What a client portal costs,
and where that amount comes from.
A client portal starts at € 3,450: customers log in and see their own file. Add an integration with your accounting or planning system, or several roles side by side, and most projects land at € 4,500 to € 9,000. Below is what each scope gets you, and which choices move the amount.
Your sheet out, a system in its place
- Your sheet read through: what counts as a client, an order, a line item here
- Your data migrated and cleaned up, history included, nothing flattened
- Login, user management and one record type with list, filters, search and detail
- Switching over while the business keeps running, plus hosting, delivery and two weeks of aftercare
- Time to launch
- 3 weeks
- Hosting and maintenance p/m
- € 100
Nothing ticked yet. The base is the project itself: picking your sheet apart, migrating it and switching over without downtime. Start with the things you do by hand today; most companies land somewhere in € 4,500 to € 9,000.
This is an indication, not a quote. The components below are scope, not surcharges: what you tick decides how big the project is. After a thirty-minute intake you get one fixed amount per milestone. If the scope turns out different, you hear it before we start and not afterwards on the invoice.
Six things set the price. The number of screens is not one of them.
Integrations
Every source that has to come along is its own piece of work: accounting, CRM, planning, stock. One integration is a different project from four, and this is by far the biggest item.
Roles and permissions
One type of user is simple. Customers, staff, admins and partners who each see something different per record is the real work.
Existing data
Migrating history out of an old system or a spreadsheet takes time, especially when the same customer is in there three times under slightly different names.
Self-management
If you want to change fields, texts or roles yourself without me, that needs an admin side. It is a choice, not a given.
Documents and files
Showing invoices is one thing. Uploading, tracking versions and controlling per role who sees which document is another.
Design
Staying inside your existing brand style is cheapest. A dedicated design for the portal is fine, but it is work you pay for separately.
From question to one fixed amount.
A half-hour conversation
Who logs in, what those people need to see, and where that information sits today. I do not need more than that for a serious indication.
Scope on paper
What is in it and what is not in it, both written down. The second list prevents the discussion that otherwise arrives in week five.
One fixed amount
No hourly billing and no paid discovery phase. If it runs over because I estimated wrong, that is my problem.
Pay per delivered part
You pay per milestone, and only once that part works. On a six-week project that is usually three or four instalments.
- ✓Login with roles and permissions per user
- ✓Permissions at database level, not only in the screen
- ✓Admin side for your own team
- ✓Integrations with the systems that are in scope
- ✓Repository, hosting and code in your name
Not the number of screens but the number of integrations and the permission structure set the amount.
Work out your own configuration above, or take half an hour on the phone. After that you get one amount that I stick to.
Three scopes, three amounts
Almost every portal falls into one of these three. The difference is not how good it looks, but how many places the data has to come from and how many kinds of user are allowed in.
If you are torn between two scopes, pick the smaller one and build on. A portal that is live in six weeks and actually used is worth more than a complete portal that is still unfinished in March. How pricing works more broadly is on pricing.
Visibility: from € 3,450
Customers log in and see their own file: orders, invoices, status. One type of user, data from one source. The smallest version that genuinely saves you phone calls.
Visibility, documents and roles: € 4,500 to € 9,000
Add files, several users per client company, and an admin side where your team changes things themselves. This is where most projects land.
Portal with integrations: higher, depending on the number of sources
Invoices live from your accounting, planning from your scheduling tool, stock from your ERP. Every integration is its own piece of work, so I only name this amount once I know which packages they are and whether they have an API.
What brings the price down
A handful of choices genuinely make a difference, and they are not the ones people reach for first. Dropping screens barely helps; these do.
And the biggest saving of all: if nobody from outside has to log in, you do not need a portal but a dashboard. That drops the entire permission model, and with a portal that is exactly where the time goes.
- ✓Start with one role instead of four
- ✓One integration now, the rest later
- ✓Do not migrate history, build it up from now on
- ✓Stay inside your existing brand style
- ✓Leave admin with me first, self-management later
- ✓Notifications by email instead of inside the portal
What it costs afterwards
After delivery there is one recurring item: € 100 a month, or € 1,200 a year. That covers hosting, backups, security updates and small changes, plus the part you only miss when you need it: that someone picks up when it jams on a Tuesday afternoon.
That amount deliberately does not scale with the build price. It is recurring work with its own cost, not a percentage of your project. What exactly falls under it is on maintenance and support.
Monthly package or one-off custom build
There is portal software you rent per month, and for a standard process that is a perfectly good choice. You are live quickly and you pay per user. Do run the sum over three years before you choose, because that is where the comparison tips.
The honest rule of thumb: if the package fits eighty percent, take the package. If the difference sits in the part your customers judge you on, then with a package you pay for years for work you have to build around it anyway.
Monthly package
Live quickly and low risk, but your process bends to the software, you pay per user, and that keeps running as long as you use it.
Custom build
The software bends to your process, connects to what you already have, and the code sits in your repository. One-off investment, then only hosting and maintenance.
What does it cost to get a client portal built?
Do I pay per user?
What does maintenance cost per year?
How long until it is live?
Can I pay in instalments?
What if the scope changes during the build?
Tell me what you
want to build.
A half-hour call. You get an honest answer about what it costs, how long it takes and whether building it is smart at all.