Project Management Software With a Client Portal, Compared

Project management software with a client portal comes in three shapes, and they are not interchangeable. A portal product is a separate branded space fed from your work. A guest account puts the client inside your workspace, scoped to one project. A share link hands over one document with no account at all. Pick by what the client has to see: a copy, the real plan, or a single file.

Onplana's plan limits, read on its pricing page in November 2026, show how much the shape changes the bill: a guest seat costs nothing up to an allowance (2 on Professional, 5 on Business, 10 on Enterprise) and none are included on Free. See which plans include free guest seats for clients.

In short. If the client needs to see the live schedule, give them a guest account on that one project, because nothing has to be copied across and nothing goes stale. If you serve many clients who each need a branded space with forms and invoices, a separate portal product fits better. If the client needs one file, a share link is enough. Onplana is the second kind: it is not a portal product.

What counts as a client portal in project management software?

A client portal is whatever lets a client see their project without seeing everything else. Three mechanisms get called by that name, and the difference decides what the client can see, edit and comment on.

The diagram below sets the three side by side by what the client sees.

How do the three client views compare?

The table sets the shapes against the questions a client-facing team actually asks.

Pros and cons of each, in one line apiece:

• Portal product. Pro: branding, isolation between clients, forms and invoices. Con: a second system to keep in step with the real plan.
• Guest account. Pro: no copy to maintain, and comments land on the real tasks. Con: the client sees everything inside the project, so internal chatter has to live elsewhere.
• Share link. Pro: no account to create or pay for. Con: it is one document, not a view of the work.

How does Onplana give a client a view of the project?

Onplana takes the guest-account route and adds a share link for single documents. It is not a portal product, and the honest comparison is that a portal is better for branded, many-client delivery.

• Guest seats are on every paid plan and absent on Free. A guest sees the one project they were invited to, can comment, and can reply to @mentions. The guest seats explainer covers what a guest can and cannot do.
• Share links give a client one project document without a licence. Sharing project documents with clients, no licence walks through it.
• Comments and @mentions happen on the same tasks your team works, so a client reply is a comment on the real task, and a mention reaches the person's inbox, email and phone. This is part of team collaboration in Onplana.
• Request access covers the link a client opens by mistake or from a forwarded email. They ask from that same URL, and the people who manage the project decide from an inbox. Request access to a project shows the flow.

What does a client portal cost per client?

Read the cost question as a per-client question. A portal product usually prices by client, by portal or by seat, so the bill grows with your client count. A guest account in a shared workspace is free up to the plan's allowance and then billed as a seat.

On Onplana the allowance is 2 free guest seats on Professional, 5 on Business and 10 on Enterprise and Enterprise+, per its plan limits in November 2026. The practical test: count the client people who need to be inside a project at once, not the number of clients. A client with three reviewers uses three guest seats on that project.

How do you keep internal work out of the client's view?

Put the client's work in its own project. A guest sees everything inside the project they were invited to, comments and attachments included, so the project is the privacy boundary. Check task names, comments and attachments before you invite anyone, and keep internal discussion, margin notes and staffing in a separate project. One project for a contractor, a client and an in-house team shows how to lay that out.

If the client mainly needs the schedule, see sharing a Gantt chart with a client, which compares a PDF, a guest seat and a member seat. For the wider field, client collaboration tools compares the two broad approaches.

Which one should you choose?

Choose on the client's job, not the feature list.

1. List what the client has to do: read status, comment, approve, or fetch files.
2. If they must see the live schedule and comment on tasks, use a guest account.
3. If they need only a document, send a share link and skip the seat.
4. If you run many branded client spaces with forms and invoices, evaluate a portal product and accept the second system.

See which plans include free guest seats for clients Guest seats start on Professional, with 2 free, and Free has none. Compare the allowances before you invite a client team. → Compare plans on the pricing page