Client portal pricing is harder to find clear answers on than website pricing, because the build varies more by sector and feature set. Here's a straight breakdown.
Bloomorbit's starting price
Our Client & Member Portal package starts at £3,500. That covers a fully built, branded, production-ready portal with:
- Authentication (email + password with magic link)
- Two roles (client + admin)
- Document upload/download with audit trail
- Admin dashboard
- Cyber Essentials-aligned security baseline
- Three months of post-launch support
For most UK small businesses adding a portal to handle a single workflow (document exchange, member renewals, or order tracking), £3,500 is the realistic number.
What pushes it higher
The five biggest cost drivers, in order of impact:
- Extra user roles. Two roles is the baseline. Four roles roughly doubles the testing and permissioning work.
- Payment integration. Adding Stripe or GoCardless is +£800-£1,500 typically. Recurring billing with dunning logic is more.
- Third-party integrations. Connecting to Xero, HubSpot, Salesforce, NHS systems, or sector-specific tools each cost £500-£2,000 depending on API quality.
- AI features. Lead scoring, document summarisation, intelligent routing — each adds genuine value but is bespoke work priced individually.
- Compliance overlays. Cyber Essentials baseline is included; specific compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, NHS DSP Toolkit, FCA, SRA) add scope.
What pushes it lower
- Single-tenant architecture (assume this unless you're building a SaaS)
- Stripe-hosted checkout instead of custom payment UI
- Reusing existing brand and domain
- Phasing — ship the core in week 2-3, add nice-to-haves later
Sector benchmarks
Accountants
Typical scope is document exchange + audit trail. Most builds land at £3,500-£5,500.
Solicitors
Matter-level access controls add complexity. £4,500-£7,500 typical.
Sports clubs and associations
Renewal payments + family management. £4,000-£6,000 typical. We sometimes ship as a £3,500 core + £1,500 family/renewal module.
B2B businesses
Two-sided ordering portals like our Ash Workwear build sit at £6,500-£12,000 depending on integration depth.
Education providers
Admissions workflows with AI augmentation like our AGP build are bespoke pricing — typically £15,000-£25,000.
Running costs
Often missed when budgeting. A typical UK portal runs:
- Hosting: £25-£50/month
- Database: £15-£40/month
- Email delivery (Resend/SendGrid): £0-£20/month
- Payment processing fees: percentage of revenue, separate
- Optional managed support: £150-£500/month if you want it
Total typically £400-£1,200/year in running costs for a small-to-medium portal.
What you should not pay for
- Per-user pricing on infrastructure (unless you're using a SaaS template)
- Long-term lock-in contracts beyond hosting
- "Discovery" fees of more than £500 before any commitment
- Custom infrastructure when standard cloud services would do
How to get a realistic quote
Skip the proposal theatre. Write a one-page brief covering: who logs in, what they do, what staff see, what integrations matter. Send it to two or three agencies including us. The realistic ones will give you a number within a day. Anyone who needs a £2,000 discovery phase to tell you the price is either overengineering or trying to pad the contract.
A note from the Bloomorbit studio
We quote portal builds within 48 hours of a clear brief from our Cardiff studio, for UK clients nationwide. Start with our pricing page for the headline numbers. If you have a brief ready or just an idea you want to talk through, that's a free 10-minute call.