Customer portals
B2B customer portal — self-service that scales.
When support and sales drown in ‘where is my order?’ emails, a customer portal is often the right next step — if you design org model and auth correctly from the start.
The problem
A portal is not ‘a login and some PDFs’.
B2B customers expect to see orders, invoices, tickets, and documents without calling. Internally you expect support not to be human middleware between ERP and the customer.
What makes portals expensive to fix later is rarely the UI — it is organisation model, permissions, and data isolation. Multi-tenant and RLS are architecture choices, not ‘phase 2’.
We build customer portals on Next.js with a clear link to your systems — and we push back if a standard tool or vendor portal already covers the need.
What a good B2B portal includes
Scope that matches how you sell.
Start with the flows that remove the most manual time — expand afterwards.
Organisations and roles
Multiple users per customer, admin invites, and permissions that mirror your sales model.
Orders, documents, and status
What customers ask about again and again — visible without tickets.
Auth that holds
Sessions, MFA readiness, and no ‘shared password for the company’.
Integration to ERP/CRM
Read and write what is necessary — not a new master system by accident.
Multi-tenant data isolation
RLS and org scope so customer A never sees customer B.
Billing and self-service when you are SaaS
Stripe Customer Portal and webhooks — without reinventing payments.
Before you build
Questions that save you from the wrong MVP.
Does the vendor portal already cover most of it?
If yes: integrate or white-label. Do not build for vanity.
Is the data ready for self-service?
Messy master data in the ERP becomes messy screens in the portal.
Who owns the support processes?
The portal changes tickets — plan operations, not only launch.
Should it later be white-label?
Prepare the org model early if partnership is on the roadmap.
FAQ
B2B customer portals
Shopify customer accounts vs. custom portal?
Shopify covers many webshops. Complex B2B with deep ERP usually needs custom.
Do we need native apps?
Rarely in v1. A fast, mobile-friendly web portal solves most B2B flows.
Where do you start?
With 2–3 high-pain flows and an honest org model — not a giant ‘everything’ scope.
Can you build on our existing APIs?
Yes. We map integrations in discovery and avoid mirroring the whole ERP unnecessarily.
Read next
Read next
On portals, multi-tenant, and billing.
- Web6 min read
When do you need a customer portal — and when is a tool enough?
Most B2B companies end up building something that looks like a customer portal. The question is whether you should build it, or whether a standard tool already does the job. Here's the framework we use.
→When do you need a customer portal — and when is a tool enough? - SaaS5 min read
Multi-tenant architecture: when, how — and what can wait
Multi-tenant sounds like something you must decide on day one. In practice it's a scale of choices — from "everyone in the same database with an org id" to full isolation. Here's how we choose without over-engineering the MVP.
→Multi-tenant architecture: when, how — and what can wait - SaaS5 min read
Stripe, billing, and org auth — what to have in place before your first paying customer
Billing and auth are the first place a SaaS product becomes expensive to fix afterwards. Here is how we think about Stripe, organisations, and self-service together — without reinventing what Stripe has already solved.
→Stripe, billing, and org auth — what to have in place before your first paying customer
Support drowning in repeated questions?
Let’s clarify whether you need a portal — and which scope.
We help cut the MVP so you get value without building a new ERP.