Client Portal for Consultants: 12 Tools Compared, Plus the One That Vanished

When you left the firm, you left the brand behind too. No more sending decks from an @bigfirm.com address, no more client extranet with a familiar logo on the login screen. Now the trust surface is you: your domain, your proposal, your portal. Which is why "client portal for consultants" is such a loaded search, and why the results for it are so bad.

We searched that query and its variants, fetched the ranking pages, then pulled the current pricing page and fee documentation for every tool worth considering, all on July 10, 2026. This article compares 12 of them on the things that actually matter for an independent consultant: which tier really includes the portal, what white labeling costs, what the fees do to a $12,500 retainer invoice, and what happens to years of client records if the tool goes away. That last one is not hypothetical; one of the most-recommended portals in this category shut down eight months ago.

Disclosure before anything else: this is the Raoura blog, and Raoura is one of the 12 tools below. We are a vendor grading a category we compete in. Every number links to the page it came from, checked this run, including the rows where competitors beat us.

Why every page ranking for this query is selling you something#

Every page that ranks for "client portal for consultants" in July 2026 is published by a software vendor, every vendor-written list ranks its own product first, and one major list still recommends a product under a name it abandoned in September 2025.

We checked the results for four phrasings of the query. What comes back:

• Agiled's 12-tool list, where Agiled ranks itself #1.
• Dock's category guide, which puts Dock first in three of its five categories, shows no prices anywhere on the page, and still calls Assembly "Copilot" ten months after the rename.
• Assembly's consulting page.
• Onehub's consulting page, a programmatic template that exists in near-identical form for 15+ industries.
• Softr's use-case page.

The only non-vendor surface in the results is the G2 category page. There is no neutral editorial at all: no independent tester, no trade publication, nobody without a product to sell.

The vendor pages are not useless. Agiled's list, to its credit, publishes real prices and covers tier gates better than most. But even the best of them says nothing about vendor payment fees on top of card processing, nothing about what an uncapped ACH percentage does to a consulting-sized invoice, and nothing about data export when you cancel. Those gaps are the article you are reading.

We already audited the freelancer version of this SERP in our client portal guide for freelancers. This one re-verifies every price as of July 10, 2026 and adds the tools that only show up in consulting searches: Zendo, Wayfront, Clinked, FuseBase, and the late Practice.do.

What an independent consultant needs from a portal#

Judge a consulting client portal on six things: the tier that actually includes it, white labeling, client login friction, payment fees at consulting invoice sizes, caps, and the exit.

Independent consulting is a big, growing market being served content written for either freelance creatives or enterprise customer-success teams. MBO Partners counts 72.9 million independent American workers in 2025, including a record 5.6 million earning over $100,000, up almost 19% in a year. The BLS projects management analyst employment to grow 9% from 2024 to 2034, three times the all-occupation average, with growth "particularly strong in smaller consulting companies." If that is you, here is the six-point checklist, tuned for how consulting actually differs:

1. The tier gate. The advertised entry price often does not include the portal. Moxie's $12 Starter has no portal (Pro, $25, does). Bonsai's $15 Basic has no portal (Essentials, $25). The only price that matters is the cheapest plan where the portal exists.
2. White label. You are asking a VP or an owner to trust a firm of one. A login screen that says "Powered by [someone else]" quietly answers the question "how established is this consultant?" the wrong way. White label is included at entry on some tools and costs $399 per month on others.
3. Login friction. Your client contact is a busy executive who will not create another password. Magic-link login (click the email, you are in) is the difference between a portal your client uses and a portal you use alone. If the vendor will not show you the client-side login flow, that is your answer.
4. Payment fees at consulting sizes. This is where consultants get hurt worst, because consulting invoices are large and usually paid by bank transfer. Stripe's published ACH rate is 0.8% capped at $5.00 per transaction. An uncapped 1.5% on the same $12,500 invoice is $187.50. Same invoice, more than 37 times the fee. We run the full-year math below.
5. Caps. Client caps matter less for consultants (you might run 3 to 6 engagements at once) than seat and portal caps do. FuseBase's Solo plan is literally 1 portal and 1 client. Assembly's Starter is 1 internal user and 50 clients. Know your shape before you buy.
6. The exit. Your portal will hold statements of work, signed contracts, invoices, and deliverables, the paper trail consulting disputes are settled with. Ask what exports exist and what your clients lose the day you cancel, before you commit. The section on Practice.do below is why.

For the definition-level basics, we cover what a client portal is and whether a solo needs one separately.

The 12-tool comparison table#

Across the 12 tools below, the cheapest plan that includes a client portal runs from $0 to $129 per month, and only 4 of the 12 include full white labeling at that price.

Prices verified against each vendor's pricing page on July 10, 2026. Annual-billing prices in parentheses where the vendor publishes one. Sorted by the entry price of the portal-including plan.

Three consulting-specific reads on that table.

1. The two free rows are real but narrow. Zendo's free plan handles payments manually and Ahsuite is a portal without paperwork, so both usually mean a second tool for proposals and invoicing.
2. The two tools built for productized services, Assembly and Wayfront, are priced for teams selling at volume, not for a consultant running four retainers.
3. Two names on this list changed identity in the last ten months (Copilot to Assembly, SPP to Wayfront), which is exactly why stale listicles keep recommending products that no longer exist under those names.

What $150,000 in retainers actually costs to collect#

On $150,000 per year collected as 12 monthly retainer invoices of $12,500 paid by ACH, the total cost of subscription plus payment fees ranges from $240 to $2,598 per year, a $2,358 spread between the cheapest and most expensive stacks.

Nobody on this SERP does invoice-size math, and for consultants it is the whole game. The scenario: one consultant, $150,000 collected through 12 ACH-paid invoices of $12,500, on the cheapest portal-including tier with annual billing where published. Where the tool uses your own Stripe account, Stripe's published ACH rate applies: 0.8% capped at $5.00, so a $12,500 invoice costs $5.00 flat. Vendor-specific rates are linked per row.

Honest notes, because a vendor publishing math should show its work.

• Ahsuite is excluded because it publishes no fee documentation for its billing feature.
• Zendo appears on Core rather than its free plan because the free plan handles payments manually.
• Plutio's annual price is the monthly $19 minus roughly two free months per its pricing toggle.
• 17hats currently advertises a 50% first-purchase promotion; the table uses the standard $600.
• The caps are the entire story: on a $12,500 invoice, a capped ACH fee costs $5 to $10 no matter the size, while a percentage with no cap scales with your rates.

HoneyBook's mandatory 1.5% ACH fee costs $187.50 on a single $12,500 consulting invoice; the same invoice through a capped Stripe ACH payment costs $5.00. If your invoices are small and card-paid, this table flips around, and we ran that version in the freelancer edition, where HoneyBook's card rate is actually the cheapest.

The structural point matters more than any row: some tools route money through your own processor account and add nothing, and some tools sit between you and your money. We wrote a whole piece on why your client tool should never touch your money. For milestone-based engagements rather than retainers, the same fee logic applies per phase, which we cover in milestone billing.

The twelve, grouped by what they really are#

Of the 12 tools, 8 are business suites where the portal is one feature, 2 are dedicated portals, and 2 are productized-service platforms; picking the right group matters more than picking the right tool.

The suites: portal plus proposals, contracts, and invoicing#

Raoura ($17/mo flat, our product). Disclosure: Raoura is our product, so weigh this entry accordingly. One plan, so there is no tier gate to check: the white-label portal, proposals, contracts, invoicing, and projects are all in the $17. Clients log in with a magic link, no password, which is built for exactly the busy-executive problem above. Payments run through your own Stripe account with no markup, so the $5-capped ACH rate in the table is what you pay, and your money never routes through us. The deliberate limit: Raoura is solo-only. If you are building a practice with associates and seats, look at the team tools below.

!Raoura's client portal login screen, which signs a client in from an emailed magic link with no password to create

The magic-link login in practice: your client clicks the email and is in, with no account or password standing between a busy executive and the portal.

!The client portal home a consulting client sees in Raoura, carrying the consultant's own branding

The portal carries your brand on the login screen and inside, included in the $17 plan rather than gated behind a $399 white-label tier.

Moxie ($25/mo Pro, $20 annual). The strongest freelancer-first suite, and the portal tier includes full white label with a custom domain. Consultants should note the $1 per ACH payment charge and the fact that the advertised $12 plan has no portal. Full comparison: Raoura vs Moxie.

HoneyBook ($29/mo Starter, billed yearly). Polished, and the portal is on the cheapest plan. But HoneyBook is your payment processor with no opt-out, and its uncapped 1.5% ACH rate is the most expensive way on this list to collect a consulting retainer, costing $2,250 per year in our scenario. Branding removal starts at Essentials ($49/mo yearly). It also raised prices sharply in February 2025; rival 17hats still runs a "Sweet Escape Sale" for HoneyBook switchers on its own pricing page. See Raoura vs HoneyBook.

Dubsado ($35/mo Starter, $335/yr). Portal on both plans, unlimited clients, three users included, no payment fees added. Two catches for a consultant: there is no white label at any price, and the setup curve is famous enough that a paid-specialist economy exists around it. Note its trial changed: the old unlimited three-client trial is now 21 days, which most listicles have not caught. More in Dubsado alternatives and Raoura vs Dubsado.

Bonsai ($25/mo Essentials, $19 annual, per user). Capable suite, but priced per user, branding removal waits at Premium, and the fee structure penalizes exactly what consultants do: its ACH rate carries no documented cap (1% of a $12,500 invoice is $125), and using your own Stripe adds a 1% platform fee. Bonsai has also belonged to Zoom since late 2025, with the product drifting toward teams, covered in Bonsai alternatives and Raoura vs Bonsai.

17hats ($60/mo or $600/yr, one plan). The old three-tier structure is gone, the portal is included, and payments run through your own Stripe or Square at processor rates. What remains is the sticker: $600 per year, roughly triple SuiteDash or Raoura, for modules a consultant may never open. More in 17hats alternatives.

SuiteDash ($19/mo START, $15 annual). The value outlier: unlimited portals, unlimited contacts, and "extreme white labeling" including a branded login domain, all at the entry price, with no payment fees documented. The cost is configuration: SuiteDash is an everything-platform (CRM, LMS, HR, marketing) and getting it consultant-ready takes real setup time. Cheapest capable stack in both tables if you will invest the hours.

Plutio ($19/mo Core). Flat-priced with a 9-active-client cap that most consultants will actually fit inside, since "active" means activity in the current billing month. White label only arrives on the $199 Max plan, which no solo should buy. Fine budget pick if vendor branding on the portal does not bother you.

The dedicated portals: no paperwork included#

Assembly ($39/mo Starter, formerly Copilot). The most polished pure portal in the category: magic-link and Google SSO login, email-reply-without-login for clients, elegant modules. It is also built and priced for productized agencies: 50 clients and 1 user at entry, custom domain at $149, full badge removal at $399, and a platform fee of 0.5% to 1.5% on your revenue that its own fee documentation says cannot be passed to clients. For a solo consultant, you are paying agency prices for an agency shape.

Ahsuite (free for 10 portals). A portal, period: embeds, files, tasks, messages, with magic-link client login. The free plan is real, and white label arrives on Agency ($29/mo, $24 annual). Proposals, contracts, and invoicing all live elsewhere, so price the second tool into your comparison, and note that its client-billing fees are not publicly documented.

The productized-service platforms#

Zendo (free to $99/mo). Built for selling services with a storefront and request queues. The free Essential plan includes a basic portal with unlimited clients and no transaction fees on any plan, which makes it the best genuinely-free starting point on this list if your consulting is productized (audits, sprints, fixed-scope packages). White labeling arrives progressively: basic at Core, custom domain at Pro, full at Agency.

Wayfront ($129/mo Base, $99 yearly, formerly SPP). Service Provider Pro rebranded to Wayfront in early 2026; spp.co now redirects. It is agency software (5 seats at entry) with a white-label portal, no transaction fees, and, uniquely on this list, an exit answer published right on its pricing page: client and sales exports from the dashboard, and subscriptions that keep running in your own Stripe account after you leave. Expensive for a solo, but that transparency deserves the mention.

The Practice.do lesson: portals die, and they take your records with them#

Practice.do, a venture-backed client portal that raised $10 million and appeared in "best portal" listicles into 2025, shut down permanently on November 3, 2025, and portals, notes, and un-exported client data went with it.

Practice was a real recommendation in this category, aimed at coaches and consultants. Then the company wound down with a few weeks' notice after a failed acquisition process, and practice.do today returns nothing at all. Users who exported in the window kept their data; users who did not, did not. It is the second portal-adjacent shutdown in twelve months, after Fiverr Workspace gave users roughly a month before deleting their records on March 1, 2026.

For a consultant this is not an abstract risk. Your portal accumulates the documents that settle disputes and win renewals: signed SOWs, approved change orders, invoice history, deliverable versions.

So ask the exit question before you enter, of every vendor on this list including us: What can I export, in what format? Do my clients lose access the day I cancel? Is there a read-only grace period?

Wayfront answers on its pricing page. Most vendors answer only if you ask. A vendor that cannot answer at all just answered.

The document portals: Clinked, FuseBase, Softr, Onehub#

If your consulting portal is really a secure file room, dedicated document portals start at $11 per user per month, but none of them send a proposal or collect an invoice.

Consulting searches surface a second family of tools built around files and workspaces rather than paperwork. Clinked now has a Start Up plan listed at $11 per user per month (a solo pays $11, with the billing-period fine print worth confirming in the checkout flow), with its own-domain portal at the $239 Standard tier; it has no invoicing at all. Softr lets you build a fully custom portal, free for up to 10 app users, with the plans aimed at portal builders at $139 per month; payments are Stripe embeds and every feature is yours to assemble and maintain. Onehub is a data-room product wearing a consulting landing page. FuseBase gates white label behind its Advanced plan and, notably, its pricing page would not render dollar amounts for us this run, so we could not verify its prices and left it out of the tables; treat any FuseBase price you read elsewhere, including older versions of ours, as unconfirmed.

The honest rule: if your engagements are pure strategy work where clients only ever need documents, a file portal plus your existing invoicing may be enough. The moment proposals, signatures, and payments enter the picture, a suite that includes the portal costs less than two tools taped together.