How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress

Do you want to create a client portal in WordPress?

A client portal is a dedicated area where clients can login and access exclusive documents, files, support, and more.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a client portal in WordPress.

Why Create a Client Portal in WordPress?

A client portal makes it easier to manage client resources online. This can reduce the number of support requests you receive, allow clients to help themselves, and provide them with a better user experience.

For example, if you run a photography website then you might create a dashboard where clients can upload and download images.

Similarly, if you run a graphic design or web design business, then you might create a customer portal where clients can download all the resources you’ve designed for them.

Without a client portal, the customer would need to contact you directly and wait for a response. This is time-consuming and frustrating for both you and the client.

With that being said, let’s see how to reduce your workload and keep your customers happy by creating a client portal in WordPress.

How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress

Each business will need something different from their client portal, so you need a solution that’s flexible, customizable, and works well with other plugins.

For this guide, we will be using MemberPress.

It is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market and allows you to easily create a members-only section for your clients. MemberPress also has powerful display rules so you create exclusive posts, pages, and other content for your clients.

First, you need to install and activate the MemberPress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go head and visit MemberPress » Settings and enter your license key.

You’ll find this information under your account on the MemberPress website. It’s also in the email you got when you purchased MemberPress.

After entering the key, click on ‘Activate License Key.’

Next, you need to add at least one payment gateway so you can easily accept credit card payments in your client portal.

MemberPress supports PayPal and Stripe. If you purchase a MemberPress Pro plan, then you can also accept payments using Authorize.net. 

Note: If you plan to add existing clients to your portal without charging a fee, then you can skip this step.

To add a payment method, switch to the ‘Payments’ tab and click on ‘Add Payment Method.’

You can now chose a payment method from the ‘Gateway’ dropdown.

MemberPress will then show all the settings you need to configure before using this payment gateway. For example, in the following image we’re adding PayPal payment to WordPress.

After choosing a gateway, you’ll need to enter some information to configure your account. Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Update Options’ button to save your changes.

You can add multiple payment gateways to your corporate portal simply by following the same process described above.

After adding one or more payment methods, you’re ready to create a membership plan.

To get started, simply go to the MemberPress » Memberships page and click on the Add New button.

On the next screen, you can type a title for the membership level and set the price. If you’re planning to add clients manually, then you can leave the ‘Price’ field at ‘0.’

However, if you want to make money by selling subscriptions to your client portal, then you can type in a price.

Next, use the ‘Billing Type’ dropdown to create a billing cycle, for example you might charge clients a one-time fee for lifetime access or set up a recurring monthly subscription.

In the following image, we’re charging clients $100 every 6 months.

Next, you need to create access rules. This allows you to create an exclusive, client-only area of your WordPress website.

Simply go to the MemberPress » Rules page and then click on the ‘Add New’ button.

On the next screen, you first need to choose what content you want to restrict.

The ‘Protected Content’ section offers different options. To start, you can restrict access to specific pages and posts, although this may be time-consuming if you have lots of content.

Another option is to restrict access to all child pages of a particular parent page. For example, you might create a ‘Client Portal’ parent page and then restrict access to all its child pages. This can save you lots of time and effort.

Similarly, you can restrict access to all the posts that have a specific category or tag.

Below that, you can specify who can access this content by opening the ‘Access Conditions’ dropdown and choosing ‘Membership.’

In the second dropdown menu, select the membership level you created earlier.

When you’re happy with how the access rule is set up, click on the Save Rule button to store your settings.

You can create more content restriction rules by following the same process described above.

Creating a Client Account Page in MemberPress

Next, you’ll want to create an Account page, which is the page that clients will see then they log into your portal.

First, go to MemberPress » Settings and click on the ‘Pages’ tab.

MemberPress will create an Account page automatically.

To preview the page, click on the ‘View’ button next to ‘MemberPress Account Page.’

The default Account page has a few different tabs where clients can edit their profile, check their subscriptions, and log out of their account.

The Account page is also designed to perfectly integrate with your WordPress theme, as you can see in the following image.

The default Account page should be a good fit for most client portals. However you can edit the page just like you would any other WordPress page.

To make some changes, click on the ‘Edit’ button.

This launches the standard WordPress page editor, so you can do ahead and make your changes. Just be aware that any content you add here will be visible to everyone and not just the client.

When you’re happy with how the account page looks, just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Update Options.’

MemberPress will now go ahead and create the Account page.

You can see this page live on your website by adding /account/ to the end of your domain, for example https://ift.tt/R6YXxsK.

You can also find this page in your WordPress dashboard by going to Pages » All Pages.

Although MemberPress creates this page automatically, you can also add the Account content to any page or post using the [mepr-account-form] shortcode.

For more details on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Customizing Client Account Page in MemberPress

Content protection rules are one way to create exclusive content for your clients. However, sometimes you may want to hide specific content within a page or post, such as the index to your members-only bbPress forum or some bonus documentation you created using a WordPress knowledge base plugin.

In this case, you can wrap the content in shortcode. MemberPress will then hide or show the content inside the shortcode, based on whether the person is logged into your client portal.

To start, you’ll need to know the ID for the client membership level. To get this, simply go to MemberPress » Memberships and look at the value in the ‘ID’ column.

Once you have the ID, go the page or post where you want to hide some content.

You can then create a shortcode block above the content and a block below the content.

In the top block, add the following: [mepr-active membership='162']. Make sure you replace the number with the client membership ID.

Next, add the following in the bottom block: [/mepr-active].

Then, simply update or publish the page and visit your site in incognito mode, or when logged out of your WordPress account.

MemberPress should hide the content inside your shortcode blocks. To see the content, simply log into any client membership account.

Adding Tabs to The Accounts Page in MemberPress

By default, the Account page has Home, Subscriptions, Payments, and Logout tabs.

You may want to add more tabs to help members find content in your client portal. For example, you could create tabs for customer service software such as HelpDesk.com or HelpScout, to help clients contact your support team.

The easiest way to add more tabs to the Account page is by using the MemberPress Nav Tabs add-on.

Simply go to MemberPress » Add-ons and then click on the ‘Install Add-on’ button next to ‘Nav Tabs.’

After that, go to MemberPress » Settings.

Here, click on the ‘Account’ tab.

Next, just scroll to ‘Account Nav Tabs Settings’ and check the ‘Enable Account Nav Tabs’ box.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a new editor where you can select either ‘Content’ or ‘URL.’

If you choose ‘Content,’ then you can add images, text, audio, shortcodes, and other content.

This content will appear inside the new tab, as you can see in the following image.

The other option is ‘URL,’ which will take the client to a different page, similar to clicking an item in the navigation menu.

If you do select ‘URL,’ then you can type in a title and the URL that the tab will link to. By default, the link will open in the same tab but you can open it in a new tab by checking the ‘Open URL…’ box.

To add more tabs to the Account page, simply click on ‘Add New Tab’ and repeat the process described above.

After adding all your custom tabs, click on the ‘Update Options’ button to save your changes.

Adding Custom Content for an Individual Client

MemberPress also allows you to show a different message to each client in their Account page. This message is included in the ‘Home’ tab.

By creating a personal greeting, you can make your clients feel more appreciated and valued. You might also include links to resources that the client may find helpful, such as the documentation for a new product they’ve just bought.

To add a custom message, go to MemberPress » Members. You can then hover over any client and click on the ‘Edit’ link when it appears.

After that, scroll to the ‘Custom MemberPress Account Message’ section and add the content that you want to show to this particular client.

This area works like the regular WordPress post editor so you can add images, shortcodes, image galleries, video, audio files, and any other resources that the client may field useful.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Update User’ button to save your changes.

Adding a Link to Client Area using MemberPress

Next, you need to make it easy for clients to access the portal by adding it to your menu.

Simply go to Appearance » Menus and click to expand the ‘Pages’ section, if it isn’t expanded already.

You can then check the box next to the ‘Account’ page and click on ‘Add to Menu.’

Once you’ve done that, you can change where the Account page appears in the menu using drag and drop.

You can also change the label that’s used for the ‘Account’ page in the menu. The default is ‘Account’ but you may want to use ‘Client Portal’ or similar.

To do this, click to expand the ‘Account’ section and then type a new title into the ‘Navigation Label’ field.

Don’t forget to click on ‘Save Menu’ to store your settings.

Now if you visit your site, you’ll see a link to the Account page in your menu.

Extending Client Portal with MemberPress

By this point, you’ve created a client portal with exclusive, members-only content and even a custom welcome message.

That’s a great start, but let’s look at some other features that you can add to the client portal using MemberPress.

1. File Downloads

Want to allow clients to download files from your site? This might be anything from copies of your invoices, to reports and studies, or the stock images you’ve created for the client.

MemberPress comes with a File Downloads add-on that allows you to offer downloadable content to your clients. After creating the download, you can add it to any page or post using a shortcode.

MemberPress will then show a link that visitors can use to download the file.

You can use content protection to make the file exclusive to your clients, or even create different downloadable files for each client.

For step by step details, please see our guide on how to manage file downloads in WordPress.

2. Training Courses

You may want to offer courses, workshops, and other training materials to your clients.

The good news is that MemberPress is also the best WordPress LMS plugin on the market.

The MemberPress course builder is built on top of the WordPress block editor. This means you can add lessons, topics, categories, embed videos, images, and more using the WordPress tools that you’re already familiar with.

By publishing courses to the client portal, you can add more value for your customers and encourage them to renew their membership.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to easily create online courses in WordPress.

3. Add Forms to Clients Area

No matter whether it’s a contact form, feedback form, customer testimonial form, or a customer survey, forms are an important way to communicate with your clients.

They can help you get feedback and improve the member experience, while also giving clients a way to ask questions and get support.

MemberPress integrates perfectly with WPForms, which is the best WordPress form builder plugin on the market.

Sometimes, clients may need to upload files to your portal, such as a contract that you need to sign or photographs that you plan to publish to your client portfolio.

You can easily create file upload forms using WPForms. You can then embed the form on the Account page, or any members-only page on your website.

4. Selling More Products and Services

As a business owner, you may want to promote other products and services to your clients.

MemberPress works with many of the email marketing services that you may already be using to keep your audience engaged and promote your other products and services. This includes SendinBlue, Constant Contact, Drip, and 1000+ others.

You can also add an online store to your portal using WooCommerce and sell other products to your customers.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a client portal in WordPress. You may also want to see our comparison of the best business phone services, and our guide on how to create an email newsletter.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

December 10, 2022 at 12:16AM

14 Best Team Communication Tools for Small Business (2022)

Are you looking for the best team communication tools for your small business?

As businesses move to remote work, they need tools to communicate with team members. Choosing the right tools can boost productivity, enhance morale, build community, and enhance efficiency among your team.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best team communication tools for small businesses.

These tools are based on our hands-on experience because we have been a remote company since we started in 2009, and now we have over 200+ team members across 45 different countries. As a remote company, our teams use several of these tools to collaborate.

How to Choose The Best Team Communication Tool for Your Business?

There is a growing need for better team communication tools as more and more businesses adapt remote and hybrid work culture.

For a small business website, these tools improve employee communication and enable them to work more efficiently.

However, there are just so many different communication tools available that it becomes hard to decide which one to choose without spending too much money.

First, you need to decide what kind of tools your team needs to work better.

For instance, if your sales team needs to make calls and follow up on leads, then you need a virtual business phone system like Nextiva and RingCentral.

Similarly, if you need to make sure that teams can collaborate on different projects, track progress, and get work done, then Slack + Asana may be the right tools for your business

You can save money by not opting for separate tools for the same tasks.

For instance, if you are using Google Workspace, then Google Meet is the perfect alternative to Zoom. Similarly, Office 365 with Microsoft Teams will save money on Slack + Zoom.

Tip: See our comparison of Google Workspace vs Office 365 to see how they stack up against each other.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva is the best omnichannel communication toolkit for businesses. It combines phone, chat, audio/video meetings, contact management, and more in one communication suite.

Employees can collaborate via chat, SMS, and video calls. Their business phone service offers toll-free numbers and teams can share the same phone numbers to easily manage contacts and leads.

Nextiva offers easy-to-use automated reminders for teams and customers around forgotten tasks, follow-ups, or check-ins to increase workplace productivity.

Plus, it integrates with popular calendars, email, Google Workspace, Microsoft teams, and many more.

We use Nextiva in our own business because it helps us get a virtual business phone number that can be shared across our team members, so we can help our customers. The auto-attendant feature helps guide the call to the right person.

Pricing: $18.95 per user per month

2. Slack

Slack is the most popular small business team communication tool on the market right now.

It is used by many Fortune 500 companies like IBM, T-Mobile, NASA, Target, and more.

Slack offers a digital HQ for businesses and teams. You can organize your virtual workspace in channels. These are chatrooms where your teams can collaborate and post updates. Team members can also do 1:1 chats.

Slack also comes with audio calls, video updates, and integration with almost all top productivity tools, CRM software, virtual phone services, and more.

We use Slack in our management company, Awesome Motive, because it allows for asynchronous communication across teams. Slack has notification features that respect timezones considering we have team members in 45 different countries.

Pricing: Paid plans start from $7.25 per user per month.

3. Google Workspace

Google Workspace is Google’s business productivity suite of applications. It includes Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Google Meet, Chat, Forms, Sites, and more.

You can use your own domain name for your Google Workspace account and create a professional business email address for yourself, your teams, and your employees.

Your team space will be hosted on Google’s cloud infrastructure which makes it very fast, reliable, and an extremely secure internal communication tool.

We have been using Google Workspace for over a decade for our business email address. It gives you the familiar Gmail and Google calendar interface which your team will love. We use the Shared Drive feature for cloud storage which is really good for access control on documents & files.

This year the quality of Google Meet calls have improved drastically, so we have cancelled our Zoom subscription and are using Google Meet for our group meetings.

Pricing: Starting at $6 per user per month

4. HubSpot

HubSpot is a business communication suite that offers a Sales platform, marketing tools, CRM software, and more.

It allows your teams to easily manage leads and customers using a robust dashboard. Improving communications between team members and customers to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

Unlike other communication tools on the list, HubSpot doesn’t offer team chat, audio, or video calls. However, as sales software it allows sales and marketing teams to communicate and work together more efficiently.

We use HubSpot to organize our partnership contacts, and it acts as a single source for our various teams.

Pricing: Limited free account, paid plans for marketing, sales, and customer services software with different pricing for each.

5. Asana

Asana is the best project management software for remote teams on the market.

For remote teams, keeping up with their projects and goals is where most communication takes place. Asana makes it super easy for teams of all shapes, sizes, and industries to collaborate and communicate.

Asana doesn’t have chat, SMS, or video conferencing features. All team communication takes place in comments, tasks, projects, and forms. Each task can have its own thread and nothing slips through the cracks.

You can organize work among teams and projects, set long-term goals, add tasks, and then view them in lists, timeline, or card views.

It comes with brilliant tools like templates, rules, forms, and approvals to automate the workflow.

Plus, it integrates beautifully with other popular productivity tools your organization may already be using.

In our business, Asana is an absolute must have. We have tried many other project management solutions like Basecamp, Trello, etc and nothing comes close to Asana. It has provided us with a great way to streamline our internal workflows while giving greater visibility on the progress of each project.

Pricing: Free and paid plans start at $10.99 per user per month.

6. RingCentral

RingCentral is one of the top business team communication toolkits available that offers virtual phone numbers, phone calls, and SMS for teams.

Their business communication suite includes phone, SMS, Fax, Messaging for internal team communications, and video meetings.

For sales and marketing teams they offer rich insights, quality of service reports, comprehensive alerts, and customizable dashboards.

Integrations are also available for Google Workspace, Office 365, popular CRM software, and marketing platformss.

Pricing: Starts at $19.99 per user per month.

7. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is the Slack alternative created by Microsoft. It supportss multiple teams, channels, one on one chats, private channels, audio/video calls, and video conferencing features.

It works well with Office 365 and you can get it with Office 365 subscription as well. Team members can open, edit, and view files within teams and projects.

Microsoft Teams have superior video conferencing features baked in. Each team member can view that a video conference is happening with an icon on the top and can join in if they are invited.

Teams also have shift management feature which allows managers to create shift, manage time-offs, assign members to shifts, and more.

Pricing: Free and paid plans start $4 per user per month or $6 per user per month with Office 365.

8. Zoom

Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing software on the market. It allows you to run video meetings with chat feature.

It is widely used in business, education, government, and finance sector. Zoom also offers business phone services, mail, and calendar to connect your teams under one platform.

We were big users of Zoom, but as the quality of Google Meet has improved, we have switched away from Zoom to reduce costs in our business.

The cost of Zoom really adds up once you go above 10 users in your organization, and then again when your organization grows to 100+ users.

What Zoom is really good for is large 100+ people meeting especially if you want to do random breakout rooms. It’s also really good for customer webinars because Zoom calls are very reliable and quality is top-notch.

Pricing: Limited Free plan, paid plans start at $149 per user per year but the per user pricing increases after 10 users.

9. Chanty

Chanty is another excellent employee communication platform with video conferencing, chat, and project management features.

You can create chatrooms or channels for your teams and view all things happening across your organization under the teambook.

For task management you can create tasks on the fly, view them in lists or kanban view, assign them to team members, and more.

Pricing: Limited free forever plan, paid plans start at $3 per user per month.

10. Ryver

Ryver is another business communication platform that combines various functionalities into one app.

It comes with messaging, task management, and audio/video calls under one roof. It comes with SSO Single Sign-on which allows team members to sign in with the single account used by your organization.

Integrations are also available for many popular productivity and CRM software.

Pricing: Starting at $69 per month for up to 12 users.

11. Flock

Flock is another good alternative to Slack. It offers voice / video conferencing, chat, to-dos, file-sharing, and more.

Teams can be organized into groups with their own to-dos, video conference, and in-line file sharing.

It has integrations available for all top producivity suites so you can collaborate in real-time in channels.

Pricing: Limited free plan, and paid plans start at $4.50 per user per month.

12. Zoho Cliq

Zoho Cliq is the Slack interactive created by the folks behind Zoho software suite. The company offers Zoho CRM, Notes, Calendar, Email, and several other tools for businesses.

Zoho Cliq offers team chat for real-time collaboration. It includes chats, group chats, project management, video conferencing, voice calls, and more.

It integrates well with other Zoho applications as well as many other third-party software.

Pricing: Limited free plan, paid plans start from $2.7 per user per month.

13. Dialpad

Dialpad offers a collaboration platform for teams and customer support. It includes VoIP service for calls, messaging, group chat, and video conferencing.

It offers omni-channel customer engagement platform as well. Which comes in handy for sales teams to follow up with leads.

It supports Google Workspace and Office 365 integrations. If you operate in multiple countries then Dialpad offerss local number for upto 70 countries.

Pricing: Starting from $15 per user per month.

14. GoTo Meeting

GoTo Meeting is a popular webinar software and video conferencing platform. It makes it super easy to conduct video meetings with teams, clients, and customers.

Their GoTo Connect suite provides phone, text, and meetings. It allows teams to follow up with leads, offer customer support, and stay in touch with chat and text.

The company offers several addon solutions for businesses particularly those providing remote IT support to customers.

Pricing: Free trial for some products, for paid plans you’ll have to contact sales.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Unlike most other businesses in the world, we have been remote since we started in 2009. This means we have 13+ years of experience running a distributed team and managing team communication. Over this period, we have helped thousands of users choose the best team communication tools.

Below are the answer to some of the most frequently asked questions.

What communication tools are most effective in working closely with the team?

Whether you’re working closely with a remote-team or an in-house team, here are the best team communication tools.

1. Google Workspace – Email is essential for working closely with a team. Google gives you gmail, calendar, and Google Drive for file sharing.
2. Nextiva – Essential for phone calls and SMS.
3. Slack – Best for group chat. Although for smaller groups, you can get away with just a simple WhatsApp group.
4. Asana – Great for project management.

What is the most effective communication method for remote teams?

For remote teams, the most effective communication method is a combination of written communication along with verbal face-to-face communication over video calls.

For remote team check-ins, the most effective method is virtual check-in software like Standuply that integrates seamlessly with Slack, and it’s completely asynchronous.

What is the best team communication tool for online collaboration?

For online collaboration, the best team communication tools are Google Workspace and Zoom. With Google Suite, you get Google Doc, Spreadsheet, and Slides all of which allow for collaborative work, and their built-in comment feature is really good.

You can also use Zoom whiteboard which is an excellent virtual communication tool for collaboration.

What is the best team communication tool for asynchronous communication?

The best asynchronous communication tool are:

1. Slack – great for instant messages and group messages. It gives users full control over their time zones and notification preferences. You can also schedule messages to send at certain time in different team member’s timezone.
2. Email – great for asynchronous communication.
3. Loom – allows you to easily record videos and screencasts that can be watched by your team members.
4. Droplr – allows you to create screenshots or quick screen recording to communicate with team members.

Which is the best team communication tool for small business?

In our opinion, the best team communication tool for small business are Nextiva, Google Workspace, Asana, and Slack.

We hope this article helped you find the best team communication tools for your business. You may also want to see our guide on must have tools to manage and grow your business and follow our guide on how to grow a small business on a shoe-string budget.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best Team Communication Tools for Small Business (2022) first appeared on WPBeginner.

December 09, 2022 at 04:20PM