Agency client portal: what it is, how to choose
What an agency client portal is, what clients should see in it, how they sign in, and the questions to ask before you choose a custom client portal.
Spodus team
Published 3 min read
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Key takeaways
- An agency client portal is one page where a client sees their invoices, quotes, contracts, projects and requests.
- It should read from the same records your team works in, not from copies you upload.
- Check how clients sign in and whether each one counts as a paid seat.
- Branding and a custom domain matter less to clients than finding their invoice in ten seconds.
An agency client portal is a private page where your clients sign in and see everything you have shared with them: invoices, quotes to approve, contracts to sign, project progress and their requests. It replaces the emails that start with "can you resend" and "where are we with", and it shows each client only their own records.
What a client portal is for
Clients ask an agency the same five questions all month:
- What do I owe you?
- Did you get my approval?
- Where is the contract?
- Where is the project?
- What happened to my request?
Each question costs someone on your team a search, a reply and a context switch. A client portal answers all five without a person, at any hour, and keeps a record of what the client did.
What clients should see
| Place | What it shows | What the client can do |
|---|---|---|
| Home | What is waiting on them | Open the item that needs them |
| Invoices and quotes | Every document you sent, with status and balance | Read, download, accept or decline a quote |
| Contracts | Their contracts and the terms in plain words | Sign one you sent |
| Projects | Progress and milestones | Approve a milestone or ask for changes |
| Requests | Their open and past requests | Raise a new one and follow it |
And what they should never see: drafts, internal notes, tasks, your costs and margins, and other clients.
How clients should sign in
The best sign-in is the one clients do not have to remember. A link sent by email that signs them in once, with no password, works for most clients, because they visit the portal a few times a month, not every day. A password they set once and forget becomes a support request.
Check two more things:
- Who can sign in. Every contact at the client, or only the ones you invite.
- Whether each client is a paid seat. Some tools charge per portal user. For an agency with many clients and several contacts at each, that changes the bill a lot.
How to choose a client portal
Ask these on a demo:
- Does it read from my CRM and invoicing, or do I upload copies? Copies go out of date the day you make them.
- Can clients act, or only look? Accepting a quote, signing a contract and approving a milestone save the most email.
- How do clients sign in? Email link, password, or an account they create.
- Do portal clients count as seats?
- What is hidden? Drafts, notes and costs must stay inside.
- How is it branded? Your logo and colours, and whether the address is yours or the vendor's.
- Can they pay in it? Some portals take card payments; some only show the invoice.
Branding comes sixth on purpose. Clients notice a portal that is slow or confusing long before they notice whose domain it runs on.
How Spodus does it
Spodus has a client portal built into the CRM. Turn it on, then send a client a portal link from their contact. They get a sign-in link by email that works once and lasts three days, with no password. Signed in, they see Home, Invoices and quotes, Contracts, Projects and Support, all read from the records your team works in. They can accept or decline a quote, sign a contract, and approve a milestone or ask for changes. You get notified and the record updates.
The portal shows your invoice logo, business name and accent colour, and a small Powered by Spodus in the footer. It runs on a Spodus address: there is no custom domain and no white label. Clients cannot pay in the portal; you record payments as they arrive. Portal clients never take a seat.
Read more about the client portal, see Spodus for agencies, or set it up with Turn on the client portal.
Questions, answered
- What is an agency client portal?
- An agency client portal is a private page where a client signs in to see what an agency has shared with them: invoices, quotes to approve, contracts to sign, project progress and their support requests. It replaces the email threads clients use to ask where things are, and it shows each client only their own company's records.
- What should a client portal show?
- What clients ask you about most. For most agencies that is the open invoices and what is owed, quotes waiting for an answer, contracts waiting for a signature, where each project is, and the status of their requests. It should never show drafts, internal notes, costs or another client's records.
- Do I need a custom client portal built for my agency?
- Usually not. A custom client portal built from scratch, or on a no-code tool, has to be kept in sync with your CRM and invoicing, which is the hard part. A portal that comes with the system you already run reads the same records, so it is never out of date. Build your own only if your clients need something no product offers.
