What is a client portal, and does your business need one?

A password-protected area of your site where a client logs in to see something meant only for them: documents, project updates, invoices, files. It's not the same as an admin area for your own team, it's a private space you're giving to the people you work for.

• You regularly send the same client updates, files, or documents by email and it's got messy.
• Clients ask you for status updates you could just show them instead.
• You need more than one type of content behind the login, or more than one role: a client seeing their own project, an admin seeing everyone's.
• You want two-way interaction: uploads, messaging, approvals, or signing something inline.

If you've got one or two clients at a time and a shared folder already does the job, a portal is solving a problem at a scale you don't have yet. It's genuinely one of the pricier add-ons, because it needs its own login system and its own database, not just a page.

A basic portal, one content type, read-only, a single role, starts from £2,000. It goes up from there for more content types, light interactivity like file downloads or marking things read, and further again for multiple roles or two-way interaction like messaging or e-signing. It's built into the Premium package and can be added to any package as an add-on. Because it holds logins and private client data, a site with a portal needs to sit on my top maintenance plan, Pro.

Ask what a client actually gains from logging in that a well-organised email or shared folder doesn't already give them. If the answer is real, a portal is worth it. If the answer is "it looks professional", that's a weaker reason to spend this much.