Custom client portal: give your clients a home (and win back your hours)

"Could you resend me the March invoice?" "Where's my order at?" "What was the link to that document again?" If these messages fill your inbox, you know the problem. Each request costs you five minutes, and those five minutes come back every day, for every client. A client portal exists for exactly that: to stop answering by hand questions a tool can settle on its own.

A client portal, what is it exactly?#

It's a private part of your website where each client logs in with their own credentials and finds everything that concerns them: their documents, their invoices, the progress of their orders or files, a way to write to you. They gain autonomy, you win back hours. And as a bonus, it projects a far more serious image than an email thread with attachments flying in every direction.

What it changes, concretely#

Time, first. All the repetitive requests disappear from your inbox: clients help themselves, at any hour. Then clarity. No more lost files, duplicate versions, or "I never received it". Everything sits in one place, up to date, for everyone.

And then there's the effect on the relationship. A client who follows their file in real time doesn't need to chase you for reassurance. They can see things moving. It sounds small, but it changes the tone of the whole collaboration.

What you can put in it#

Every trade has its ideal client portal, and that's exactly why we build it custom. A few building blocks that come up often:

• Documents: quotes, invoices, contracts, deliverables, downloadable at any time.
• Tracking: the progress of an order, a job, a file, step by step.
• Payments: settling an invoice online, viewing the history.
• Messages: asking a question in the right place, instead of in the umpteenth email.
• Actions: booking an appointment, placing a new order, sending a document.

The right question at the start isn't "what could we put in?" but "what do my clients ask me all the time?". The answer sketches your first portal.

Off-the-shelf or custom?#

There are ready-made client portals for rent. For very standard needs, they can do the job, and we'll tell you if that's your case. But the limits show up fast: the tool imposes its boxes, your trade doesn't fit in, and there you are bending your habits to match the software. Not to mention the image: your client portal looks like everyone else's.

A custom portal takes the opposite path. It fits the way you work, it wears your colors, and it plugs into your existing tools: your invoicing, your calendar, your till. That's what we did for a multi-location bakery, with a platform that connects the website, the till and the deliveries in a single dashboard.

What it costs, and how we go about it#

With us, a custom client portal starts at €10,000. The budget mostly depends on the number of building blocks and the connections with your existing tools. We covered everything that drives the price in our article on the cost of custom software.

And we don't build everything at once. We start with a first version carrying the essentials, the one that already removes 80% of your repetitive emails. You put it in your clients' hands, we listen to what they say, and we add the next blocks as real needs appear. Your portal grows with your business, not ahead of it.

We look at your terrain#

Tell us about your day-to-day: who your clients are, what they ask you, what eats your time. We'll tell you frankly whether a client portal makes sense, what we'd put in first, and what it would cost.

Let's talk about your project

Frequently asked questions#