Sharing the client portal with a client

Two ways to give a client access — email invite or copy-paste link — and when to use each.

Once your branding is set, sharing the portal with a client takes about ten seconds. There's no separate "portal" account to create — the client signs in with the email you have on file, and the system handles the rest. This article walks through the two ways to send them in.

Where the share controls live

Every project detail page has a Client portal card in the right-hand sidebar. It shows the client's name, the email on file, and three controls:

Send invite email — emails the client a magic link.
Copy magic link — generates a link and copies it to your clipboard.
Preview as client — opens a read-only preview of their portal in a new tab (forms disabled), so you can see what they'll see before you send.

If there's no email on file, the card prompts you to add one — the Send and Copy buttons stay disabled until there is, since there's nowhere to send the link.

Path A: send the invite email

Click Send invite email. The system generates a fresh magic link (30-minute expiry), emails it to the address on file, and shows a confirmation ("Invite sent to clientname@example.com").

The email is branded with your studio — your logo, your colors, and your studio's name as the sender — and carries a single button to open the portal. The client clicks it, confirms once, and they're in.

Use this when:

You're rolling out portal access to a client for the first time.
The client expects to find the link in their inbox (most do).
You want a record of when access was sent.

A note on deliverability

The email is sent through Resend, and most major providers (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud) deliver it within seconds. If a client says it never arrived, ask them to:

Check their spam folder.
Look for a message from your studio's name (the sending address is a studiohaus.app address, so searching their inbox for your studio name finds it fastest).
Confirm the email on the Client portal card is correct — a typo here is the #1 cause of "I didn't get the link."

If they still can't find it, use the copy-link path below.

Path B: copy a magic link

Click Copy magic link. The system generates a fresh link, copies it to your clipboard, and shows the expiry. Paste it into a text, a chat, an existing email thread — wherever your client is already paying attention.

Use this when:

You're already on the phone or texting and want them looking at something right now.
The email path failed and you need a faster fallback.
You want to check the portal yourself (paste the link into an incognito window).

The link is good for 30 minutes from when you generate it, and works once. If they don't click in time, just generate another.

Rate limits

To prevent accidental abuse, link sends are capped at 5 per client per hour. If you hit the cap you'll see a "try again in an hour" message — in normal use you'll never come close.

What the client experiences

Whether you emailed it or shared a copied link, the experience is the same:

Click the link.
Land on a quick "Sign in to your portal" page and tap to confirm.
Arrive in the portal, signed in, on their Dashboard — and stay signed in for 30 days before needing a new link.

No password, no username, nothing to remember. The email is the credential.

Removing access

There's no one-click revoke in the current build, and it's worth knowing why it doesn't need one in most cases: access is tied to the client (not a single link), and a signed-in session lasts up to 30 days, refreshing each visit. To wind access down, stop sending new links and remove the email on file — that disables the Send and Copy buttons so no new links can go out, and the existing session lapses on its own within 30 days of the client's last visit.