In most companies we work with, the client portal is an inbox. A customer writes to ask where their order is, someone opens a spreadsheet, copies three cells into an email and sends it back. The next day the same customer asks again, because the answer was already out of date.
The problem has two layers. The first is wasted time: your team answers the same status questions by hand, although the answer already sits in a system. The second is control: to stop the questions, someone shares the whole spreadsheet or adds the client as a guest, and the client now sees far more than they should. Building a proper portal with a developer solves both, but it takes months and a budget most growing companies would rather spend elsewhere.
What is Softr?
Softr is a no-code builder for client portals and internal tools. You connect it to the data you already have, or keep the data in Softr's own database, and it gives you a web app with logins, user roles and pages that show each person only what they are allowed to see.
The typical uses are client, partner and supplier portals, simple CRMs, company intranets, inventory trackers and internal dashboards. According to the vendor, more than a million teams use it. Softr states that it is GDPR ready and SOC 2 compliant.
What sets Softr apart?
1. It works on the data you already have
This is the part that makes Softr quick to adopt. It connects to more than 20 external sources, among them Airtable, Google Sheets, Notion, HubSpot, SQL databases and monday.com. Your team keeps working where it works today, and the portal shows a controlled slice of that data to the outside world. If you have no sensible source yet, Softr Databases is the built-in option, with an import from Airtable.
2. Permissions that decide who sees what
A portal is only as good as its access rules. In Softr you put users into groups (clients, partners, managers, staff) and decide which pages, records and actions each group gets. A client logs in and sees their own projects, invoices and files, and nothing that belongs to anyone else. That is the difference between a portal and a shared spreadsheet.
3. You can describe the app instead of building it
Since 2026 Softr has an AI Co-Builder: you describe the app you need and it creates the database, the pages, the user roles and the basic logic. What it generates stays editable in the visual editor, so you are not left with a black box. Treat the result as a first draft, not a finished system. It saves the first day of work, not the thinking about your process.
4. Workflows and AI agents built in
Softr Workflows automate what happens around the data: a form is submitted, a record is created, the right person gets a notification, the client gets an email. AI agents can enrich records and take steps inside a workflow, and Ask AI lets users question the app's data in plain language. For heavier automation, Softr still works well alongside n8n or Make.
5. One back end for several apps
A client portal, a sales CRM and an approvals tool can share the same data, users and permissions. For a growing company this matters more than it sounds: you add the second and third tool without creating a second and third version of the truth.
What does it cost?
Softr charges per workspace, not per seat, and every plan includes unlimited apps. What moves you up a plan is the number of builders, the number of people who log in, the number of records and the number of workflow actions. Prices with annual billing, as of November 2026:
- Free – no charge, 5 app users, 5,000 records and 500 workflow actions a month. Enough for a prototype.
- Basic – 19 USD a month (25 USD billed monthly), 1 builder, 5 team and 5 client users, 50,000 records, a custom domain.
- Pro – 99 USD a month (119 USD billed monthly), 2 builders, 10 team and 50 client users, 500,000 records. The first plan that removes Softr branding and adds monday.com as a data source.
- Business – 329 USD a month (395 USD billed monthly), 3 builders, 30 team and 100 client users, 1 million records, plus HubSpot and SQL databases as data sources.
- Enterprise – individual pricing, with SSO and audit logs.
You can start on the free plan and build a working prototype before you pay anything. Before you pick a plan, count how many clients will actually log in. Softr treats everyone outside your company's email domain as a client user, and that number decides the bill, not the plan name.
Softr, or a custom-built portal?
If your portal is your product, with complex logic, heavy traffic or a design that must be pixel-perfect, build it with developers. You cannot export a Softr app and host it yourself, so you are choosing a platform, not buying code. If data sovereignty rules out a hosted tool altogether, look at an open-source option such as Baserow, which also has an application builder and runs on your own server.
Softr earns its place in the middle: the portal is a supporting tool, the data already exists, and you need something working in weeks, not quarters. It is also a sensible answer when the only reason you are buying extra seats in another tool is to let clients look at their own records.
Velg's view
We do not recommend tools because they are fashionable, only because they solve a specific problem. Softr makes sense when:
- clients, partners or suppliers keep asking for information that already sits in your systems,
- you share spreadsheets or add guest accounts and people see more than they should,
- you need an internal tool for one process and a full custom build is out of proportion.
It does not make sense when the data underneath is a mess. A portal shows clients exactly what is in your tables: duplicate records, statuses nobody updates and three spellings of the same company name all become visible the day you launch. That is why we start with the data and the process, and add the portal second.
Transparency note: Velg is a Softr partner and the links to Softr in this article are referral links. If you sign up through them, we may earn a commission. It does not change what we recommend, or when we advise against it.
Are your clients still emailing you for a status update? Try Softr for free, or write to us at hello@velg.io and we will show you what a portal on top of your data could look like.