Customer portal development
A customer portal gives your clients secure access to the information and processes they currently phone or email you about. Order status, documents, registrations, account history, support requests: the things that take up your team's time when handled manually.
We build bespoke portals in .NET, integrated with the systems you already run. Not a product you configure and work around, but a platform built to match how your business actually operates.
16i is a B Corp certified software development agency based in Cheltenham. We have been building portals and business applications for more than twenty years, including a trade portal serving over a thousand installers for a national manufacturer.
What a bespoke customer portal can do
Every portal is different, because every business handles its customers differently. These are the capabilities we are most often asked for.
Secure client access
Authenticated access to account information, with permissions controlled at the level your business needs rather than the level a product allows
Document exchange
Secure upload, storage and sharing of documents, with version control and a full audit trail of who accessed what and when
Self-service processes
Registrations, applications, claims, bookings and requests handled by the customer directly rather than through your team
Back-office integration
Real-time connection to your ERP, CRM or bespoke systems, so data entered once appears everywhere it is needed.
Reporting and dashboards
Views built for your users and for your internal team, showing the information each actually needs.
Mobile and offline
Companion apps where users work away from a desk, including offline capability where connectivity cannot be relied on.
The types of portal we build
Portal is a broad word. In practice the projects we deliver fall into five recognisable types, and the right one depends on who needs access and what they need to do once they are in.
Customer Portals
Customer portals give your clients a secure place to see their own information: orders, documents, invoices, service history or support tickets. The commercial case is usually a reduction in routine enquiries handled by phone and email.
Partner and installer portals
Partner and installer portals serve a trade or reseller network rather than end customers. Grant UK's G1 portal is the example we point to most often: it supports over a thousand registered installers with registration, product information and support, replacing a process that had previously run on phone calls and paperwork.
Member Portals
Member portals suit membership bodies, associations and subscription businesses, where access itself is the product and the portal needs to handle renewals, entitlements and member-only content.
Staff and internal portals
Staff and internal portals bring scattered internal processes into one place. These are often the highest-value projects commercially, because the time saved is measured across an entire workforce rather than a customer base.
Certification and accreditation platforms
Certification and accreditation platforms manage inspection, assessment and certificate issuing, often with public verification. PIPA, the national inflatable play inspection scheme, runs on a platform we built for exactly this purpose. See platforms for certification and inspection schemes.
Integrating a portal with the systems you already run
A portal is only as useful as the data behind it. If users have to wait for someone internally to update it, you have added a maintenance job rather than removed one.
Most of the portals we build connect to systems the client already depends on: a CRM, an ERP or finance system, a stock or booking database, or a third-party service accessed through an API. Where a system has no usable API there are usually workable alternatives, from scheduled data exports to a middleware layer sitting between the two.
Because we build in .NET, integration with Microsoft environments tends to be straightforward, and Azure hosting keeps authentication and access control in familiar territory for internal IT teams. That matters more than it sounds: a portal that IT does not trust rarely gets adopted.
The integration question is one of the first things we work through during discovery, because it has more influence on scope and cost than almost anything else.
Grant UK: a portal serving over 1,000 trade installers
Grant UK has been manufacturing heating systems since 1970. Their G1 installer network needed a way to register products, track warranties, manage customer records and receive service reminders, and the process was being handled manually across multiple systems.
We built the G1 portal from the ground up on .NET, integrated directly with Grant's back-office systems so that data entered by an installer flows through in real time with no duplication. A companion iOS and Android app lets installers submit registrations on site, including in rural locations with no data connection, using barcode scanning to capture product serial numbers.
More than a thousand registered installers now use it as part of their working day.
Should you buy portal software or build bespoke?
Off-the-shelf portal products are the right answer more often than a development agency might admit. If your requirements are close to standard, your systems are mainstream, and speed matters more than exact fit, a configurable product will get you working sooner and cheaper.
Bespoke becomes the better option when integration is the hard part, when your workflow is specific to how you operate, when the portal is a significant part of the customer experience, or when licence fees across three to five years would exceed the cost of owning the thing outright.
We are happy to tell you which applies. If an off-the-shelf product fits your requirements, that is what we will say.
How a portal project runs
Portal projects start with discovery rather than a proposal. We spend time with the people who will use the system and the people who maintain the data behind it, and establish what the portal needs to do before anyone estimates what it will cost.
Integration feasibility is confirmed early rather than assumed. This is the part of a portal project that most often causes difficulty, and we would rather establish exactly what your systems can read and write at the start than discover a constraint after the design is fixed.
For larger builds we usually recommend proving the core workflow with a defined group of users before committing to the full system. It reduces risk substantially and gives you something real to evaluate.
What does a bespoke portal cost?
It depends on scope, and specifically on how many systems the portal has to talk to. As a guide:
Portal
Cost
Single integration, defined user group, focused workflow
From £25,000, 8 to 14 weeks
Multiple integrations, varied user types, complex workflow
From £60,000, 16 to 24 weeks
Enterprise platform with multiple environments and phases
Scoped individually after discovery
These figures assume proper discovery, UX, build, QA and deployment by a professional .NET team. They exclude hosting and ongoing support, which should be included when comparing against a subscription product over three to five years.
Security and access control
Portals hold information that is not meant to be public, which makes access control a design decision rather than a technical afterthought.
Every portal we build has role-based permissions, so what a user sees is determined by who they are. That may be as simple as separating customers from staff, or as involved as a trade network where distributors, installers and regional managers each see a different view of the same system.
We build authentication using established .NET identity frameworks rather than bespoke login code, support single sign-on where an organisation already uses Microsoft Entra or similar, and handle data in line with UK GDPR requirements. Hosting is typically on Azure in UK data centres, which resolves most data residency questions before they are asked.
Why work with 16i
Our Advantages
Descriptions
We have built portals at scale
Including a trade platform used daily by over a thousand installers,
integrated with back-office systems and supported by native
mobile apps.No product to protect
We do not sell portal software, so we have no reason to recommend
building when buying would serve you better.Integration is the specialism
Connecting to proprietary and legacy systems is the part most projects
struggle with, and the part we do most often.Long-term relationships
Most of our client relationships are measured in years. Portals evolve
with the business and we are set up to support that.B Corp certified
Independently assessed on how we treat our people, our clients and
our impact.
Creating a seamless user experience for G1 Installers
Grant UK • Portal & App
Creating a resilient reporting system.
PIPA • Platform
Generating happier employees through bespoke software development.
Harkn • App
Scaling a publishing platform for growing traffic
SoPublishing • Platform
More on customer portals
Working through a portal project? These may help:
Business benefits of customer portals
Customer Portal Software: Options and Features Compared
Customer Portal Software vs Bespoke: How to Decide
Frequently asked questions
What is a bespoke portal?
A bespoke portal is a secure online area built specifically for your organisation, where a defined group of users can access information and complete tasks. Unlike off-the-shelf portal software, it is shaped around your existing processes and connects directly to the systems you already run.
Can a portal integrate with our CRM?
In most cases yes. If your CRM has an API, integration is usually straightforward. Where it does not, we look at scheduled data synchronisation or a middleware layer. This is one of the first things we establish during discovery.
How long does a bespoke portal take to build?
A focused portal with a clearly defined user group and one or two integrations typically takes three to four months from discovery to launch. Larger platforms serving multiple user types are scoped individually and often delivered in phases so value arrives sooner.
Should we buy portal software or build a bespoke portal?
Off-the-shelf portal software is faster and cheaper to launch, and is the right answer when your requirements are close to standard. A bespoke build makes sense when the portal is central to how the business operates, when it needs to integrate with systems a packaged product will not reach, or when the user experience is part of what differentiates you commercially.
What does a bespoke portal cost?
Portal projects vary with scope, but as a guide a focused portal with defined users and limited integration typically starts in the region of 25,000 to 40,000 pounds, while larger multi-user platforms with substantial integration run higher. We give a firm figure after discovery rather than a range before it.
Talk to us about your portal
If you are considering a customer or client portal, we would welcome a conversation about what is involved. An initial discussion is free and carries no obligation, and if a bespoke build is not the right answer for you we will say so.
Get in touch at hello@16i.co.uk or call +44 (0)1242 654 000.