Empowering customers with client portal software

What is a client portal?

A client portal is a secure digital gateway to an organization’s network, community forum, customer information, knowledge base, and/or other information. Organizations often use client portals as a central place to share information with their customers. Typically, these portals are accessible via a web browser or mobile app. Client portals, also called customer portals, rely on client portal software, which gives clients the ability to securely log in and access information, files, and services online.

Why do you need a customer portal?

In the early days of the internet, email was the main line of communication between a company and its customers. While this can be an effective tool for outreach efforts, it doesn’t give customers quick access to the things they want, like status updates to open customer service tickets or account information. So if a customer needs this information, they must reach out to the company, ultimately taking account executives and customer service agents away from other work.

Many companies now employ a customer portal solution, something that puts the power into the customer’s hands. With an open source customer portal, customers can log in anytime they want and get access to things they need without having to reach out directly to the company.

What are the benefits of client portal software?

Providing customers with a portal has a variety of advantages over other solutions like email. Here are four of the top benefits of client portal software:

On-demand information

Customers expect service now. Especially if they’re having an issue with your product or service. With a well-implemented customer portal, you don’t have to force them to wait for one of your agents to free up. Instead, you can offer them on-demand information they can use to find what they need when they need it. In addition to making your customers happy, on-demand information can also greatly reduce the number of time-consuming requests your agents get from customers to resend an invoice or a ticket update.

Less strain on the company

Although customer inquiries often lead to opportunities for engagement, it’s unrealistic—even inefficient—to attempt to put an agent on every single customer question. It’s unfair to your agents and unsustainable if you’re trying to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. A customer portal greatly reduces the risk of your agents becoming overwhelmed.

Effective portals prevent a large number of customers, who just want things like status updates to a customer service ticket, from directly reaching out to the company.

Security

Most people don’t realize just how easy it is for criminals to compromise email communications. And if that happens, whether it’s your fault or not, your customers will not be happy. With security features like encryption, though, your customers can safely upload and access sensitive information.

Greater flexibility

The best client portals serve as the entrance to your entire online support experience, which makes them far more flexible than email—or for that matter, any one communication method. With a customer portal, you have much higher limits on the size and type of files you can upload. Plus, you can centralize other customer interactions like ticket tracking, billing, messaging, and more.

What should a customer portal include?

There are several, high-level features you’ll find in common among most modern customer portals. To help you prepare to compare customer portals, here are five common features to look for and evaluate.

1. Brand customization

   Anyone whose job it is to attract and retain customers knows how important a cohesive customer experience is. Customizable portal software enables you to offer self-service options without presenting inconsistent branding or directing your customers to an unfamiliar URL. At a minimum, your client portal software should allow you to map the portal to your domain and control the design of the portal itself.

2. Secure file management

   Cybersecurity has been a concern since the dawn of the internet. But today, that concern is top of mind for consumers as well as businesses. So whether you run a B2B or B2C business (or both), you can’t afford to allow your customers’ data to be compromised. Using customer portal software is a great way to unlock another layer of security, but you still have to make sure your solution has sufficient security measures in place.

3. Billing

   The best client portal software has features that allow you to upload invoices and enable your customers to pay and see their invoices. This also prevents your customers from having to search for bills in a crowded email inbox. Instead, they can easily access the payment information they need, along with other documents, in your customer portal.

4. Self-service options

   By definition, customer portal software is a self-service option. But the types of self-service options can vary significantly. If you’re looking for a portal for your customer support team, you will likely need self-service options such as the ability to look up ticket histories and submit new tickets, contribute and track contributions to community forums, and search for knowledge base articles.

5. Collaboration tools

   Just because a client portal gives your customers a place to self-serve doesn’t mean your agents aren’t still heavily involved. To ensure customer requests are addressed quickly and completely, support agents need visibility into requests and the ability to share updates or request assistance from other team members. This is especially true when you’re serving large organizations where your customer is more than one person.

Top 10 client portal software

1. Zendesk

Zendesk’s online customer requests portal helps customers keep track of activities that matter the most. Customers can check the status of their support requests, review updates to their knowledge base and community contributions, and track content they’re following—all from a single location. And with a dedicated client portal, customers find exactly what they’re looking for.

Customers can also create new requests on the Zendesk customer portal. You can pick and choose which fields a customer needs to complete so support agents have the context they need when resolving a request.

One place for everything

A well-designed help desk portal is a customer’s home for information on their support requests. Customers can search through previous interactions or tickets they’re CC’d on to find answers to questions that they’ve already asked, saving them time—and saving your team from repetitive queries.

Your customer portal, your brand

Branded support portals reassure customers they’re in the right place. The Zendesk user portal supports logos and custom themes so that it matches your brand. And you can deliver a seamless experience between your own website and your help center by using your own domain and configuring single sign-on.

Zendesk for businesses and individuals

Many companies, particularly B2B, rely on long-term relationship management with their customers. And as relationships progress, customer accounts tend to grow—not just in terms of value but also headcount. Zendesk’s client portal supports shared organizations, so members can see each other’s requests and increase transparency when the customer is more than one person. This enables simplified workflows for your support agents and better service for your biggest customers.

Zendesk’s customer portal features

• Brand customization
• File management
• Collaboration tools
• Billing
• Self-service options
• Knowledge base
• Ticket management
• Community forums

2. Huddle

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Huddle is a customer portal software that’s geared towards complicated client engagements where data security is a priority. It’s all centered around the concept of “Workspaces,” which is where you organize people, files, tasks, and conversations associated with a project. In this way, you can use Huddle as both a client portal and a task management tool.

But because it’s designed more like a document and task management tool, it’s not as well-suited to customer service teams with a large volume of service tickets. The cost of Huddle is not provided on their website but you can request a quote for one of their three plans.

Features

• Custom branding
• File management
• Online document collaboration
• Secure file sharing

3. Zoho Creator

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Zoho Creator is an impressively flexible collaboration portal software anyone can use to build a variety of different kinds of portals. In addition to a client help desk or support portal, Zoho is flexible enough to create portals for project management, HR, and even order fulfillment.

The reason Zoho Creator is so flexible is that it provides a low-code platform to develop all kinds of applications, not just portals. But that means it’s on the pricier side as far as client portal software goes. And support portals aren’t included in their starter plan so you’ll need to pay $37 per month for premium ($27/month if you pay yearly) or $40 per month (billed annually) for their ultimate plan.

Features

• Brand customization
• File management
• Collaboration tools
• SDKs, APIs, and widgets
• Billing
• Self-service portal
• Knowledge content management
• Email ticketing
• Discussion forums

4. Portal

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Portal is an intuitive customer portal software that provides modules for messaging, billing, files, eSignatures, forms, and knowledge bases. There’s also a module for embedded dashboards, which allows you to connect analytics software to your portal. It’s simple to set up and easy to use, but it doesn’t have native support for some vital customer support functions like ticket routing.

Portal’s pricing is organized into two plans, Standard at $59 per user/per month and Professional at $95 per user/per month. And you can get 20 percent off those prices if you pay annually.

Features

• Brand customization
• Files and eSignatures
• Messaging tools
• Global and client-specific extensions
• Customer payments
• Self-service portal
• Knowledge base management

5. HappyFox

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As a staple name in the world of customer service software, you’d expect HappyFox to develop customer portal software, and they have. The HappyFox client portal makes a whole range of self-service options available to your customers, including support for ticket tracking, community forums, and knowledge bases.

HappyFox’s customer portal also allows plenty of customization using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Their price tiers range from $39 to $99 per user per month, and there is no free trial.

Features

• Brand customization
• Secure file sharing
• Customer billing
• Self-service knowledge base
• Content management
• Ticket routing, categorization, and tagging
• Community forums

Learn more about Zendesk for HappyFox

6. MyDocSafe

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A basic program for onboarding clients and sharing files, MyDocSafe provides secure client portal software that extends to include document management, billing, e-forms, ID verification, and automation. Using MyDocSafe, you can share files and documents for signing and collect customer data with forms.

MyDocSafe’s customizable workflows also enable you to completely automate the onboarding process. The vendor does offer a free trial and pricing ranges from $20 to $28 per user per month (when billed annually). There is a cheaper plan of $7 per month but it only provides a digital signature feature.

Features

• Customizable workflows
• Fully customizable portals
• Full audit trails
• Secure document management
• Data security
• Customer payments
• Self-service options
• Multi-party signing

7. SupportBee

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In addition to its simple, intuitive ticketing system, SupportBee provides client portal software that’s great for small teams. Their customer portal enables your clients to submit new support requests and check in on past requests. One of SupportBee’s unique features is how the software handles customer logins. Rather than requiring customers to remember usernames and passwords, your agents can send private links that customers can use to access the portal.

SupportBee offers a 14-day trial and they offer two plans—only the Enterprise plan includes their portal software. The Startup plan is $15 per user per month and Enterprise is $20 per user per month. And you can get 13 percent off those prices if you purchase SupportBee annually.

Features

• Portal customization
• Domain mapping
• Shareable private portal links
• Secure file sharing
• Billing
• Self-service knowledge base
• Ticket management
• Discussion forums

8. Clinked

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Designed for a variety of industries, Clinked consolidates communication between clients and internal teams in a secure, mobile portal. While it doesn’t natively provide ticket tracking, knowledge base, or forum accessibility, customers can make requests through Clinked. And since it’s as white-label client portal software, that means it’s fully customizable.

Clinked is a good fit if you’re looking for a portal that’s focused on project collaboration. Through real-time chat and document collaboration tools, it’s a great option for centralized task management. Clinked provides four plans priced between $99 and $995 per month, though you can get up to 35 percent off if you purchase a two-year plan.

Features

• Branded portals
• Real-time file sharing
• Document collaboration tools
• Secure document management
• Live chat
• Mobile app

9. AzureDesk

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AzureDesk is a robust helpdesk software that includes self-service customer portals as well as ticket routing, knowledge base management, and email-to-ticket conversion. Once you’re registered with AzureDesk, you’ll have an admin portal where you can add FAQs, knowledge base articles, and more to your customer support portal.

Using an AzureDesk portal, your customers can easily search your knowledge base and look up and make new requests. And it’s customizable so you can give your client portal the look and feel of your brand. AzureDesk offers a Plus plan for $33 per user per month when billed annually and $50 per user per month when billed monthly.

Features

• Domain mapping
• Branding customization
• FAQs
• API
• Secure file management
• Payments
• Knowledge base management
• Ticket routing
• Community forums

10. Kahootz

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If it’s secure enough for the UK Ministry of Defence, Kahootz is probably secure enough for you. And on top of great security, Kahootz provides intuitive, powerful customer portal software that includes forums, document management, surveys, content creation, and much more. Similar to Huddle, Kahootz is as much a project management tool as it is a client portal, but it doesn’t provide ticket routing.

You can start a free trial of Kahootz software and give it a try before you buy. If you decide to buy, you’ll need to contact Kahootz through their website to receive a quote.

Features

• Portal customization
• Customer surveys
• Forums
• Secure data sharing and file management
• Content management
• Document collaboration tools
• Billing

A summary of the best customer portal software

Here’s how our top 15 picks for customer portal software stack up against one another at a glance:

How to choose the right support portal for your business?

Support portals come in many forms, from point products solely dedicated to consolidated communication to separate modules of a full-blown helpdesk solution. Beyond how they’re packaged, support portals also differ greatly depending on whom they’re built for.

For example, the portal a professional service company needs differs greatly from the one an e-commerce company or a B2B tech provider would need. With so many factors influencing which is the ideal portal for your team, it helps to simplify things.

When evaluating any customer portal software, consider the following: