A branded client portal for a three-person team with 40 clients costs anything from $19 a month on SuiteDash's Start plan to $399 a month on FuseBase's Advanced plan, according to the vendors' own pricing pages read on 27 October 2026. The difference is not mostly about features. It is about how each tool counts users and which plan first lets you put your own domain and logo on the login screen.
This page compares eleven portal products and one custom build on the three things that decide whether a portal fits: permissions, branding and price. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on 27 October 2026, so treat each one as a vendor's claim about its own product and check it again before you buy.
The 12 options at a glance
Client portal software falls into three groups. Portal-first products are built around one job: a branded place where clients log in, see files, sign things, pay and message. All-in-one agency suites bundle a portal with CRM, proposals and invoicing. Portal builders give you a database and a page builder, and you assemble the portal yourself. The twelfth option is to build one in code.
| Option | Type | Cheapest paid plan as listed | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly (formerly Copilot) | Portal-first | Starter $29 a month billed annually, $49 monthly | Service firms that want a polished portal with billing |
| SuiteDash | All-in-one suite | Start $19 a month, $180 a year | Small firms that want everything for a flat fee |
| Moxo | Portal-first, workflow | Not published | Regulated firms with multi-step client processes |
| Clinked | Portal-first, file sharing | Start Up $11 per user a month | Document-heavy firms: accounting, legal, finance |
| FuseBase | Portal and workspace | Solo $32 to $39 a month | Teams that live in shared docs and wikis |
| Softr | Portal builder | Basic $19 a month | Teams with data in Airtable, Sheets or a database |
| Noloco | Portal builder | Build $65 a month billed annually, $79 monthly | Teams that need record and field rules |
| Plutio | All-in-one suite | Core $19 a month, $190 a year | Freelancers and small studios |
| ManyRequests | Agency request portal | Core $39 a month billed annually, $59 monthly | Productised agencies taking client requests |
| HoneyBook | All-in-one suite | Starter $29 a month billed yearly | Solo service businesses, US-focused |
| Dubsado | All-in-one suite | Starter $335 a year | Solo service businesses with forms and contracts |
| Custom build (Next.js and a database) | Code | Hosting from about $45 a month, plus the build | Portals that are part of the product |
Sources: each vendor's pricing page; Supabase and Vercel pricing for the custom build hosting estimate, all read 2026-10-27
Our earlier post, Client Portal Requirements Checklist: 40 Questions Across Users, Permissions, Documents and Billing, covers what to decide before choosing. This page assumes you have answered those questions and now need to know which tools can meet the answers.
Permissions: the column most comparisons skip
A client portal is an access control system with a login page in front. OWASP's 2025 data found "some form of broken access control" in 100% of the applications tested, with 1,839,701 recorded occurrences. In a portal, that failure looks like one client seeing another client's invoice. Most tools handle the basic case well: each client sees its own space. The differences appear when you need more than that.
Three levels of permission matter in practice. Level one is client separation: client A cannot see client B. Level two is roles inside a client: the client's finance lead sees invoices, their marketing lead does not. Level three is record and field rules: a user sees only rows they own, or a field is hidden from one role.
| Option | What the pricing page lists | Plan where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Assembly | Client access permissions, audit log, enforced MFA; custom SSO | Advanced; SSO on Enterprise |
| SuiteDash | No role or permission features described | Not stated |
| Moxo | Role-based access control, SAML SSO, audit trail | Not tied to a plan |
| Clinked | Role-based permissions; Active Directory and SSO | Premium; SSO on Enterprise |
| FuseBase | Granular permissions and groups | Advanced and Unlimited |
| Softr | Granular permissions and visibility; two-factor authentication | Pro; 2FA on Business |
| Noloco | 2 user roles on Free, unlimited on Build; record and field permissions; SSO and audit logs | Build; SSO on Enterprise |
| Plutio | No roles described; SSO as a $5 add-on | SSO add-on on Pro, included on Max |
| ManyRequests | No role settings described | Not stated |
| HoneyBook | Roles and permissions in the comparison table | Plan not clear from the page |
| Dubsado | "Customize the account access for each user" | Not tied to a plan |
| Custom build | Whatever the data model enforces | Not applicable |
Source: vendor pricing pages, read 2026-10-27
What "not stated" means. A blank here does not prove a tool lacks roles. It means the pricing page does not say, which is where most buyers compare. Ask the vendor for a screenshot of its role editor before you sign.
The builders are different. Softr and Noloco let you write rules against your own data, so level three is possible. That flexibility moves the risk to you: a rule written wrongly shows the wrong rows, and no vendor will notice.
Branding: what "white label" means on each plan
Vendors use "white label" for three different things: your logo and colours, your own domain, and the removal of the vendor's name from the screen and from emails. Only the last one makes the portal look like yours to a client.
| Option | Custom domain | Vendor name removed | Branded emails or app |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly | Professional | Professional (badge removed) | Not stated |
| SuiteDash | Not stated per plan | "Extreme White Labeling" from Start | Branded mobile app from Start |
| Moxo | Not stated | "Branded" portals, plan not stated | Not stated |
| Clinked | Standard ($239) | Not stated | White-label emails on Premium; white-label app on Enterprise |
| FuseBase | Advanced (in FAQ) | White label on Advanced | Not stated |
| Softr | Basic ($19) | Pro ($99) | Not stated |
| Noloco | Listed, plan not readable | Badge on Free; full white label on Enterprise | Branded SMTP as an add-on |
| Plutio | Not mentioned | $9 a month add-on on Core and Pro; included on Max | Not stated |
| ManyRequests | Core | Pro | Custom emails on Pro; branded app on Enterprise |
| HoneyBook | Listed, plan not clear | Essentials | Not stated |
| Dubsado | Not mentioned | Not mentioned | Not mentioned |
| Custom build | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Source: vendor pricing pages, read 2026-10-27
The cheapest route to a portal with your own domain and no vendor badge is usually not the cheapest plan. ManyRequests puts the custom domain on Core but keeps "Powered by" until Pro. Softr gives you a domain on Basic and removes its branding on Pro. Clinked offers your own domain on Standard but lists white-label notification emails only on Premium, so clients still receive emails that mention Clinked on the lower plan unless the vendor says otherwise.
Price: what a three-person team with 40 clients pays
List prices hide the counting rules. To compare like for like, we priced one scenario: three staff, 40 client companies with one login each, own domain, vendor name removed where the page lets you. These are list prices from the pricing pages; we did not buy each tool.
| Option | Plan needed | Monthly cost | Why that plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| SuiteDash | Start | $19 monthly, or $15 on yearly billing | Unlimited staff and clients on every plan, white labelling from Start |
| Dubsado | Starter | About $28 ($335 a year) | Three additional users free; branding not stated |
| Plutio | Pro plus white-label add-on | $58 | Core is solo and capped at 9 active clients |
| Noloco | Build | $65 annual, $79 monthly | Free caps client seats at 50 and keeps the badge |
| Assembly | Professional | $99 billed annually | Starter has 1 internal user and no custom domain |
| Softr | Pro | $99 | 10 team plus 50 client users; branding removed |
| HoneyBook | Premium | $109 billed yearly | Essentials allows up to 2 team members |
| ManyRequests | Pro plus 2 seats | $129 annual, $159 monthly | 1 seat included; the page also shows 10 seats, so ask |
| Clinked | Standard | $239 | Start Up stops at 25 users; Standard includes 100 members |
| FuseBase | Advanced | $266 to $399 | White label listed only from Advanced |
| Moxo | Not published | Ask for a quote | No public pricing |
| Custom build | Hosting only | About $45, plus the build | Supabase Pro from $25 and one Vercel Pro seat at $20 |
Sources: vendor pricing pages; Supabase and Vercel pricing, read 2026-10-27
Several pages contradict themselves. Clinked shows Premium at $599 on the plan card and $479 in its comparison table. Noloco gives the extra seat price as both $5 and $6. ManyRequests shows one seat on its plan cards and five or ten in its limits table. FuseBase shows two prices per plan without saying which is monthly. Screenshot the page on the day you subscribe.
The scenario moves the ranking. Double the clients to 80 and Softr Pro runs out of client users at 50, so Business at $329 applies or extra users are bought. Grow to six staff and Assembly's Professional limit of 3 internal users pushes you to Advanced, which its page shows at $499 billed annually. SuiteDash's flat model wins on headcount growth, though its page marks unlimited clients and staff with an asterisk.
Agency suites, portal-first tools and builders
All-in-one suites. SuiteDash, Plutio, HoneyBook and Dubsado are cheapest when you would otherwise pay for a CRM, proposals and invoicing separately. The portal is one module among many. Expect less control over what each client user sees, and check whether the portal works without the rest of the suite.
Portal-first tools. Assembly, Clinked, Moxo and FuseBase put the client experience first. Assembly bundles messaging, billing and apps. Clinked leans towards secure file exchange, with a virtual data room tier. Moxo is built around multi-step workflows with approvals, and its pricing page lists role-based access control and audit trails without a price.
Request portals for agencies. ManyRequests is narrower: clients submit and track requests against a service catalogue. It suits productised agencies. It is not a document vault.
Builders. Softr and Noloco connect to data you already have and let you lay out pages for each user group. They are the right choice when the portal is mostly views on your own data: project status from Airtable, invoices from a database, files from a drive. Budget time to design the data model and the permission rules, because that work is yours.
When a custom build is the better answer
Our bias first: we build applications in Next.js, so we are more likely than a software vendor to recommend building. With that said, most firms should not build a portal. If one of the eleven products above meets your permission grid and branding needs, a subscription will be cheaper for years.
A custom build starts to make sense in four cases.
- The portal is part of your product. Clients pay for the experience inside it, so it has to match your design system and roadmap.
- Your permission rules are unusual. Multi-level client hierarchies, per-field visibility tied to contract terms, or rules no vendor's role editor can express.
- Data has to stay in your own database or region, for a client contract or a regulator, and no vendor's hosting option fits.
- Per-user pricing breaks your model. At several hundred client logins, a seat-priced tool can cost more each year than running your own.
Hosting itself is not the expensive part. Supabase lists its Pro plan from $25 a month with 100,000 monthly active users included, and Vercel lists a Pro developer seat at $20 a month; its Hobby plan is for "personal, non-commercial use", so a client portal needs Pro. The cost is the build, the testing of every permission rule, and the upkeep.
On a portal project, we would model the permission grid in the database first and test it with fake clients before any screen is designed, because changing who can see what after launch touches the data model, the API and every screen at once.
What this means for choosing client portal software
Start with the permission grid, not the feature list. Cut every tool that cannot express your grid on a plan you can afford. Then price your real scenario, with your staff count and client count, on each remaining tool's page, and note which plan first removes the vendor's name. Most shortlists end at two or three products after those two passes.
Run a two-week trial with two fake clients and one real one who is friendly. Watch where they get lost, and test what happens when you remove someone's access. If none of the products holds up, our web apps service page explains how we scope a custom portal.
