Client Portal: Streamline Your Business

Why choose Clinked? It’s easy to use and full of features!

What is a Client portal

A client portal is a secure, cloud-based platform enabling file sharing and collaboration between a business and its clients. Client portal includes multi-level access restrictions that ensure that different user groups can access specific data in a specific way.

For instance, the clients can only access to their own files and the other clients’ data is hidden from them. At the same time, the employees of the business can access the data of all clients what are assigned to them, but cannot see other employees clients’ files. Client portal’s settings are highly customizable and can be changed depending on the specific situation.

What is a client portal used for?

A client portal is used to improve business’ communication and collaboration with clients and for secure files storage.

Clients get access to their files 24 hours a day and are able to upload, download and edit them in real time. They can communicate and collaborate with the business’ staff through messaging, discussions and one-to-one and group chat.

A client portal can be used to securely store and share documents with an option to provide multiple levels of access restrictions, starting from a very restricted access, when the user can only view the file for a limited period of time, but not edit or download it, to full access when the client can freely share, edit and delete the file.

Some client portals offer popular apps integrations that allow additional functionality, such as e-signatures.

What should a client portal include?

A client portal should include the following features:

• Cloud Storage: All documents and files are stored online
• Document Collaboration: Review, comment and annotate throughout creation process
• eSignature & Approval: Use approval processes or eSignatures to finalise document and have a memorialised audit trail
• Groups (or Channels): User defined permission based groups allowing specific parties access with easy to control user management
• Advanced Permissions: Allowing multiple groups with security concerns
• Password Management: Members has self-controlled governance of passwords allowing admins to focus on work
• Discussion Boards: Groups and teams can communicate internally or remotely online
• Project Management: Using flexible self-managed event calendars and tasks to assign work to members across internal and external members
• Tasks: Assign and manage Tasks to keep progress visible, set due dates and milestones and send automatic email notifications when there is an update
• Group Chat: Allowing real time communication between groups or individuals with 1-1 chat
• Audit Trial: Know who has accessed, changed or delete data on the platform as well as which devices or browsers have been used to access the platform in real time and easy export functionality
• White-label: Allows for your company branding to take be presented throughout the platform in an easy to manage way

What are the benefits of a client portal?

A client portal can benefit businesses by easing the workload of employees and helps them to provide excellent value-add to client relationships. Client portals open up broader channels of communications for companies working with geographical flexibility and allows businesses to scale value-add offerings to their client portfolio.

Why client portals are becoming a must for client-facing businesses?

Historically, client portals have been used as a tool for organisations to allow specific parties, often client or partnering organisations, to access documentation for viewing or downloading in a one-way communication channel, sometimes called an FTP site or VDR. These one-way channels ensured the correct parties were accessing the correct documentation. However, technology and client facing organisational needs are evolving. At Clinked, we believed client portals needed to evolve as well.

Today, client portals are innovating to offer higher service through providing mobile apps and integrations with other software applications. These innovations include replicating the functionality of many popular tools used for team collaboration that cannot be fully opened for security reasons with outside parties. Today’s technologies have increased the abilities of collaboration and whilst being a modern concept, many businesses see and reap the benefits of two-way channels for teams and clients.

Are client portals safe?

The short answer is – it depends on the provider! At Clinked we offer the best in class security for all our users – regardless of their package, including safe data transfers and storage, as well as TLS 1.2 standards for all communication. Our security features include:

• Two-factor authentication
• Complex passwords
• Encryption in transit & at rest
• Secure Data Centers
• Automatic account lockout
• User-based permissions
• Audit trail
• See all Clinked security and compliance features

How do I create a client portal website?

You can either create a client portal website from scratch or sign up for one of the existing SaaS client portal services, such as Clinked. The former option will be very costly because you would have to create various essential features that are available as standard from the existing providers and then also build your specific features on top. If you decide to join a cloud-based client portal service, your outlay can be as low as $99 per month for a full-featured, completely secure client portal that would satisfy most small business’ needs. If you require a custom portal, it is much cheaper and easier to go with an established client portal provider, and build you unique client portal on their existing infrastructure. Clinked offers custom-built client portals that are tailored to your specific needs and can be delivered very quickly. Contact us to discuss.

How do I add a client portal to my website?

It is very easy to add a client portal to your website. First, you will need to sign up to one of the client portal packages, customize your portal with your branding to make it indistinguishable from your existing website, set it up in a sub-folder of your website and then simply add a link to your website’s menu, or use a custom domain feature to set up your portal on a subdomain your site. For instance, it can look like https://www.clients.your-organization.com, or like http://www.your-organisation-clients.com.

Why should my business invest in a client portal?

The adoption of client portals have become standard operational features for many businesses working with multiple businesses or clients for three key reasons:

• Security: Client portals should offer 256bit SSL encryption, which is standard for online banking, at a minimum. Also, data is stored remotely in data centres employing physical security measures offering a more secure option than on a private server, PC or network.
• Storage: Storage within remote data centres means that usually your files are stored across multiple servers and are therefore more protected against physical hardware failure.
• Geographical Flexibility: Many organisations have embraced geographic flexibility for their teams working in various locations and off premise. Also, clients are in similar positions with their geographical flexibility, however require direct access with low friction.

Businesses have been able to educate teams and clients on the benefits of a client portal as a central hub of information and platform to access data. It has become an attractive asset due to the flexibility allowing teams and clients to collaborate securely on demand.

How much does a client portal cost?

The prices vary based on your business’ needs and the amount and type of features that your business requires. For the most basic client portal you can expect to pay as little as $20 per month, the average SME would probably have to budget for $100-500 per month. There is also an option of a completely custom client portal where the design and functionality is tailored to your businesses needs precisely. The cost would then include an initial design fee, which varies from several thousand US Dollars to hundreds of thousands if not millions for some large corporations. You can see Clinked pricing here.