Fonteva Platform 16 is here, what does that mean for you?

What’s changing for associations, why it matters, and how to plan for the move

Fonteva Platform 16 (FP16) rebuilds the Community Site experience on Salesforce Lightning Web Components (LWC), replacing the Aura-based Store and Member Profile pages. The release also updates certification programs, fundraising, events, and parts of the data model. If you run Fonteva today or are evaluating it, here is what changed and what it means for your organization.

A platform built for what comes next

Members compare their association’s portal to every other digital experience they use, not to other associations. FP16 is working to close that performance gap. An improved member experience and the backend flexibility to support it are the defining traits of this release.

FP16 is a foundational change. Aura components are being phased out across Salesforce generally, and FP16 gets ahead of that shift by rebuilding its Store, Member Profile, and community experience on modern Lightning Web Components. That means faster page loads, easier customization, and a much larger library of prebuilt configurable components.

Fonteva has been direct about the tradeoff; this is the last release to support custom Aura components, and organizations still running Visualforce-based (CPBase) communities will need to replace those before upgrading.

The flexibility gain is immediately apparent in portal configuration. In 15.1, moving a component or restyling a section usually meant developer time and a deployment. In FP16, most of that happens in Experience Builder: move a component, adjust its properties, and publish. Fonteva’s shorthand for the release is configurable, not customized, and that theme runs through everything below.

Member Journey Replaces Join Process in FP16

Member Journey replaces the old Join Process with a single-page, multi-step enrollment flow, and offers a more flexible and personalized experience that adapts to what’s in the order. The updates include qualifying questions, optional package items, membership seat assignment, item-level forms, and an optional donation step. Authenticated visitors can now save their progress, and the process also supports guest users.

This is a significant improvement for members, moving the overall experience much closer to the standard they have come to expect.

Improvements to the Store in FP16

Both the Shopping Cart and Checkout pages are rebuilt on LWC and configured through Experience Builder, and this foundation supports a significant improvement in the member’s buying experience.

Notable Features:

• A rebuilt Store, Cart, and unified checkout. All transaction types, along with memberships, events, donations, and products, now run through the same checkout instead of separate pages for each. It also connects to Fonteva Payments 3.0: organizations can recover up to 3% of their processing costs through credit card surcharging, and members can spread a purchase out over time with Klarna instead of paying it all upfront.
• Product reviews and richer product pages. Members can rate and review items, browse parent items with variations grouped underneath (each with its own price), and see cross-sell suggestions based on product topics. Product pages add image carousels, video, PDF previews, and configurable information tabs.
• Member-specific pricing. The store landing page shows each member their qualified price and savings rather than a flat list price for every visitor, and member pricing applies when a membership and a product are purchased in the same order.
• Smarter catalogs. Featured Catalogs get preferred placement on the storefront, and a new Priority field controls display order.

These are the most visible changes in the release and the ones members will notice first.

Profile, Certifications, Fundraising, and Events Get Upgrades

Like the Store, the Member Profile is rebuilt on Fonteva’s LWC framework, with styling and branding controlled through Experience Builder’s Theme Panel and Component Properties.

Several program areas were updated in the same release:

• Certification and Accreditation Programs move off the legacy Visualforce foundation tracking page entirely and onto the same modern model as the rest of FP16 (LWC). The three-level structure (Program Types, Programs, and Requirements across Candidacy and Maintenance) is unchanged; participants now track progress through a Lightning-based experience.
• The Events Listing Page is rebuilt with multiple browsing layouts, a featured events carousel, filtering, search, sort, and a slide-out cart so visitors can register without losing their place.

• Fundraising Campaign Pages gain a “Donation Frequency” option. Campaigns can now offer quarterly, semi-annual, or annual giving too, and monthly donors can choose which day of the month they’re billed.
• Payment Method Management gives members more control over saved payment methods from their Wallet on the Profile page, and organizations gain broader gateway options behind the scenes.

Data Model Changes and Bonus Features

A handful of data-model changes won’t necessarily be the star of the show in a demo, but they’ll affect how your team works day to day after the upgrade:

• Awards. Record recognitions given to accounts or contacts, visible on the record.
• Seasonal addresses. Known Addresses can carry a start and end date with a Repeat Yearly option. The seasonal address becomes the contact’s current address while the window is open, then reverts automatically.
• Subscriptions vs. memberships. Items can be flagged as memberships separately from subscriptions, each with its own home on the FP16 profile template.
• Credit memo visibility. Staff can hide a credit memo from the self-service Apply Payment page while keeping it usable behind the scenes.
• Forms. The deprecated Aura-based form experience is replaced with a modern equivalent

Where Configuration Replaces Customization, and Where it Doesn’t

The pattern across the release is consistent: Fonteva ships a default, opinionated layout of discrete LWC components, and administrators configure, reorder, or remove them through Experience Builder without touching code. The legacy CP-based Visualforce join process is retired entirely in favor of this model. (Member Journey)

Let’s be precise about what configuration covers, though. Layout, styling, field visibility, and component ordering are configuration. Business logic that does not match Fonteva’s assumptions, complex conditional eligibility, or anything Flow does not already support is still implementation work, done in Flow and component properties instead of Apex and Visualforce. No customization does not mean no implementation effort.

The Impact on Your Admin Team

Not all upgrades are for members – the administrative side got real attention too. Community Site styling now runs through an Experience Builder Theme Panel instead of custom CSS overrides, so rebranding a page no longer requires developer time. Native GA4 and Google Tag Manager support, one of the most requested features in Fonteva’s customer community, gives staff funnel visibility from browsing through checkout without a custom integration. And a new field-history tracking framework keeps more than the standard 18 months of change history, useful for audit trails on membership status changes, certification records, and donor data.

What FP16 Feature Improvements Look Like for Users

Feature lists only tell half the story. The bigger difference for members and staff is how each everyday flow feels to use, and across FP16 the same pattern repeats: pages that used to be split across several disconnected screens come together into one continuous, configurable experience. The storefront and checkout become fully rearrangeable, with guest checkout and product variations built in. My Profile arrives populated, with badges, memberships, subscriptions, payment methods, orders, and recurring donations in one place, and staff can rearrange any of it without a developer. The multi-page Join Process becomes Member Journey, one continuous flow with a progress bar and save-and-resume.

One caution: none of this is a toggle flipped during the upgrade. Each of these pages is rebuilt in the new community.

Advantages of FP16 Over FP15.1

Version 15.1 got the job done, but it still relies on an aging Aura foundation with custom code holding the experience together: overridden invoice and receipt HTML, custom item descriptions, one-off checkout components. FP16 replaces most of that with configuration. Display Messages replace banner code, item tabs replace custom description fields, and forms move to a supported foundation. LWC also renders faster than Aura, most visibly on the store, cart, and checkout. The practical gain is day-to-day flexibility: storefront layout changes, promotional messages, and profile updates become admin work in Experience Builder rather than items in a developer queue.

What FP16 means depending on your role

The benefit looks a little different depending on where you sit in the organization:

• Members get smoother, more intuitive digital interactions, from browsing to checkout to renewing.
• Staff get better visibility and cleaner workflows.
• Revenue teams get new levers across commerce, payments, and fundraising: surcharging, Klarna, and richer recurring giving.
• Admins and IT get a modern, Salesforce-aligned foundation built from standard components.
• Leadership gets a platform positioned for growth and future Fonteva releases.

fusionSpan has implemented Fonteva 16.

Fonteva has already shared a live customer example on an FP16 webinar: a trade association with roughly 1,000 corporate members and 7,000 to 8,000 contacts, running on a legacy platform since the early 2000s, that moved its go-live date up to align with the FP16 release and still went live in six months. Staff started using the new system first; members followed about a week later, registering and joining under the new experience ever since.

The team held itself to two rules the whole way through: kill every spreadsheet, and accept zero customizations. They came out the other side with a cleaner org and, in their own words, room to grow they’d previously only dreamed about. That’s the outcome a disciplined, config-first approach makes possible.

Important Considerations Before Upgrading to FP16

FP16 is a planned migration, not a routine patch, and it helps to know that going in.

The Community Site template cannot be upgraded in place, so each site needs a one-time update after upgrading to adopt the new templates and pages while preserving custom pages, navigation, and branding. Review existing customizations and deprecated fields against FP16’s schema changes before the move. There is no automated migration wizard, but fusionSpan offers a readiness assessment.

Events browsing is rebuilt on LWC, but event creation and registration still run through the separate Event Builder. Fonteva has named Events its top roadmap priority, with customer feedback sessions starting this quarter.

FP16 is also the last release to support custom Aura components. If your org has any, plan that migration now rather than letting the next release force it.

None of this is a reason to wait. It is a reason to plan the move deliberately.