How to Create Professional Client Portals with Notion in 2025
A complete guide to transforming your Notion workspace into client-ready portals that impress and convert. Learn best practices, templates, and workflows that professional service providers use to elevate their client experience.
If you're using Notion to manage client projects, you've probably faced this dilemma: how do you share project updates and deliverables with clients without overwhelming them with your entire workspace? The answer lies in creating dedicated client portals that filter and present only the most relevant information.
In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk through the process of creating professional client portals using Notion, covering everything from database setup to automation workflows that will save you hours each week.
Step 1: Setting Up Your Notion Databases
The foundation of any good client portal is a well-structured database system. You'll typically need at least two main databases:
Essential Databases for Client Portals
- Tasks/Projects Database: Track project milestones, deliverables, and their current status
- Invoices/Billing Database: Manage invoices, payments, and financial communications
- Documents/Files Database: Store and organize client-specific documents and resources
Critical Database Properties
Each database should include these essential properties to enable proper client filtering and portal functionality:
Required Properties
- • Client: Select or relation property to tag items
- • Status: Multi-select for tracking progress
- • Due Date: Date property for deadlines
- • Priority: Select property for importance levels
Optional Properties
- • Assignee: Person property for team members
- • Category: Select for organizing by type
- • Budget: Number property for project costs
- • Files: Files property for attachments
Step 2: Creating Client-Specific Views
Once your databases are set up, you need to create filtered views that show only the information relevant to each specific client. This is where the magic happens.
💡 Pro Tip
Create a template view structure that you can quickly duplicate for new clients. This ensures consistency and saves time during client onboarding.
Setting Up Filters
For each client portal, create filtered views in your databases:
- Open your Tasks database
- Create a new view and name it after your client (e.g., "Acme Corp Tasks")
- Add a filter:
Client contains [Client Name] - Sort by due date or priority as needed
- Hide unnecessary properties to reduce clutter
Step 3: Securing Your Client Portals
Security and permissions are crucial when sharing Notion pages with clients. You want to ensure they can only see what they're supposed to see.
⚠️ Security Warning
Never share your main workspace with clients. Always create dedicated portal pages with limited permissions and filtered views.
Permission Best Practices
- Grant "Can view" permissions only, never "Can edit"
- Use specific email addresses instead of public links when possible
- Regularly audit and remove access for completed projects
- Consider using Notion's guest access for external collaborators
Why This Approach Falls Short
While the manual Notion approach works, it has significant limitations that become apparent as your business grows:
Common Challenges
- • Clients get confused by Notion's interface
- • No way to add action buttons (approve, reject, etc.)
- • Limited branding and customization options
- • Manual work required for each new client
- • Security concerns with shared workspace access
The Professional Solution
This is exactly why we built Portalwith. It takes your existing Notion setup and automatically creates professional, branded client portals with advanced features like action buttons, custom domains, and enterprise-grade security.
Ready to Upgrade Your Client Experience?
Transform your Notion databases into professional client portals with custom branding, action buttons, and automatic filtering - all while keeping your existing workflow intact.
Key Takeaways
Creating client portals with Notion requires careful planning and structure, but the results can significantly improve your client relationships. Remember these key points:
- Start with well-structured databases that include client tagging
- Create filtered views for each client to show only relevant information
- Implement proper security measures and permission controls
- Consider professional portal solutions for scaling and branding
The manual approach works for getting started, but as your business grows, you'll likely want a more professional, automated solution that gives you the polish and functionality your clients expect.