Best client portal software for service businesses in 2026

The best client portal depends on what you sell. Delivvo suits service businesses that want the whole cycle from inquiry to delivery, SuiteDash and Plutio suit all-in-one admin, Assembly suits polished app-style portals, and HoneyBook and Dubsado suit businesses whose bottleneck is leads and contracts.

All prices below come from each vendor's own pricing page, read in October 2026. They change often, so check before you buy.

What a client portal has to do

A client portal is the place where your client finds everything about their job: the quote, the contract, files, approvals, messages and what they owe. The test is simple. Can your client answer "where is the latest version?" and "did my deposit go through?" without emailing you?

Four things decide whether a portal helps or just adds a login:

1. The address. Does the client see your name in the link or the vendor's?
2. The branding. Whose logo and colours does the client see first?
3. The login. Does the client need a password, or does a link or code do it?
4. The phone. Most clients open it on a phone.

The rest of this post looks at how six tools handle those, and what each costs.

The pricing snapshot

Sources: SuiteDash, Plutio, Assembly, HoneyBook and Dubsado. Delivvo's prices come from its own pricing page.

Two patterns stand out. First, the price to do a decent job has settled around $19 to $29 a month for anything beyond a free plan. Second, client caps matter more than the sticker. Plutio's $19 plan stops at 9 active clients, and moving up to Pro costs $49 a month, which is about two and a half times as much.

How each tool fits

Delivvo is built around the whole client cycle for a service business: inquiry form, lead board, quote, contract, deposit, invoice, delivery. The portal is where the client sees all of it. It has no password, since the client enters a one-time code. It fits studios, consultants, photographers, clinics, trainers and small agencies that want quote to delivery in one place. It does not replace a full accounting package or a project tracker.

SuiteDash is an all-in-one business platform with CRM, billing, projects, files and portals. Its pricing page says unlimited clients and staff on every plan, and the entry plan includes what it calls extreme white labelling. That makes it attractive for a small agency that wants everything in one system, at the cost of a bigger learning curve.

Plutio sits closer to a solo owner's operating system. It combines time tracking, invoicing, proposals, contracts, projects and tasks. The catch is the 9 active client cap on Core. If you plan to have more than 9 live clients, the real entry price is the $49 Pro plan.

Assembly, which was Copilot until it rebranded, goes for a modern, app-like portal. Its free plan allows 5 active contacts, Starter allows 50, and custom domains and badge removal start on Professional. The Professional and Advanced prices were not legible on the page when I read it, so I am not quoting them. Check before you commit.

HoneyBook and Dubsado are closer to CRMs with a portal attached. HoneyBook's yearly price is $29 on Starter, $49 on Essentials and $109 on Premium. Dubsado's two plans are $335 and $525 a year, both with unlimited projects and clients. Pick one of these when your bottleneck is lead capture and contract templates rather than delivering work to people who already hired you. We compare them in more depth in the best HoneyBook alternatives.

The client limit trap

Plutio is the clearest example of a limit that bites. The page counts "active clients," and the number includes anyone whose portal is still live, such as a past client who comes back once a year to download a file. A business with a steady flow of one-off jobs can pass 9 within months.

Delivvo's Free plan has its own limit. It covers 3 clients and 3 active projects, which is enough to test it with real work but not to run a business on. Solo covers 15 clients and 15 active projects for $12 a month, and Pro covers 50 clients with unlimited projects for $29.

Do the sum for your own year. Count your active clients now, add the number you expect in six months, and price the plan that covers that number, not the one that covers today.

What the white-label tiers cost over a year

If you want the portal to look like your business, compare the cost of that specific feature, not the entry price. Over twelve months:

• SuiteDash START at $19 a month is $228 on monthly billing, and $180 billed yearly.
• Plutio Core at $19 plus the $9 white-label add-on is $28 a month, or $336 a year. Max, where white-label is included, is $1,990 a year billed yearly.
• Assembly needs Professional for a custom domain or to remove its badge. At the time of reading its price was not legible, so ask for the figure.

Delivvo puts your logo and colours on the portal, quotes, forms, emails and PDFs on every plan. Running the portal on your own domain is coming soon: it will arrive for Team and up, and as an add-on for Solo and Pro. Until then, the portal link is a Delivvo link with your logo and colours on it. That is a real difference from SuiteDash, so weigh how much the address matters to your clients.

Files and approvals: the part that decides it

For a creative or technical business, the test of a portal is delivery. Can the client upload big files? Can they approve one version and see which is final? Can you send a 4 GB video without a separate transfer service?

Delivvo's limits are high: your files can be up to 50 GB each on Pro and above, with resumable uploads, and clients can upload up to 5 GB a file. The client approves a version inside the portal and the approval is recorded. For other ways to send large files, read how to send large files without WeTransfer. Check each competitor's file limit before you rely on it, because pricing pages rarely list one and the answer changes what you can deliver.

Email and shared drives are not portals

For two or three clients, a shared folder and email work. The break comes around client five, when you lose files in shared folders, miss approvals buried in a thread and forget which invoice went out. We wrote about when that happens in client portal vs email for delivering work. The price of a portal is small next to one missed invoice.

How Delivvo works as a client portal

Delivvo's portal is one link per client. Everything about their job lives behind it, and the client never creates an account. Here is the flow.

1. A client submits your inquiry form, which you can share as a link or QR code, or embed on a site built with WordPress, Wix, Webflow or Framer. It lands on your lead board.
2. You send a quote from your packages. The client accepts, signs the contract and pays the deposit through the same link.
3. The client opens their portal by entering a one-time code sent to their email. No password.
4. Inside the portal they see the files, versions, approvals, messages, documents and a money line showing what is paid and what is due.
5. You upload deliverables, up to 50 GB a file on Pro and above, and ask for approval. The client approves inside the portal.
6. Invoices come with a pay button that opens your own payment gateway. The client pays you directly, and Delivvo takes 0%.

One detail a competitor's page will not have: every quote, contract, invoice and receipt carries a verification code. Anyone with the code can check on the Verify page who issued it, the number, the dates, the amount and its status.

If your team grows, the team structure lets you add people with roles, and in the team workspace a client only ever sees the approved file under your business name. See the client portal page for more.

Delivvo is a CRM and client portal for service businesses. See the client portal.

FAQ