Agency client portals and internal tools your team will actually use
Client portals, onboarding flows, approval dashboards, and internal ops tools for creative and marketing agencies. Senior engineer on subscription, $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Agency owner or ops lead at a 10 to 50-person creative or marketing agency where client onboarding lives in Notion plus email and the white-label dashboards from third parties look bad.
The pain today
- Client onboarding is Notion + email with no audit trail
- Third-party white-label dashboards look generic and off-brand
- Approval flows live in email threads and get lost
- Project delivery handoffs to account managers lose context
- Want branded client portal without building one from scratch
The outcome you get
- Custom agency web app on subscription at $3,499/mo
- Branded client portal, onboarding, or approval flow in 8 to 12 weeks
- White-label architecture for multi-client support
- Integration with your CRM, PM tool, and deliverables system
- Handoff-ready code your developer can extend
Where agency ops bleed time
Five places. Client onboarding — the same forms, briefs, and access handoffs repeated for every engagement, often manually. Approval flows — creative or strategy drafts sent via email, feedback scattered, version control lost. Reporting dashboards — performance reports compiled manually from GA, Meta, and other sources. Invoicing and contract handoff — sales close, contract in DocuSign, invoice in accounting tool, project brief somewhere else. Asset delivery — final assets sent via WeTransfer with no persistent client access. Each is a candidate for a focused internal or client-facing app.
Common apps I build
Branded client portals (project status, asset access, approvals, invoices in one place). Onboarding flows (structured intake forms, account creation, brief generation). Approval dashboards (version tracking, comment threads, status for each stakeholder). Reporting dashboards (pulled from your PM tool and analytics sources into a client-friendly view). Internal ops dashboards (capacity, utilisation, project profitability). For white-label agencies managing dashboards for their clients' end-users, multi-tenant architecture with per-client branding.
White-label considerations
White-label means the app supports multiple clients with custom branding per client. Architecture choices: subdomain per client (client1.yourapp.com), custom domain per client (client1's-domain.com mapped to your app), or shared domain with branded theme per client. Each has tradeoffs in SEO, complexity, and client setup time. For agencies serving 5 to 20 clients with white-label needs, subdomain + branded theme per client is the usual sweet spot. Deeper white-labelling (client1's-domain.com) is worth it when clients demand full ownership of the URL.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. Either tier covers focused 2 to 4-month engagements typical for agency app work. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire — you own the app, can white-label for your clients, can productise if the app has outside-agency applicability. For agencies using the app as a commercial product (selling access to non-agency clients), we discuss revenue-sharing or licensing arrangements separately.
Case: LAK Embalagens and Instill — two patterns for agency-style platforms
LAK Embalagens: catalog-first B2B site with quote funnel, 45 percent bounce reduction, 3x impressions, top three rankings. Instill: self-initiated AI skills platform with 30+ active users, 1,000+ skills saved, 45+ projects powered. Stack: Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Vercel, MCP Protocol. Between the two, the structural lessons for agency apps are covered — catalog-first for service delivery, multi-user platform with content library for agency tooling. Clean taxonomy, fast pages, integration-friendly architecture.
When Notion plus Zapier is enough
For agencies under 10 people where client ops are manageable, Notion plus Zapier plus your CRM covers 80 percent of needs for under $100/month. Custom app work pays back when the agency is growing past what spreadsheets can handle — usually at $1M to $10M in annual revenue with 10+ clients on books. I will tell you in the first call which bracket you are in. Many agencies spend $3,499/mo prematurely when better Notion hygiene would solve the underlying problem. Start with the hygiene; build custom when you actually hit the wall.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Turned a B2B manufacturer into a digital showroom
Designed and developed a high-performance institutional website to showcase packaging solutions and generate qualified leads.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can the app be white-labelled for our clients?
- Yes. Multi-tenant architecture with per-client branding (logo, colours, typography) and optional per-client custom domain. Agencies servicing 5 to 20 clients with different brand identities can run all of them on one codebase with separate deployments or shared deployment with tenant isolation. White-label setup is part of the standard engagement when it is a stated requirement. For heavy white-label (client1's-own-domain.com with SSL), additional setup time is required.
- How do you handle multi-tenant data isolation?
- Data isolation per tenant with tenant-aware queries at every layer. Each client's data stays separate, no cross-tenant visibility, audit logs for access. For agencies with clients in regulated industries (healthcare, legal, finance), we strengthen isolation with separate database schemas per tenant or dedicated database instances for premium clients. Pricing for these stronger isolation patterns goes up modestly — usually another $200 to $500/month in hosting cost per tenant needing dedicated infrastructure.
- Can it integrate with our CRM and project management?
- Yes. HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Monday, Asana, ClickUp, Notion — all have APIs. Typical integration patterns: projects created in the agency app sync to the PM tool; clients logged in the CRM route to app onboarding; approval outcomes push back to the CRM as engagement milestones. Each integration is 1 to 2 weeks of work during the engagement. Pick the integrations that materially affect workflow — not all of them.
- Will the app handle billing and invoicing?
- Client portals can display invoices pulled from your accounting system (QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks) and accept payments via Stripe. For agencies wanting to move billing into the portal itself (invoices generated from project milestones, payments collected directly), that is a larger feature — 4 to 8 weeks of work. Most agencies keep billing in their accounting system and use the portal as a display and payment surface. Decision depends on how much billing custom logic your agency has.
- Can we productise the app for non-agency clients?
- If the app has generic value beyond your agency's immediate client base, yes — productising is possible. Agencies that have turned client work into SaaS products include Basecamp (from 37signals) and Wistia (from Brand Projectors). Discuss revenue-sharing or licensing arrangements with me if productisation is the goal — the initial build may need architectural choices (multi-tenant from day one, payments infrastructure) that differ from a pure internal tool. Instill is my own example of productising a work pattern.
Ready to start?
Tell me what you need in 60 seconds. Tailored proposal in your inbox within 6 hours.