If two clients ask what is in progress every day and briefs still turn up in Slack, you probably need a better board before you need a portal. Buy a portal when several people at one client need different access, or when billing and pause should sit next to the work. ManyRequests, Zendo and Copilot are the usual shortlist.
Below: what each portal costs on the vendor's own pricing page, how to run the same thing on Trello or Notion, and a four-question test to decide. A branded login adds little if the brief still arrives in email and someone on your team has to explain every status by hand.
Do you need a portal, or a better board?
Answer these in order. The first "no" tells you what to do instead.
- Do clients ask for status more than once a week? If not, keep your board and send each client a short status message every Monday.
- Do several people at one client need to request, approve or see billing? If not, a shared Trello or Notion board with guest access is enough for now.
- Do most briefs arrive complete? If they arrive incomplete more often than not, fix intake first with a required brief form on your existing board. A portal will not write a better brief for your client.
- Can you name the person who will keep the portal up to date every day? If you cannot, do not buy a portal yet. It will become a second, stale source of truth.
Four yeses: trial a portal with one real client for a month before you move anyone else.
What a portal has to do for a subscription studio
Before you pay for a portal, check it does these five jobs better than the board you already have.
- Request intake with required fields. The client cannot submit until the goal, format, size and deadline are filled in. On Trello you get close with a card template, but nothing stops a client skipping it.
- Status the client can read without asking. Received, active, in review, delivered. A board column does this well if you move cards the same day.
- Several people per client, with different permissions. The marketing lead requests, the founder approves, finance sees invoices. Can a client invite a colleague without exposing another account? Can a departing stakeholder lose access without breaking the request history? This is where boards run out first.
- Billing and pause in the same place. Subscription clients want to see the next charge and pause for a quiet month. A board cannot show that.
- File delivery. Final files attached to the request that produced them. Figma stays where the design work happens; the portal or board links to the file, it does not replace it.
The portals studios actually use, and what they cost
Prices below are the monthly-billed entry paid tier, read from each vendor's pricing page.
| Tool | Entry paid price | Seats and clients at that price | Queue | Proofing | Billing | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ManyRequests | $59 a month (Core) | 1 seat; extra seats $20 a month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Intake, proofing and invoicing in one login |
| Copilot (pricing now on Assembly) | Paid tiers not readable from the pricing page when | Free plan: 5 active contacts, 1 internal user | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Trying a portal free with a few contacts |
| Zendo | $29 a month (Core) | 1 internal user; extra users $8 a month | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Solo designers selling a fixed subscription |
| Wayfront (formerly SPP) | $129 a month (Base) | 5 team seats, unlimited clients | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Teams of up to five selling through order forms |
| Agency Handy | $109 a month (Freelancer) | 1 user; Team Starter is $359 a month for 10 users | Yes | Yes | Yes | Subscription billing run from the portal |
| SuperOkay | $12 a month (Solo) | 3 clients, 5 contacts, no team | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Freelancers who need approvals more than invoicing |
"Not listed" means the vendor's pricing page did not mention the feature when we read it, not that it is missing.
ManyRequests is built for productised design work: request forms, a queue view and comments on the design itself. Core is $59 a month billed monthly, or $99 for Pro. The catch is seats: one is included, so a five-person team on Core pays $80 a month more for the other four.
Copilot now sends its pricing page to Assembly, so treat them as one product. The free plan covers 5 active contacts and 1 internal user, enough to try it with one real client. The paid tiers were not readable from the Assembly pricing page when we checked in September 2026, so we do not quote them.
Zendo is the cheapest way into a proper portal: free for up to 3 clients, then $29 a month for Core, $59 for Pro or $99 for Agency. The pricing page does not mention design proofing, so check before you rely on it.
Wayfront, formerly Service Provider Pro, prices per team rather than per seat: $129 a month for Base with 5 seats. For five or six people that can come out cheaper than a seat-priced tool.
Agency Handy starts at $109 a month for one user and $359 for ten. It suits a studio that wants subscription billing to run from the portal too.
SuperOkay is the small end: $12 a month for Solo, $38 for Solo+ with 5 clients and 3 team members. Good for approvals and file exchange; plan on keeping billing in Stripe.
If you also want CRM, contracts and time tracking in the same tool, compare all-in-one agency platforms before adding a portal.
Running it on Trello or Notion instead
A shared board does most of a portal's job for little or nothing. Set it up like this.
- One board per client. Invite the client's people as guests to their board only, so nobody sees another client's work.
- A required brief template. Pin a card template built from our design request brief and reject cards that skip it.
- A status column the client reads. Four columns: Received, Active, In review, Delivered. Only one card sits in Active per client, which is what "one request at a time" looks like on a Tuesday morning.
- A daily move. Someone moves every card before 10am. Our guide to running the daily request queue covers the review.
Costs: Trello Free covers up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, and Standard is $6 per user a month billed monthly. Notion Plus is €9.50 (about $11) per member per month, and guests are free but only see the pages you invite them to. ClickUp Unlimited is $10 per user a month billed monthly, with guest permissions on paid plans.
What breaks is arithmetic. At ten clients you have ten boards to check every morning. The Trello Free limit of 10 collaborators is gone once your team and a few client contacts are in. Billing questions still arrive by email because the board cannot show the next charge. When a client has three people with different jobs, guest access gives them all the same view. That is usually the week to run the four questions again.
DesignJoy is the counter-example. It charges $4,995 a month for one request at a time and has no dedicated portal. In a 2021 Indie Hackers AMA, Brett Williams described serving 30+ clients with Trello for requests and Webflow for the site.
The client journey test before you pay
A demo shows you the studio side. Test the client side: on the free trial, set up one fake client and do these four things in the first hour.
- Invite a fictional requester using the same access method a real client would use. Time how long it takes from email to first screen.
- Submit a brief with a missing asset and check whether it stays visibly incomplete, to the client and to you.
- Ask a separate approver at the same fake client to find the current version and record a decision without help.
- Remove the requester's access and check what the remaining client users can still see, including the request history.
If any step needs you to explain it on a call, your real clients will message you instead. Try the same four steps on your current board. If the board passes three of them, keep the board instead and fix the fourth.
What to decide this week
- Count the questions. For five working days, note every "where is this at?" message and which client sent it. More than one per client per week is your answer to question one.
- Fix intake on the board you have. Add the brief template and the four status columns today. It costs nothing.
- If the answers still say portal, book one trial. ManyRequests, Zendo and Wayfront each offer a 14-day trial with no card needed. Pick one, run the client journey test with one real client, and plan the invitation email using our client onboarding guide.