What a client portal actually is
A client portal is a private, logged-in part of your website where each customer sees only their own information. A staff portal is the same idea for your team. Both are web applications, not pages, and they exist to take repeated manual work off your desk.
Typical things a small business portal does:
- Shows customers their quotes, invoices, job status and documents.
- Lets customers book, request a quote, upload files or approve work.
- Lets field staff fill in job sheets, safety checks and timesheets from a phone.
- Holds compliance records, certificates and inspection history in one place.
- Sends automatic notifications when something changes, so nobody has to chase.
If your team spends part of every day answering "where is my..." or re-keying something a customer already told you, a portal is the fix.
Who builds them in NZ
There are four kinds of vendor a small business tends to find, and they suit different situations.
Off-the-shelf portal software. Subscription products that give you a generic portal quickly. Good if your process is standard. Frustrating when it is not, because you end up bending your business to fit the tool, and the per-user fee grows as your customer base does.
Freelancers and offshore marketplaces. Low quotes and real risk. Portals hold customer data and run for years, and the common failure is a build that works on launch day with nobody reachable when it needs a change.
Large software houses. The right capability, priced for companies ten times your size. If your scope genuinely needs one, we will say so.
A right-sized web development company. This is where Applicable sits: a senior Auckland team that scopes, builds and supports portals for businesses of roughly five to a hundred staff, on a fixed scope, NZ-wide. The people who scope your portal are the people you talk to during the build and after launch.
What Applicable has built
Applicable has built logged-in platforms for Sport New Zealand, a client since 2012, for EAP Services and for Firestop's Fire Report industry application. Benjamin Wilson of EAP Services said the team "provided valuable insights well beyond our expectations." Applicable has built software for New Zealand clients since 2008 and is led by John Halvorsen-Jones, who has spent over 30 years in technology.
What a portal costs and how long it takes
Applicable quotes portals on a fixed scope. A single-purpose portal, such as customers viewing job status and documents, sits in the low tens of thousands. A multi-role portal with customer, staff and admin views, several integrations and a data migration runs higher, and the bracket for custom applications goes up to around NZ$250,000.
Timeframes follow scope. A simple portal is a few months from scoping to launch. The price and timeline are both in the scope document before you commit, and changes are quoted in writing before they are built.
How the build works
- Listen. A first call to understand your business, the process the portal replaces and who will use it. You get a ballpark bracket on this call.
- Scope. Workshops with the people who do the work, wireframes, and a clickable prototype your customers or staff try before anything is built. This ends in a fixed scope and price.
- Build. Short cycles with regular demos. Integrations with your accounting, CRM or industry systems are built and tested against real data.
- Support. Automated deployment, user acceptance testing with your own people and a monthly retainer for hosting, security and small changes.
You own the code, the data and the hosting accounts throughout.
Questions to ask any portal vendor
- Is the price fixed, and what happens when I want a change?
- Who do I talk to after launch, and how fast do they respond?
- Do I own the code and the hosting account?
- Will it connect to the systems I already use, and is that in the quote?
- Can I see a prototype before you build the real thing?
If a vendor hesitates on any of these, keep looking.
Key takeaways
- Applicable builds customer and staff portals for NZ small and mid-sized businesses on a fixed scope, from an Auckland office, NZ-wide.
- A client portal is a logged-in web app where customers see their own quotes, jobs, documents and status without emailing you.
- Portal projects at Applicable include a prototype your users try before the real build, and you own the code and hosting.
- Applicable has built logged-in platforms for Sport New Zealand (client since 2012), EAP Services and Firestop's Fire Report.
What a portal costs
Applicable builds customer and staff portals from NZ$30,000 plus GST, typically NZ$30,000 to NZ$100,000 depending on roles, integrations and the systems it replaces, over ten to sixteen weeks. The price is fixed at the end of a two-week Prototype Sprint for NZ$5,000, credited against the build. After launch the Care plan runs it for NZ$1,999 a month. See the pricing page.