How To Create A Client Portal In 30 Minutes? 4-Step No-Code Guide

How to create a client portal and is it difficult?

Well, in our humble opinion, it’s as difficult as you want to make it.

You can try your luck with sticking different free tools together until they make up a creature resembling a client portal. For example, combining Google Sheets with Notion, Trello, Asana, Google Calendar, and any live chat app, if that’s something that fits your business goals.

Unfortunately, that will not only be time-consuming, but it will also be pretty frustrating, as these apps were simply not made to work together smoothly, on top of switching between a whole lot of tabs.

Taking another route, you can go for project management tools that add a client portal feature as a nice add-on. However, this may not necessarily meet your client portal needs, since they usually lack finesse in the UI, client communication, or overall interactiveness in your client portal, providing view-only options.

What to go for then?

To build your client portal in as little time as possible, yet deliver the best results, we suggest going for a dedicated, no-code option — a client portal software that comes in an easily accessible web app.

And in this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to achieve that in 4 simple steps using one intuitive tool — Zendo.

Objectives, AKA Defining Your Client Portal

Getting right into it, the first thing we need to do is set the objectives for our client portal and write them down.

There are different features you may want to go for, depending on the nature of your business or your needs. After all, client portals come in all shapes and sizes.

But for the purpose of this guide, let’s say we want our client portal to have:

• a welcome page/onboarding,
• a dashboard,
• a chat for client communication,
• services & orders,
• forms & requests,
• payments/checkout,
• quotes & invoices,
• file sharing,
• external apps for project feedback & reports,
• advanced customization & white labeling.

⛏️ Tool used: Zendo

⏱️ Time taken to build the client portal: 30 minutes

💰 Money spent to build & maintain it: $49/mo

Create A Client Portal: Step-By-Step Guide

Wasting no time, let’s jump right into the four steps we should complete to create a client portal using Zendo.

Step One: Work On The Sidebar & Main Client Portal Elements

First things first, we have to make sure we have all the blocks of our client portal in place. To do that, we’ll work on our client portal’s sidebar.

After signing up to Zendo, go to Client portal under Settings on the left-hand panel, and choose Sidebars from the drop-down options.

Right then you’ll see the default client portal every new Zendo workspace is equipped with.

It includes:

• a dashboard — so that your clients can easily check on any shared files, submitted requests, or their subscriptions to your services, in one unified place,
• messages — to take client collaboration to a whole new level and easily chat with you, sending messages and replying in real time,

• requests — so that they can submit new requests and chat with your team on any ongoing conversations or projects. The Requests tab collects all your requests in different views, from Kanban to list, and adds a real-time chat for easy request-connected communication on top,
• orders — so that customers can quickly check on their purchased services, looking up things like order number, payment status, service type, and more filtering by various factors,
• quotes & invoices — so that they can easily access documents of importance, aka their quotes and invoices,
• files — so that they can easily browse and download any shared files, as well as upload new files directly in the tab,
• intake forms — to fill out any pending intake forms, as well as review past answers,
• storefront — so that they customers can easily access your services (self service capabilities included), browse through the listed services and make purchases on their own,

• and notifications — so that they can check on any recent activity and access their notifications settings to switch things up if they feel over or underwhelmed by the amount of alerts.

And if that’s enough for your idea of a client portal, you may safely move on to the next step.

But since we’ve set a bit more extensive objectives for our solution, we’re going to add a few additional elements, and customize the default ones to fit the client portal we’re building.

Work on Onboarding

Now, it’s time to work on onboarding our customers into the client portal to make sure their experience is satisfactory and not at all confusing, especially for that first-time log in.

To create a new onboarding experience in Zendo, head to the Settings section on the left-hand panel again, but this time choose Onboarding under Client portal.

There, you’ll be able to create dedicated onboarding experiences for all or selected customers (you can create more than one onboarding and choose who sees what).

Within onboarding, you can add:

• a welcome message,
• different files, from audio to video or regular docs,
• add images,
• checklist with tasks for customers to tick.

The created onboarding will be visible on the customer’s dashboard page we’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph.

💡 Tip! You can choose how much space the client portal onboarding will take, either half or full-sized option.

Add A Project Feedback Page

Now that we have all the basic elements of a professional client portal in place, let’s work on some bonus options to take it to the next level.

First, we can add a project feedback page.

If we want to make sure that our clients get the easiest possible access to their projects and follow their progress smoothly, we can share it through an embedded element in the sidebar.

To do that, head to Sidebars again (left-hand side panel, under Client portal) and choose the Add new sidebar element option to open the selection window.

From there, you can choose to add many different apps directly into the client portal you’re building with iFrame embeds. From Google Docs to Calendly or Figma.

So, for example, for sharing a project for client feedback, you can embed a Figma file and name that section Project feedback.

💡 Tip! You may want to keep the projects’ details or feedback specific to certain clients or client groups. In that case, we suggest creating personalized sidebars specifically for those clients, adding the elements only certain people should see.

Add A Reports Section

In the same vein as project management or document sharing for checking on project status, we’re going to work on adding a reports section to our client portal by simply embedding Google Sheets.

Again, we choose + Add sidebar element and choose the prospective app. In this case, Google Sheets.

While adding this element, we went ahead to check its preview, making sure everything will look just as we’d want it to. In the content field, choose the Preview content button that will ignite a preview popup to appear.

Next, simply change the slug and name of this new section to Reports, and go ahead and paste in the shareable link to your Google Sheets reports found in the trenches of your Google Drive.

💡 Tip! If you want to make sure the client portal you’re creating will be perfectly polished before officially launching it to clients, Zendo gives you the option to save your new creation as a draft or even work on it in a special testing environment called the Sandbox.

Adjust The Colors & Organize It

To further customize our client portal and make things tidier, we’re going to switch up our client portal’s colors, rename a few of the elements, as well as add a few dividers & labels to make sure everything’s nice and organized.

Zendo’s client portal sidebar works on the WYSIWYG basis, showing a live preview on the changes you’re making on the right side of the screen, making the whole tidying up process extremely easy.

Now, to change our sidebar’s colors, we simply click on the elements we want to change the color of. So let’s say we want to change the background and highlight colors; we chose #F4F4F4 for the background color and #B2B2B2 for the highlight.

To add dividers, we simply click the + Add sidebar element, choose Divider and move it around to find the perfect placement.

Next, we want to add our section headings to help divide our client portal categories. Once added, we can use drag and drop to move them around to sit above our selected sections or elements, and rename them accordingly. For example, putting an Important Docs label above our invoices, files, and reports.

---

Once all the changes have been made and we’re sure we want to share our new client portal with our clients, we simply hit the Publish button.

The end result can be easily double-checked from the client’s POV, either by creating a test client account and logging in to your client portal or simply using the impersonation feature, temporarily taking over one of our client’s accounts to really check what the client sees.

Step Two: Add Your Services

If you run a service-based business, Zendo will also make it effortless to add your services and sell them within and outside your client portal.

You can add productized, custom, free, and subscription-based services, collect payments, create whole checkouts, order forms, and more.

So to really seal the deal with our tutorial, we’re going to add 3 services and work on our Storefront and order forms.

To start, head to Settings on the left-hand side panel, then choose Sell, and go to Services. From there, click the Create service button to start working on your first offer.

Choose the service type you want to add, selecting from productized, subscription, custom, and free services.

If you choose productized, you simply add the specific items of your service and price them accordingly. Here, you can easily upsell your offer with add-ons and quantifiable items.

With subscription-based services, you have the option to create different packages with additional options, such as adding free trials, highlighting favorite offers, allowing pausing & canceling for customers, adding discounts, and varied pricing for different billing cycles, from weekly to annual.

In turn, choose custom services if you want to work on more flexible projects that require an estimate and a quote.

Lastly, free services are for anything you want to offer free-of-charge, be it traditional inquiries, support form, or used as a free sample of your services to attract new customers.

Now, each service comes with the option to add a customizable intake/order form you can build from various fields, from file uploads to multi-select boxes.

And to make things a bit prettier, you can also customize individual order pages for each service you create, which include descriptions & images in the step preceding checkout.

All of this can be tied together with a whole Storefront.

Although optional, since you can link from the buttons on your website directly to each service’s checkout and make things even more smooth, a Storefront is a nice add-on to your client portal specifically.

Why?

Because it makes it easy for your clients to order new services directly from their client portal space. Once they’re there, no tab switching will be required.

By default, it comes in as a Storefront tab. However, as with every previous tab we’ve worked on, we can change it to anything else.

For this one, we’ll rename it to Shop 🛒, and move it higher up on the sidebar. That way, our clients will be able to easily access our services and make future purchases.

Step Three: Customize & White-Label

What would it all be without a good dose of customization and white-labeling?

Since we don’t want to make the carefully crafted client portal look like it belongs to someone else or comes from a third-party provider, we’re going to make a few adjustments in the settings of our workspace.

To complete this step, head over to Settings again, and find the General tab on the drop-down menu under Client portal. Clicking on the General tab will lead you straight to the main settings you’d want to tackle.

Once there, staying in the Essentials tab comes with the option to change your company name, personalize the requests view for your clients, choosing if they should see all three views, from list, to table, and Kanban, and which view should be the default one displayed for them to track progress of their requests better.

Additionally, you can decide who should be granted access to your client portal, anyone with a link or just invited clients.

From there, you can also create a top banner with any announcements or special offers you want to highlight at the time, like adding a special deal for Black Friday.

Besides that, you get a few additional options, such as setting the default workspace language (you can choose from 12 languages), time zone, or date and time formats you prefer.

However, we all know we mean something more when hearing of a customizable client portal than just choosing the date and time format. So don’t worry, advanced customizing & white label settings can be found in a different tab.

Choosing the Branding tab, will get you exactly where you need to be to customize your client portal even more.

And here, you get three main areas to work on, starting with the general tab, going through your sign-up & login page, and ending on email settings.

General

The General tab is where you set the main theme of your customer portal: choosing a preferred accent color, adding your logo & favicon, customizing your very own chatbot, changing its name & avatar, connecting your own help center or knowledge bases, and adding your own Terms of Service links.

This is also where you can completely remove any “Powered by Zendo” branding, so that any trace of a third-party provider is wiped out.

But, most importantly, that’s the place to make an official connection to your business website, whether it’s built on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, or any other provider or builder, you can easily connect it with Zendo.

Completing the custom domain settings ensures that your client portal shows up on your website’s URL, making the whole experience much more coherent and cohesive for your clients.

Sign Up & Login

In the second tab, you can work directly on the sign-up and login page that your clients or team members will be using to create their own accounts or simply log in to use it.

Here, you can add your own image to that page or remove any images so that the signing up and logging in box is centered out, ensuring a minimal and clean look.

That’s also the tab you’re going to use to allow or hide the possibility of logging in/signing up using existing Google or Facebook accounts.

Emails

Last but not least, you can connect a custom email domain, so that any outgoing client portal emails come from your own domain, not the Zendo-provided one.

To add some final touches, you can also spice up our emails by adding your own logo and personalizing the footer note.

Step Four: Invite Your Clients

As a sweet cherry on top, now it’s time to puff your chest and add your client profiles into the equation, showing off your brand new client portal, all while offering a fully secure experience.

To give your customers access and add them as users, head to the Clients tab found on the left-side panel and either copy an invitation link or invite clients directly by email typing or copy-pasting their email addresses in the invite window.

The invitation link can be easily connected to your website, either in a separate Client portal or Members page, or directly under a button you add.

Inviting by email is perfect for manually adding any existing clients you know of, simply by pasting multiple emails in Zendo and pressing Send invites.

Once you invite your clients, using either method, they’ll be able to sign up and set their own passwords, ensuring a secure client portal complete safe for exchanging sensitive information.

To make it even less demanding for the end customer, you can also add the each customer yourself, creating their accounts, adding their information into the portal, and simply requiring an account verification that’ll be sent to the customer’s email address.

Now, signing up to your client portal keeps your clients up-to-date even if they’re not logged in.

Email notifications, which can be personalized per each account, make sure your clients stay on top of the business with no effort. New message, request, status change, or invoice issued, they’ll be the first to know.

Surprise Your Clients With A Professional Tool

With the rising customer expectations, the need to properly handle sensitive data left and right, regular solutions like back and forth emails or glued together makeshift solutions simply no longer cut it.

Instead, you can impress your clients using a dedicated client portal software.

That way, you’ll be sure to save yourself from all the frustration and countless hours spent trying to build a client portal from the ground up using unrelated tools, and grant yourself some peace and immediate solutions instead. Zendo comes with a pleasant learning curve, and carefully crafted UI ensuring ultimate intuitiveness while meeting all your business needs.

Using this tool, we’ve built our client portal in under 30 minutes, setting up everything from services and a client portal sidebar to embedding external apps and taking advantage of a myriad of white label options without having to write a single line of code.

This tool makes building your very own client portal an absolute breeze, and comes with unlimited clients for which you can create personalized portals sharing private data securely.

Moreover, a Zendo client portal can be easily connected to any website, from Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or any other, ensuring a smooth customer journey and a completely professional experience, from start to finish.

And if your budget is not made of elastic, you’ll be happy to learn that Zendo comes with a free forever Essential plan that gives you all the essential client portal features completely for free with no time limit, no credit card required.

As your business grows, you may move to paid plans that simply offer more. Zendo is a fully scalable client portal tool.

If you’re still in need of answers, go ahead and check out the most frequently asked questions section below.

Frequently Asked Questions: How To Create A Client Portal?

What Are Customer Portals?

Customer portals are secure, password-protected spaces for clients to easily share files, access project or order information, complete payments, check on invoices, get in touch with the seller, and more. They can come in many different sizes and forms, however, dedicated client portal software offers such a solution in the form of easily accessible web apps.

How To Create A Client Portal?

Just as many client portal shapes, there are as many ways to create a client portal. Some go for DIY solutions, like sticking together different tools, such as Trello to check on project timelines + Google Sheets to add client data + Asana to manage tasks + Slack for client interactions, while others go for ready-made, yet customizable options, such as dedicated client portal software. Not all are created equal, though. Using the right tools is a much more efficient option, while staying affordable.

Is Client Portal Software A Good Option?

But using a client portal software is not only going to save you a whole lot of time, it also comes with a myriad of benefits. For one, it gives clients access to everything you want to share with them, making working on client relationships that much easier. From completing payments to files or your team’s communication channel, all with complete security, being it’s password-protected. For two, it’s fairly cheap, some even offer free forever plans. For three, it’s way easier than any DIY option or other tools duct-taped together.

How To Create A Client Portal In Zendo?

There are four steps to get done to create a client portal in Zendo, all can be completed in under 30 minutes. Step one involves working on our client portal sidebar, aka, adding all the elements we want it to have, renaming them, and working on their order and look. Step two is adding our services, order forms, client information, working on the checkout pages & Storefront. Step three is customizing & white labeling our client portal, for example by connecting a custom domain. Lastly, step four is to simply invite your clients to access your client portal.

What Features Does Zendo Client Portal Have?

Zendo is a complete customer portal software that offers many features for creating dedicated custom client portal solutions. From collaboration tools for easily tracking project data, including project management tools, like secure document sharing to role based access for team members.

What Customization And Branding Features Does Zendo Offer?

Zendo offers a full range of features to create completely custom portals and really tailor them to your brand identity. No matter if we’re speaking of creative agencies or law firms, the entire portal in Zendo is not only a secure environment, but also a tailored one. From colors to logos to custom sign up & login pages, to changing the UX copy, adding your own apps and documents, and removing Zendo’s branding completely, this tool makes customization possible and easy while at it.