What is Portal in software terms?
A portal is a common term that normally means a purpose-built website. For example, a Sales Portal is a website that has specific features and content to help a Sales team prepare for and engage in sales activities. A Career portal could be like monster.com, indeed.com or dice.com. Those are just websites, with a very specific set of features and serves the specific purpose of showcasing jobs or helping people with their ability to apply for and build on their career.
What is the cost of a portal?
The cost of a portal completely relies on what’s built into the portal. Like any other website, it could be less than $10,000 to well over $200,000. A small career portal with less than 20 pages is just a few thousand dollars and is very easy and relatively quick to build. A Distributor portal would add ecommerce, multiple EDI supply chain integrations, shipping and sales tax integrations, most likely an ERP integration, and can cost $50,000 to 200,000, taking 6-12 months to build.
What is a secure client portal?
When the content on the site is protected and served up behind a login, that’s usually what is meant by a secure client portal. That means that the business requires membership or partnership, sometimes a fee, to gain access to specific content or materials reserved for those clients. These can range from partner portals, sales portals, to client portals, like Costco.com. You have to purchase a membership to gain access to purchase at warehouse prices.
What is a Portal example?
One example that has gained popularity is the Patient portal. If you’ve been to the doctor or dentist lately, they’ve probably sent you access to their patient portal, where you can get access to certain information, sometimes re-order medications, schedule appointments, set communication preferences, see lab results and ask the doctor a question. Next are Career, Sales and Partner portals. Pretty much every university or educational institutions’ websites are portals, as they’ve created secure accounts for each student, which allows them to see their grades, access their financial aid, apply for financial aid, sign up for classes and much more.