What's the difference between portal and newly introduced salesforce community

Question

After introduction with salesforce community, I am unable to clear how community is different from portal functionality. I already read here but this don't have answers of question like:

• What is new things being provided by community?
• What are restriction we have if we use community?
• Advantage of community over portal.
• Is it capable of provide Email functionalities as same we have in other organization types?
• Role of chatter in communities etc.
• Is their difference between portal user and community user?

I already know that community is dedicated feature for portal functionality, but is it have some new functionality or only a portal part is separated?

Please provide some summary, links or answers you have.

Answer 1

Communities launched in Summer'13.

Before : Partner and Customer Portals

Now : Communities with Partner and Customer Licenses

Before : Limited customisation

Now : Pixel perfect customisation, including customisation of login pages. Use of Site.Com as well as VF Pages for Customisation. Also some ability to customise email with branding.

Before : No Chatter

Now : Chatter with controls to limit people to groups, limit posts to just internal audience and / or external.

Customers who have Portal Licenses can either swap for Community Licenses, or use their existing licenses to use Communities. Also customers who already have Portal can continue to use them, I don't believe an EOL has been announced yet.

Internal Users can switch between communities, similarly to how we can switch between applications. Communities also support SSO.

Answer 2

I got answers for all your questions in here. Please reference to the following address http://help.salesforce.com/help/pdfs/en/salesforce_portal_to_community_migration_cheatsheet.pdf

Hope it helps.

Regards, Kate Luu