A company should usually build a custom customer portal, because a portal is useful only when it shows the orders, projects and invoices held in your own systems, and that connection is the part products do least well. Salesforce Experience Cloud is the best portal to buy, provided Salesforce is already your system of record, since customers then see and update that same data.
The ranking, entry by entry
1 Custom build by Black Badger
Best for portals that show live data from your own systems
Custom is first on this list, and Black Badger, which publishes this guide, builds customer portals, so weigh that. A portal is the system on this site most shaped by your own data. Customers want their orders, their project status and their invoices, and those are held in your ERP, your CRM and your finance tool. We build the portal against those systems, under your brand and your domain, and no fee is charged per customer login.
Watch for. The portal depends on the systems behind it having clean data and a way to read it. Discovery checks that before the written scope is agreed.
- How it charges
- One-time build scoped in writing, then running costs such as hosting
- Main limit
- Needs a scoping call first, and suits companies of 50 or more employees
What a custom build involves, and how to ask about one
2 Salesforce Experience Cloud
Best for companies whose customer data already lives in Salesforce
Salesforce Experience Cloud is the best portal to buy if you run Salesforce, because the portal reads the same records your staff work in. Buying wins there, and the cost follows the customers. The published Service Portal plan is billed per login or per member, monthly, and every external user is licensed by one of the two. Five-year cost depends on how many customers sign in and how often.
Watch for. Object permissions on community license profiles start restricted, and Salesforce shows prices for the Service Portal plan only. Other license types need a quote.
- How it charges
- Per login or per named member, monthly
- Main limit
- Priced per login or per named member, and object access starts restricted
3 Zendesk
Best for portals that are mainly a help center and ticket tracker
Zendesk ranks third. If what you mean by a customer portal is a place to raise and follow support tickets, buy this and do not build. The customer portal appears on Suite Professional, billed yearly, and pricing is per agent, so the cost follows your support team and not your customer count. It stops being the answer when customers need to see orders or invoices from your own systems.
Watch for. Removing Zendesk branding from the web widget is not included on any of the three listed plans. Host mapping to your own subdomain is.
- How it charges
- Per agent, billed yearly or monthly
- Main limit
- Customer portal starts on Suite Professional, priced per support agent
4 Softr
Best for A quick portal over records kept in a table tool
Softr ranks fourth. It is the fastest buy when your records already sit in a table tool and a modest number of customers need to see them. Pro has a flat monthly price, billed yearly. The ceiling is what decides build or buy. Client users are capped at 250 on Pro and 500 on Business, and anything larger needs the Enterprise plan, which is quoted. A company with a larger customer base outgrows the published plans.
Watch for. Users with free email domains such as Gmail count as client users, and Pro includes only 50 before the per-user add-on begins.
- How it charges
- Flat monthly price by plan, plus a fee per extra client user
- Main limit
- Client users are capped, at 250 on Pro and 500 on Business
5 Moxo
Best for guided onboarding and approval steps with customers
Moxo ranks fifth. It is a different kind of product. Customers act on guided steps through a magic link without creating an account, which suits onboarding and approvals. A Moxo blog post gives the Team plan a yearly price with 100 flows and unlimited seats, so the price follows process volume and not logins. It is not the buy for a persistent account area with order history, which is the usual meaning of a customer portal.
Watch for. The Moxo pricing page shows no prices, and the pages we read do not say which plans include white-label branding or custom domains.
- How it charges
- By flows a year and AI use, larger plans quoted
- Main limit
- Priced by flows a year and AI use, not by people who log in
6 Clinked
Best for branded file sharing with a defined group of clients
Clinked ranks sixth. It gives a defined group of clients or partners a branded space to share files and work together, and it does that without any building. Standard covers 100 members and Premium covers 250 on the plan card, each billed monthly, and Premium costs more. The member allowance is the limit. A company expecting thousands of customer logins, or a portal connected to its own systems, is outside what Clinked is for.
Watch for. The comparison section of the pricing page shows a lower Premium price than the plan card, and does not say whether customers count toward the member allowance.
- How it charges
- Monthly by member allowance, Enterprise quoted
- Main limit
- Member allowance per plan, 100 on Standard and 250 on Premium
7 SuiteDash
Best for services firms that want one flat-priced client tool
SuiteDash ranks seventh for a company of 50 or more employees. Its pricing is the opposite of per-seat, with one flat price per account and unlimited clients and staff on every plan, from Start to Pinnacle. On cost alone it is a sound buy. It ranks last because it keeps clients, files, invoices and projects in its own system. It does not suit a portal that must read live data from your ERP or order system.
Watch for. Plans differ mainly by storage, from 100GB on Start to 2TB on Pinnacle. The page does not list custom domains by plan.
- How it charges
- Flat price per account, monthly or yearly, not per user
- Main limit
- Plans differ mainly by storage, 100GB on Start to 2TB on Pinnacle
How this list was ranked
A customer portal differs from the other systems on this site. Its value comes from showing customers data that is already held in your own systems, under your own brand. So we ranked by how well each option reaches that data, then by how the price behaves as the number of customers grows, then by who maintains it.
Custom is first on this list for that reason. Building wins more often for portals than for any other system we cover, and we rank it second or third on the lists where buying usually wins.
Questions buyers ask
Why does building win more often for customer portals?
Building wins more often for customer portals because the portal has little content of its own. Everything a customer wants to see comes from your ERP, CRM, project or finance system. A product can supply the login and the pages, and the connection to your data still has to be built. Once you are building that, building the pages too is a small step.
When should a company buy a customer portal product instead of building one?
Buy a portal product when the portal belongs to a system you already run. If your records are in Salesforce, its portal reads them directly. If the portal is a help center, a support product does it well. If you mainly share files with a known group of clients, a file portal is enough.
How do customer portal products charge as the number of customers grows?
Customer portal products charge in different ways as customers grow, and the method changes the five-year total. Some license each external login or member, some charge per support agent, some cap client users by plan and some charge a flat fee. Work out the cost at the number of customers you expect in year five.
What systems does a custom customer portal connect to?
A custom portal connects to whatever systems hold the data your customers ask about. Black Badger names each source system in the written scope, along with what customers can see and what they can change. The portal uses your sign-in rules and your domain.