I’m a wedding invitation designer, but I’m speaking to all designers (graphic designers, interior designers, web designers, etc.) when I say this: your business needs a client portal to function well in 2026! Clients simply expect more from a tech standpoint, especially if you’re not local to them as is common these days.

As designers, we go back and forth over so many details with our clients that things can get lost easily. This leads to really costly mistakes and a bad look. A client portal can help you stay connected with your clients without actually doing any extra work, it’ll prevent costly issues, it’ll keep everything in one place where you can find it, and it’ll help clients help themselves vs. coming to you with a million questions.

In short: a good client portal will make your clients happier and you more money as a designer. Let me show you some examples! Thanks to our wonderful partner Assembly for sponsoring this blog post! 

What to Include in Your Client Portal

In a lot of client portals, you can only include what’s in their internal system. Forms, billing, and contracts are fairly common. But with an advanced client portal like Assembly, you can customize *everything* that’s in the client portal. Some examples of what to include in your client portal:

• A welcome message 
• Helpful resources to pre-empt questions
• Billing + invoices
• Contracts
• Forms + questionnaires
• Templates or dashboards they need to fill out
• Tasks that your team / the client needs to complete
• Design files, moodboards, etc.
• Easy searchable communication between the client and your team

Let’s see how some of this works – luckily, you can do all of these things easily in Assembly!

Client Portal Welcome Message

A good client portal welcome message will pre-empt a lot of questions and confusions. We have in ours a section for all tasks the client needs to complete, a quick video intro that walks them through the invitation design process, and some helpful resources (just links to blog posts!). These help answer questions they may have about invitation wording, addressing, etc. so that they don’t have to come to us with those questions and it empowers them to find answers on their own!

In the video, we walk through how to use other things in their portal, so again, they are empowered to manage this process directly. 

Connecting Outside Systems in Your Client Portal

With Assembly, one unique thing you can do is embed or link other systems directly into the same portal. For instance, in ours, we have a few things embedded/linked:

• The address template – this is an active Google Sheet and everything they fill out on their end appears on the Sheets file on my end. But it’s all within their portal so they don’t have to go anywhere to fill it out!
• I also include a customized wedding timeline Google Sheet for them. This one I edit on my end, highlighting which stage of the process we’re in so they can always see what’s happening.
• We love to link their design proofs from Adobe using Adobe’s Share for Review feature. The client can view these proofs, request changes, and then see the updates in the same place after I make revisions. 

Other apps like billing, tasks, and forms are vital to our design business – those are built-in apps from Assembly! But it’s helpful that you’re not limited to those apps they offer. Using the Embed + Link feature, you can combine all the apps you prefer into your portal instead of being limited to just what they offer in Assembly. 

Client Portal with Customized Views

We especially like that you can customize the views and access for each app in Assembly. We have a Trello board that our team uses on the back-end without the client ever seeing it. So we just set it up so only our team can see it, and it’s still there for each client, but they won’t have access to it!

Working with a team in this client portal makes your business so much more efficient – everyone on the team has access to exactly what they need and doesn’t have access to things they don’t need. You can grant access by Client (an individual) or by Company (a group of individual clients). I make each wedding a “company” so that I can send the same files to everyone involved – sometimes both partners, a wedding planner, a Mom who’s involved, etc. ! 

Design Business Client Portal

For designers, there are certain client portal features that are extra helpful from Assembly! 

• Files folder to keep track of all client uploads! Brand assets, mood board, etc.
• Forms to gather information all in one place
• Searchable email messaging
• Embedding outside platforms and links into the same portal
• Customizing which apps are visible to your team and your clients
• Working with clients (individuals) AND/OR companies (multiple clients) on the same projects – customize who gets access to what features!
• Tasks built for your team or your client
• Shoppable services area – clients can directly add-on and pay for additional services in their portal

Build a Client Portal for Designers

How do you go about building this type of client portal for designers? With Assembly it’s easy – I’ve included a how-to video for you here!

Here are the basic steps to building a client portal as a designer:

1. Outline all the apps you use in your process
2. Add built-in Apps in Assembly such as forms, billing, and contracts
3. Add additional embeds + links in Assembly such as Trello, Google Drive, AirTable, Calendly and so many more! Anything with embed code or a link will work here!
4. Set up each app to the right permissions – is this app for your team, or for your client?
5. Write a killer welcome message explaining how to use the portal and your process!
6. Start adding your clients and companies in the CRM section of Assembly
7. Bonus: Add some additional add-on services for your clients in the Store section of the Billing app! Here’s a photo of mine! 

Benefits of a Good Client Portal

The benefits of a good client portal are countless – but here are a few of my favorites!

• Everything is in one place! I can not over-state how important this is and how much money this will save you. Imagine ordering 150 invitations with the wrong ink color, or a date wrong, or someone’s name misspelled – simply because you missed an email. That won’t happen if you keep all your information in a built-in form!
• Clients can purchase add-ons directly which is immediate added revenue!
• The client will access many different platforms, but all under one umbrella. They won’t need to keep track of lots of links, logins, etc. but can access everything at once
• You will receive fewer questions from your clients
• The client is empowered to take matters into their own hands – pay their invoice, upload inspiration pics, fill out forms, etc. without any prompting or reminders from you
• Your team can add apps and dashboards needed on the back-end to complete each job (all in the same place that the client is filling in their information)
• A good client portal allows you to have more customer service touchpoints than you could if you were manually doing all this work! Your business will appear larger and more professional than it might actually be on the back end (no offense!)

Best Designer Client Portal

Overall, having a great designer client portal can help your business grow and definitely keep your clients happier. We all know that happier clients leads to better reviews, easier projects, and more referrals. But don’t sleep on the back-end benefits of a good portal either: saving time and preventing mistakes will propel your business forward faster without bogging you down in costly issues or countless details.

Assembly is one of the best client portals for designers simply because it allows you to fully customize the tools you need. You aren’t limited to only the tools they offer, but can embed or link pretty much anything that you need in your business. While you might be able to replace some things with Assembly’s built-in apps (ie: if you’re currently using Google Forms, try Assembly’s Forms app instead), you can also keep a lot of the tools that you’re already familiar with, and put them all in one place for your clients to access easily. Instead of having to explain 14 different systems…just tell them it’s in their portal! 

We are so grateful to Assembly for sponsoring this post, and allowing gorgeous, customized client portals – if you can already tell this is what you NEED to propel your design business forward this year, use code LANEY for $100 off any of the Assembly plans!