Is there any difference between Community User and common AEM user?

[Diego_Fontan]

What are the differences between a Community User (in AEM) and a common AEM user? Is valid to create 50 million of users inside AEM Community (using ASRP)? or do you guys recommend to have those users in an external system?

What if I need to manage preferences and personalisation for each user? Can I store that information in ASRP? or Is that info necessarily stored in usual AEM Profile?

Thank you

[JK_Kendall · Accepted solution]

SRP is for the storage of community content, commonly referred to as user generated content (UGC).  User credentials and profiles are not stored in SRP.  

Essentially, there is no difference between an AEM Community user and a common AEM user.

Conceptually :

A Community user exists only in the publish environment and commonly is referred to as a 'member'.  The JCR path, /home/users/community, has permissions which allow one member to see another member's profile for activities such as 'following'.

The 'common' AEM user exists in the author environment for purposes of authoring, administering, deploying, developing and managing.

- JK