How much does a customer portal cost?

A customer portal is the place your customers sign in to see their account: orders, invoices, documents, project status, payments, whatever they would otherwise call or email you about. You can rent one, switch on the one your accounting or ERP system offers, or have one built. Here is what each tends to cost, and how to tell which you need.

Your three options

• A client portal subscription. Hosted portal products for agencies, accountants and service firms charge a monthly fee, usually per user, per client or per feature tier. Quick to start and fine when your process looks like everyone else’s.
• Your system’s own portal. QuickBooks, NetSuite and most practice and field service tools offer some customer-facing view, like invoice links or a customer center. No sync to worry about, but the screens and the flow are the vendor’s.
• A custom portal. Built around what your customers actually do, under your brand and domain, connected to your systems through their APIs. A one-time build plus hosting and support, with no per-user fees.

Typical custom build ranges

For a professional US team building a portal you own:

• $15,000 to $35,000: a focused client portal. Secure sign-in, document requests and uploads, status for each job or engagement, e-signature and card or ACH payments, posted to QuickBooks. Usually 4 to 8 weeks. Our client portal is this size.
• $25,000 to $60,000: a portal on your ERP. Customer-specific pricing, ordering and reorder, order status and tracking, invoices and statements, read from and written to NetSuite, Business Central, Acumatica or QuickBooks. Our guide on B2B ordering portal cost goes deeper on this one.
• $60,000 and up: several user types (buyers, approvers, reps, partners), several integrations, a mobile app, or a portal you sell access to.
• Running it: hosting is usually $50 to $300 a month; maintenance, security updates and small changes commonly $500 to $2,000 a month.

What moves the price

• What it connects to. A portal that only stores what you put in it is the simple case. Every live system behind it (accounting, ERP, CRM, a carrier, a scheduling tool) adds integration work, and messy data adds more.
• Who signs in, and what each one sees. One contact per customer is simpler than companies with several users, each allowed to see different things.
• Payments. Card and ACH through Stripe is routine. Partial payments, deposits, autopay and posting each payment to the right invoice take more care.
• Security and compliance. Tax documents, health records and legal files need encryption, access logs, two-factor sign-in and sometimes vendor agreements.
• Your brand. A clean, professional design is part of every build. Heavy custom design and animation are extra.

Subscription or custom: compare three years, not one month

A portal subscription looks cheap on the first invoice. Multiply the per-user or per-client fee by the customers you expect to have in three years, add the tools you still need beside it, and add the hours your team spends working around what it does not do. Then compare that with a build plus three years of hosting and support.

Custom usually wins when:

• Fees grow with every customer you add.
• Your process does not fit the product, so staff keep spreadsheets or email on the side.
• Customers need data from your own systems, like their pricing, orders or job status, not just files.
• The portal is part of how you win and keep customers.

If a subscription fits how you work today, start there. Moving to custom later is normal, and the time on the subscription tells you exactly what the custom version needs.

How to get a firm number

• Write down what customers call or email you about most, and what they need to see.
• List the systems the portal must read from or write to.
• Count roughly how many customers, and how many users per customer, will sign in.
• Decide what the first release must do. Usually that is sign-in, status, documents and payments.

Try our client portal demo and our B2B ordering portal demo to see what a focused first release looks like, on sample data with no sign-up. Then send us your list and we will tell you which range you are in, usually within a day.

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