Client portals
Your clients submit work. They never sign up.
Every project gets a public link. Clients send bugs, ideas, and feedback straight to your board, watch the kanban update in real time, and reply to email updates without an account. The portal kills the status meeting — your client already knows where things stand because they can see them moving.
What it does
Three jobs, one URL
Intake. The portal carries a submission form. Clients describe what they need, we attach their name and email, and a card lands in your Harbour column ready for triage. No account creation, no CAPTCHA wall, no copy-pasting from email into your tool.
Visibility. Below the form, the live kanban shows every public card — what's in progress, what's next, what shipped. Cards reposition in real time as your team works. The status meeting stops being a meeting and starts being a bookmark.
Honesty. Below the kanban, the Tide log shows every projection change with a plain-language reason. When a card slips, your client sees why before they see the slip in the schedule. That's the difference between feeling managed and feeling included.
How it works
From off to live in two minutes
- 1
Enable the portal
Open project settings → Sharing → toggle 'Public client portal'. We generate a slug like /r/acme-q3 you can edit.
- 2
Choose what's public
Mark cards public individually or in bulk. The portal only shows cards with is_public=true. Card titles always show; descriptions are optional per card.
- 3
Brand it (Team)
On Team, upload your logo, set the accent colour, and configure the from-name and from-email used on confirmation messages. Optional custom domain via CNAME.
- 4
Send the link
Email or Slack the URL to your client. They bookmark it. They submit, watch progress, and reply to email updates — no sign-up screen ever.
- 5
Triage submissions
New submissions land in the Harbour column with sender name, email, and message attached. Accept, defer, or merge. The submitter is notified automatically.
- 6
Watch the Tide log
Under the board, the Tide log shows every projection change with a plain-language reason: 'Pulled forward 4 hours because copy review finished early.' This replaces the weekly status update.
Use cases
Five real scenarios where the portal earns its place
Web studios
A 4-week brand sprint with three rounds of feedback
Acme's portal is at narcove.com/r/acme-rebrand. Their PM submits feedback on the homepage wireframes via the form. The card lands in your Harbour column tagged 'Acme'. You triage, the work cascades, and the client sees the new ETA without a Slack ping. By Friday, they've watched the schedule pull forward twice — once when copy finished early, once when motion graphics went faster than expected. They never asked for an update.
SaaS bug intake
Customers reporting bugs without raising a support ticket
Surface a portal at app.your-saas.com/feedback. Customers submit bugs straight from your app. Each submission becomes a public card so other customers can see 'we're already working on this'. You upvote, deduplicate, and ship. The portal becomes a public roadmap by accident — and your support volume drops 30% because customers self-serve their status checks.
Internal stakeholders
An exec who wants visibility without disturbing the team
Your CEO doesn't need a paid seat. They get the portal URL bookmarked. They check it before the leadership meeting and skip the standup. When something slips, the Tide log explains the reason in one sentence — 'Pushed back 2 days because the Stripe migration revealed a webhook bug we now have to handle' — and the exec walks into the meeting informed without you spending an hour writing a status doc.
Freelancer + retainer client
Monthly retainer with a transparent backlog
Your client's portal shows the running backlog of work for the month. They submit new requests, see what's in flight, and watch the hours pool deplete. When they're approaching the cap, the projection turns coral and they have the conversation with you early — not when they get the invoice. Trust compounds. Renewals get easier.
Open source / community
A public roadmap that doesn't need GitHub Issues
Toggle the portal indexable. Search engines pick up your card titles, so 'narcove dark mode' becomes a result that lands a contributor on a card showing it's planned for next quarter, with the Tide log proving the team actually moves on it. Closed-source teams can do the same selectively — publishing only the customer-facing roadmap while keeping internal work private.
Why this matters
Most PM tools charge per viewer. We charge per editor.
Asana, Monday, ClickUp, and Jira count every guest as a billable user. A ten-person studio with three retainer clients ends up paying for thirteen seats that mostly read. We think that's backwards. The people doing the work pay for the tool. The people watching pay nothing.
The portal is also faster. There's no auth handshake, no SSO redirect, no account-recovery flow when a client gets a new laptop. They open the bookmark and the page is there. We measure portal first-contentful-paint at < 800ms on UK 4G, partly because it's server-rendered and partly because we never load authenticated infra for unauthenticated users.
And it's honest. Most status pages let teams hide bad news behind green ticks. The Tide log doesn't. Every projection change is recorded, with a reason, and the public summary at the top of the portal says "tracking three days ahead" or "tracking two days behind target" in plain English. Clients trust honest tools. They tend to renew with them too.
FAQ
Portal questions
Do clients need to sign up to use the portal?
No. The portal is a public read-and-submit page at narcove.com/r/your-slug. Clients see the live board, submit requests via a short form, and reply to email updates without ever creating an account. They never count as a paid seat.
Can I put the portal on my own domain?
Yes, on Team. Point a CNAME to portal.narcove.com and we'll serve your portal at portal.your-domain.com with your logo, colours, and email-from address. Pro and Free portals live on narcove.com/r/your-slug.
What can clients see — and what can't they?
Clients see public cards (anything you've toggled to is_public on Pro+). They never see card descriptions you've marked private, internal comments, time estimates, or assignee names unless you choose to expose them. Toggle visibility per card or in bulk.
How do submissions land on the board?
Submissions create a new card in your designated 'Harbour' column with the client's name, email, and message attached. You triage it like any other card — accept it, deflect it, or merge it with an existing card. The submitter gets a confirmation email with the public link to track it.
Will clients see the schedule moving in real time?
Yes. The portal uses Supabase realtime, so cards reposition as the board changes — completed, blocked, started — without a page refresh. The Tide log section under the board shows every projection change with a plain-language reason.
Can I disable the portal for sensitive projects?
Yes. Each project's portal is opt-in. Even with the portal enabled, individual cards default to private — only cards you explicitly mark public appear externally. You can revoke a portal in one click if a relationship ends; the URL becomes a 404.
Does the portal hurt my SEO?
No. Portals are noindex by default — search engines don't surface them. If you want a portal to be discoverable (a public roadmap, for example), flip the indexable toggle in share settings.
Related
How portals fit with the rest of Narcove
The Tide
Cascade replan
When the schedule moves, the portal updates in real time. The log records every change with a plain-language reason.
The Harbour
Submission triage
Where new portal submissions land. Triage them like any other card. Send back, accept, or merge.
The Chart
Public timeline
Portal viewers can switch to the Gantt view. Target vs projection rendered side-by-side so the gap is obvious.
No card required. Public viewers always free.