Entitlement enforced on the server
The right client sees the right documents, and that has to be provable rather than merely true.
A client portal replaces email attachments with authenticated access: each client sees their own documents, and you get a record of who saw what and when. True Cedar delivered one for a financial services firm serving 350 clients in under two weeks, and rolled out an AI portal to 500 users in the same window.
Timelines are examples from specific projects, not a guarantee. Every engagement is governed by its own written statement of work and agreement.
Sending documents to clients as email attachments works at ten clients. At three hundred it produces three problems at once:
Most firms notice the first problem, get asked about the third during a review, and never had an answer for the second.
The interface is the easy part, and it is what most demos lead with. These are the parts that matter:
The right client sees the right documents, and that has to be provable rather than merely true.
A record of every access event, because at some point somebody will ask.
Your team publishes documents to one client or many without needing an engineer.
A portal is only as useful as what flows into it, so it connects to the systems already producing your documents.
Hundreds of client accounts mapped correctly to the right documents at launch. At scale, this is the genuinely hard problem.
Portal products exist, and for some firms buying one is the right call. It is worth being clear about when.
Buy when your industry has a mature portal product that fits your workflow, and your document sources already integrate with it.
Build when the portal needs to match a process specific to your firm; when per-client pricing makes a product expensive at your scale; when the product cannot reach the systems your documents come from; or when you need control of the data for compliance reasons.
Our pricing page walks through the break-even between paying per seat and building.
Asset managers, advisory firms, and other firms delivering statements and reporting to clients. Stephen spent five years as Director of Innovation and Technology at the Washington State Investment Board.
Firms sharing sensitive documents with clients, including matters involving protected health information. We have delivered a HIPAA-compliant AI agent for a large law firm.
Consultancies and service firms replacing email-based intake, onboarding, and reporting.
| Portal | Typical timeline | Typical budget |
|---|---|---|
| Simple, single-role document portal | About 5 business days | Under $10,000 |
| Multi-role portal with reporting and integrations | 2–5 weeks | $18,000–$45,000 |
| Regulated data, many source systems, or complex permissions | 5–10 weeks | $45,000–$90,000 |
Prices and timelines here are examples to help you plan, not a quote, an offer, or a contract. Every engagement is governed by its own written statement of work and agreement.
A portal that holds client data has to be designed for that from the start, not retrofitted. That means entitlement enforced on the server rather than hidden in the interface, an audit log of every access, encryption, and access that can be reviewed.
When a portal falls under a regulation such as HIPAA or GLBA, the compliance work is additive: it typically adds 25 to 60 percent to a build, depending on the regulation and the evidence your auditors require. We scope it explicitly, in the statement of work, before anything is built.
What the workflow is, who uses it, what it connects to, whether data has to come along, and what compliance applies. We will tell you on that call if you should buy something instead, and if the scope you have in mind does not fit the date you have in mind.
Within a few business days of that call, with a delivery date on it. Fixed price rather than hourly, so the risk of the work taking longer is ours rather than yours. If we deliver late, monetary penalties apply, on terms set out in your statement of work.
You see the software working rather than described, typically twice a week. You should never have to ask where the project stands.
Deployed to your infrastructure, with a walkthrough, written handover, and the source code in a repository you control. Stephen sees every engagement through to this point personally. Nothing is handed off at eighty percent.
All the work is done by the True Cedar team and completed by US-based resources. We do not outsource any of the work. This describes how we typically work; each engagement's terms are set out in its own written statement of work and agreement.
A simple, single-role document portal can come in under $10,000. A multi-role portal with reporting and integrations typically runs $18,000 to $45,000 over two to five weeks. Regulated data or many source systems push it higher. These are examples; each project's price is set in its statement of work.
Two to five weeks for most builds. We delivered a portal for a financial services firm with a 350-client base in under two weeks, and rolled out an AI portal to 500 users in the same window. Those timelines reflect those specific projects.
It can be, and that is a design requirement rather than an afterthought: entitlement enforced on the server, an audit log of every access, encryption, and reviewable access. Compliance scope adds to the cost, and we scope it explicitly before building. We have delivered a HIPAA-compliant solution for a large law firm.
Buy when a mature product in your industry fits your workflow and already integrates with your document sources. Build when your process is specific to your firm, when per-client pricing gets expensive at your scale, or when you need control of the data for compliance reasons.
Connect the portal to the systems your documents come from.
The full custom web application service.
The staff side of the process, replacing manual assembly.
Tell us who your clients are and what you send them. We will tell you what a portal would take, and whether a product would serve you better.