theULTIMATE CLIENT PORTAL for web designers

After testing 22 different options (yes, really), Kitchen.co* is hands-down the best client portal for designers who want a setup that actually reflects the quality of their work.

Most project management tools like ClickUp, Notion, or Asana are built for internal teams — they weren't designed with your client's experience in mind.

Kitchen gives you a fully white-labeled portal your clients can access without a confusing account setup, built-in task management, file sharing, direct messaging, and a one-time payment versus yet another monthly subscription. It's a rare tool that makes you look more professional and makes them feel taken care of — at the same time!

It's a client portal — and that's actually the point.

A CRM (like Dubsado or HoneyBook) manages your leads, contracts, and invoices: the business parts.

A client portal for designers especially is where the active project lives — tasks, files, feedback, communication, all in one place your client can actually navigate without needing a tutorial.

This client portal template doesn't replace your CRM; CRM compatibility is fully built into how this system works, so it picks up right where your CRM leaves off. Once the contract is signed and the deposit is paid, your Kitchen setup becomes the hub where the real work happens — and where clients go from "I hope this goes okay" to "this is the most organized process I've ever been through!”

Yes, –and no. 😂 Those tools are strictly task & project management apps, intended for internal collaboration work with ourselves & our team if we have one. Learn more about this, in this blog post.

Kitchen is designed to manage collaborative work with people we don’t employ, or manage contract work with (team) AND guests who don’t have their own Kitchen account –and never will.

THIS MEANS OUR CLIENTS (GUESTS):

• ONLY have profiles in OUR Kitchen account

• don’t get marketing or onboarding emails from Kitchen, because our client doesn’t have an account with them –only with us

• can access the portal with a magic link; passwords & Two-Factor Authentication are optional

• don’t have to create an account in a tool/app they may never use again (we ‘create their profile’ for them when we send them an invitation to the portal)

  • this also means we can ‘impersonate’ their account to see what they see, help them set notifications so they won’t be bombarded, etc

• NEVER see Kitchen’s branding or name anywhere, if we white-label our accounts; meaning, emailed notifications come from OUR recognizable email address, the login link uses our brand’s web address, and the coloring matches our brand too

Yes it does, but that’s subject to change, by their team.

You can absolutely test out the client portal template features with their free plan while it’s available, to see if you like it before you purchase my client portal for web designers, or Kitchen’s lifetime plan.

Start a free plan now & see for yourself!

For this setup, you’ll need to purchase a plan from Kitchen.co* but they do have a few options for different budgets & you can start on a free plan with no credit card required to see if you like it first!

I’ll list the pricing options below as of Nov 2025, but make sure to check their pricing for updates as changes may not be reflected here.

• a Lifetime plan starting at $300 total (can be split into 2 payments) for up to 5 internal users + free guests/clients

• a Lifetime plan starting at $600 total (can be split into 3 equal payments) for unlimited internal users + free guests/clients

• a subscription option (Agency plan) at a low monthly rate of ~ $30/mo, ongoing

Other tools used in this course & set up are using free plans of software like Tally.so to build forms, Zapier’s free (or paid plans), or Google Calendar which you likely already have access to using either a paid Google Workspace or free Gmail account.

You can have the basics running in a weekend if you binge the course, like I tend to do when I get excited about what I’m learning. 😂

Most designers can implement the full system within a week, and use it with your very next client.

Absolutely! This system is designed to complement your existing CRM (like Dubsado, HoneyBook, etc).

This client portal handles the day-to-day project task & content management, while your CRM continues to handle booking, leads, contracts, and invoices.

You can still keep your CRM to book the projects & manage your leads, then when the project is ready to start (homework, then design, etc) you invite the client to your portal using this system for the duration of the project & its support window (if you provide post-launch support).

To learn more about the difference between a Client Portal & a CRM, check out this blog / video post here.

Yep, totally! This client portal template is designed to work alongside whatever CRM you're already using — Dubsado included.

Dubsado handles your contracts, invoices, and lead workflows beautifully, while Kitchen handles the actual client-facing project experience & delivery once someone's signed on. They play well together, and you won't have to blow up your existing setup to make it work.

If anything, adding Kitchen fills the gap that Dubsado's portal features leave behind — giving your clients one clean, branded place to track progress, upload files, and communicate with you throughout the project.

No. You will have to recreate it –but I’ve purposefully revamped the whole system in Kitchen BASED on the foundational elements I used in Notion ––and stripped out the redundancies or extras that we can easily use AI to do for us.

That stripping down means the new version in Kitchen is much simpler for BOTH you & your client, and also means it can be recreated much more quickly with my step-by-step guides, requiring much less editing than the Notion version.

Club Insiders do get 20% off this template AND get the Pricing Calculator template FREE.

The coupon code access is linked here so if you're an All-Access member (first), you can click to see/grab the discount code & then checkout with the code when you're ready.