Difference between force.com site and site.com?

Resolution Force.com Sites:

  • Force.com sites supports both authenticated and public websites (i.e. the legacy portal products).
  • Included in all Enterprise Edition (or above) and Developer orgs.
  • Support for custom pages using Visualforce, JavaScript, CSS.
  • Main target audience is for users that are developers familiar with the above languages.
  • Can access all Force.com objects.
  • A full review of the product is available on this page.

Site.com:

  • Formerly called "Siteforce".
  • Is a provisioned (paid-for) product.
  • Site.com is meant for non-technical administrators as there is no coding necessary.
  • Drag n drop support for CMS.
  • Allows custom coding using HTML, CSS, Javascript.
  • Includes a security model of who can contribute to and publish sites.
  • Chatter supported for contribution of content while chatter is not available on the front end website.
  • A full review of the product is available on this page.

For the end user, there may be no noticeable difference between a site created via Force.com Sites or in Site.com.

For developers and content managers, the two are very different:

  • Site.com is a CMS (Content Management System) that allows developers and non-developers alike to maintain a website. It has WYSIWYG editing and point-and-click page creation and management. Underlying Salesforce functionality is fairly constrained.

  • Force.com Sites are websites that are created and coded by developers using Visualforce (an html-like SFDC-view language) and apex code. Nearly every imaginable element of Salesforce functionality is available through code that can be written as part of a Force.com Site.