Free for your clients
A free client portal, with no login for your clients
A free client portal should be a working portal, not a builder licence. Here, free means free for the people who actually use it: your clients. They never pay, never create an account, and never get a login. Each one opens a single magic link that runs the whole flow — agreement signing, deposit payment, intake questions, access requests, and file uploads. You pay a flat fee per agency; onboard 3 clients or 300 and your clients’ side costs the same, which is nothing.
What is free, and what you pay for
| Free for your client, forever | What you pay for |
|---|---|
| Your client’s portal — no fee, no account, no password, no app | Your seat: $19/mo Pro after a 14-day trial |
| Every client you ever onboard, at no extra cost — pricing is per agency | Volume above 20 completed onboardings a month (Scale, $49/mo) |
| Unlimited onboardings in progress, so a slow client never blocks you | Custom domain and full white-labelling (Scale, $49/mo) |
| Full flow: e-sign, payment, intake, access, uploads | Removing the small “powered by” badge |
| Magic link, no client account, password-protected portals | Team seats and per-member roles (Team, $20/user/mo) |
The line to check on any tool is which side of it your clients sit on. Per-seat and per-contact pricing means every client you add costs you again, which quietly pushes you toward emailing PDFs to the small ones. Here the client side is always zero: a flat fee per agency, and onboardings still in progress are never capped, so a client who takes three weeks to send their files does not cost you a slot.
Why most “free client portals” are not portals
Search this term and the results are mostly app builders: Softr, Airtable, Notion, and similar. Their free tiers are real, but what you get is the raw material. You still have to design the portal, wire the permissions, connect a form, work out file storage, and maintain it when something breaks. That is a weekend of work before your first client sees anything, and it is still your responsibility every time it misbehaves.
The other pattern is a trial wearing a free-plan badge: fourteen or thirty days, then the portal your client is halfway through stops working. Check which one you are signing up for before you invest the setup time.
To be straight about our own: OnboardHive runs a 14-day trial and asks for a card up front. We used to run a free plan and stopped in August 2026 (accounts that had one keep it). The difference from the pattern above is where the clock starts — yours begins when you send your first proposal, not on the day you sign up, so a busy week cannot eat the trial you never used. We email you three days before the card is charged, and cancelling before then costs nothing. What does not expire is the client side: their portal is free whatever you decide.
No login is the part that matters
Most client portals, free or paid, ask your client to create an account first. For a multi-year relationship that is reasonable. For onboarding it is the single largest source of drop-off, because every account-creation screen sits between a client who has just paid you and the thing you need them to do.
A magic link removes it. The link is unique to that client, unguessable, revocable, and resumable, so they can complete two items on Monday and finish on Thursday without a password reset in between. More on how that works in magic-link client onboarding.
Try it without signing up for anything
If you want to improve onboarding before you pick a tool, these are free and none of them ask for an email address:
- Client onboarding checklist — 42 steps from signed proposal to kickoff
- Client onboarding questionnaire — 48 intake questions worth asking
- Onboarding email templates — ten emails from welcome to handoff
Questions
Is there a genuinely free client portal?
It depends whose side you mean. For your clients, yes and permanently: with OnboardHive they never pay, never sign up, never get a password, and there is no per-client or per-contact charge — pricing is per agency, so the hundredth client costs the same as the first, which is nothing. For you, no: OnboardHive is $19/mo after a 14-day trial. Most results for this query are app builders like Softr, Airtable or Notion, where the free tier is a licence to build a portal yourself rather than a working portal.
What is the catch with free client portals?
Usually one of three: a time-limited trial dressed up as a free plan, a cap so low you cannot complete anything real, or a builder tier where you still have to construct the portal from scratch. There is a fourth worth checking for, because it is the one that costs the most over time: per-client or per-seat pricing, where every client you add charges you again. Ours is stated plainly — a 14-day trial for you, then a flat fee per agency, and the client side is free forever with in-progress onboardings never capped.
Do my clients need to create an account?
No. Each client gets one private magic link. They open it, complete what they can, close it, and come back to the same link later with their progress saved. No signup, no password, no app. Portals can be password-protected for confidential work, and new client portals are protected by default.
Can I use a client portal with my own branding?
Partly, on the cheaper plans. Your logo and brand colour are on the portal from the first day, including during the trial, but Pro portals carry a small 'powered by OnboardHive' badge. Full white-labelling with your own custom domain is on the $49/mo Scale plan. If removing all third-party branding is non-negotiable for you, no free tier of any tool will do it.
Is a passwordless client portal secure enough for real client work?
Each link is unique, unguessable, revocable, and can be password-protected, and files are stored encrypted. That is appropriate for most agency and consulting work. If you handle regulated financial or health records, review it against your own compliance obligations before putting client documents through any tool, free or paid.
Running an agency specifically? The client portal for agencies page covers the agency case, and client onboarding for accountants covers accounting and bookkeeping firms.
Onboard your next client for free.
One client, the whole flow, free for them forever.
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