensing to show your clients their own data. Data that lives in systems you already pay for. Every new household your firm onboards increases the portal bill. It is a pricing model designed around Salesforce's revenue, not your firm's growth economics.
It Looks and Feels Like Salesforce
Experience Cloud is built on Salesforce's Lightning framework. No matter how much branding you apply, the underlying rendering engine, the interaction patterns, and the performance profile all carry Salesforce's DNA. Clients experience a portal that feels like a CRM tool with a logo change — not a purpose-built wealth management experience designed for them.
Modern fintech clients compare their wealth portal to their banking app, their brokerage interface, and every other digital product they use daily. An Experience Cloud portal rarely wins that comparison.
Customization Requires Specialists
Making Experience Cloud look and work the way your firm wants requires Lightning Web Components development or Salesforce-certified consultants. Every change to the portal layout, every new data integration, every UI improvement goes through a Salesforce-specific development workflow. Iteration is slow and expensive. Firms with evolving client experience needs find themselves locked in a queue of consulting engagements to make incremental improvements to a portal they already pay per-seat to run.
Performance and Mobile Are Structural Limitations
Experience Cloud's performance is tied to Salesforce's rendering engine. On mobile devices — where many clients will first open their portal — the experience often suffers. Load times, interaction responsiveness, and native-feel behavior all fall short of what clients expect from a modern digital product. These are not configuration problems. They are architectural constraints of the platform.
- $25–$60 per user per month — for a 2,000-household firm, that's $50K–$120K/year just for portal access
- Salesforce look and feel — branding customization is limited compared to purpose-built solutions
- Consultant dependency — Lightning Web Components or Salesforce-certified developers required for meaningful customization
- Data constraints — only surfaces what's in Salesforce; custodian and portfolio data require additional integrations
- Mobile performance — tied to Salesforce's rendering engine, often slow on mobile
- Per-client pricing — cost grows with your firm, not with the value delivered
What Clients Actually Want in a Portal
When wealth management clients say they want a "better portal," they are describing a specific set of capabilities that have nothing to do with the underlying technology platform. They want a window into their financial life that is clear, fast, and actually worth opening.
Portfolio Overview
Clean, visual display of holdings, allocations, and performance. Not a Salesforce record view — a designed experience that shows clients exactly where they stand at a glance.
Document Vault
Secure access to statements, tax documents, and financial plans. Organized and searchable so clients find what they need without calling the office.
Meeting Scheduling
Book reviews directly, integrated with advisor calendars. Not a Salesforce Case — a simple, human scheduling experience that respects the client's time.
Secure Messaging
Compliant communication channel. Simple threads, not Salesforce Chatter. Clients should be able to send a quick question without navigating an enterprise UI.
Performance Reporting
Interactive charts and time-period comparisons. Not a Salesforce dashboard — a reporting experience that makes performance data legible and meaningful to non-technical clients.
Mobile Experience
Native-quality mobile app or PWA. Not a responsive Salesforce page. Clients check their portal on their phone. The experience should feel built for that context.
None of these requirements demand Salesforce. They demand thoughtful design, fast data delivery, and a platform built around the client experience rather than the CRM vendor's architecture.
Milemarker's Approach to Client Portals
Built on Modern Web Technology, Not Salesforce's Framework
Milemarker Workflow is a configurable portal platform that can serve as both an advisor-facing operational hub and a client-facing experience layer. It is built on modern web technology — fast, responsive, and fully brandable without the constraints of Lightning Web Components or Salesforce's rendering engine. Load times and mobile performance are a function of the product's architecture, not Salesforce's infrastructure decisions.
Your Data, Already Unified
The Milemarker data warehouse already contains the unified data clients want to see: custodian positions, portfolio performance, CRM relationship context, document references, and planning data — all normalized and joined in a single Snowflake warehouse your firm controls. The client portal reads from that warehouse. What Experience Cloud would require custom integrations to achieve, Milemarker delivers as the default state of a connected data environment.
Platform Pricing, Not Per-Client Pricing
Milemarker's pricing scales with your firm's platform investment, not with the number of client households accessing the portal. Onboarding 500 new households does not trigger a licensing invoice. Your technology cost grows as your firm's capabilities expand, not as your client count does.
Full White-Labeling as Standard
Milemarker Workflow supports complete white-labeling: your domain, your color palette, your logo, your typography, your brand voice. Clients see your firm's identity, not a Salesforce-branded product with your logo applied. No consultants required to implement branding. No Lightning theme constraints. No platform-imposed design framework to work around.
The Economics
Numbers make the abstract concrete. Take Flat Iron Wealth, a hypothetical RIA managing assets for 2,500 client households. Here is what their Experience Cloud portal cost actually looks like when you add it up.
Experience Cloud Cost at Flat Iron Wealth
| Cost Item | Low Estimate | High Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Experience Cloud — Customer Community 2,500 users × $25/month × 12 |
$750,000 | — |
| Experience Cloud — Community Plus 2,500 users × $60/month × 12 |
— | $1,800,000 |
| Salesforce consulting for customization Annual estimate for ongoing development |
$30,000 | $75,000 |
| Underlying Salesforce CRM licensing Prerequisite for Experience Cloud |
$200,000 | $200,000 |
| Total annual cost for portal + CRM | $980,000+ | $2,075,000+ |
| Milemarker alternative Flat platform pricing — portal + data warehouse + advisor tools |
A fraction of that cost — with more capabilities and unified data access | |
The comparison above reflects actual Salesforce public pricing. The Milemarker alternative includes client portal access, advisor-facing tools, data warehouse infrastructure, and unified integrations across custodians, portfolio systems, and planning tools — without per-client-user licensing that scales against you as your firm grows.
Firms evaluating this decision often find that the portal cost alone — independent of the CRM licensing underneath it — justifies a serious conversation about alternatives. The question is not whether a better alternative exists. The question is whether the transition cost and timeline make sense for your firm's situation today.