The client portal — sharing, price visibility & what clients can do
The client portal is a branded view of a project you share with your client — never a Mortar account, and (on most studios) no password either: they sign in with their own email — no password needed. A one-time code (or a one-click link straight from an email) is all it takes.
Creating a share link
From the project page, click Share with client:
- Enter the client's email (used to send the branded portal invite).
- Choose price visibility for this link (see below).
- Optionally set an expiry date. If email sign-in isn't turned on for your environment, you'll see a password field here instead — see the FAQ below.
- Click Create Link. You'll see a copyable URL right away, and — if you left the invite email on — it's sent to the client automatically. This is the only time the link's exact URL is shown; after that, use Copy link on the list (see below) whenever you need it again.
Price visibility is set per link, not per project. Each time you create a new share link you choose its visibility independently; changing it doesn't retroactively change any link you already sent out. The three modes:
| Mode | What the client sees |
|---|---|
| Full | Every item's price and room/project totals |
| Totals only | Room and project totals, but not individual item prices |
| Hidden | No pricing anywhere — selections and totals only |
Whatever the mode, the client always sees their selections (items, images, specs) — visibility only ever controls money.
Managing existing links
Every link for a project is listed with its status — active, expired (past its expiry date), or revoked — along with who it was invited to and, once email sign-in is on, when they last signed in. Click Copy link any time to grab the URL again (this fetches it fresh and is logged to the project's activity feed, so copying an existing link is always a deliberate, visible action, not something that happens automatically just by loading the page), or Revoke to cut off access immediately — a revoked link stops working right away, even for a client with it already open.
If your studio has email sign-in on, you can also Resend sign-in link from this list, and from Clients → [a client] → Contacts you can see each contact's last sign-in and, if needed, Sign out everywhere — this immediately signs them out of every portal share they can currently open, everywhere, not just this one project.
What clients can do
Once in the portal, a client can:
- Browse the project overview, per-room budget visuals (respecting that link's price-visibility mode), and item galleries with images and specs.
- View alternatives (option groups) presented as a set of choices.
- React to any item — ❤️ love, 👍 like, 👎 dislike.
- Comment on any item, including on each option within an alternatives group.
- Approve or decline items directly — see Approvals for how this connects to your own approval workflow.
- View and pay invoices from the Invoices tab.
- Watch budget totals and item lists update live while they have the portal open — no refresh needed, powered by the same live channel that drives scrape progress in your own view.
Client feedback (reactions, comments, approvals) surfaces back to you as notifications, on your dashboard, and is summarisable by the AI assistant.
Branding
The portal is branded with your studio's logo, colours, and font (set in Settings → Branding). White-label (hiding "powered by Mortar") is available on the Studio plan. Custom portal domains (e.g. portal.yourstudio.com) are planned but not yet available.
FAQ
My client says they can't see the project. If email sign-in is on, check they're signing in with the exact email address the invite went to (or that they've been added as a contact for this project) — a different address gets a clear "shared with a different email" message rather than the project. Otherwise, check the link hasn't expired or been revoked and that they're using the exact link you sent (each link has its own password/visibility settings if you set them).
Do I need to set a password? Only if your studio's environment doesn't have email sign-in turned on — in that case the portal falls back to an optional per-link password, and the Password field appears in the Share dialog. Once email sign-in is on, a password is never needed (and the field disappears) — a client just enters their email and gets a one-time code or a one-click link instead.
Can I have different price visibility for two different people looking at the same project? Yes — create a separate share link for each, with whatever visibility mode makes sense for that recipient.
Does the client need a Mortar account? No. Portal access is link-based, and (on most studios) signing in only ever needs their email — no signup, ever.