How to integrate HoneyBook client portal with your website for a cohesive client experience

Learn how to embed the HoneyBook client portal onto your website so you can wow your clients with a seamless branded experience.

With HoneyBook’s client portal software, you can provide one simple space for your clients to access files, messages, payments, and meetings. 

This helps you stay organized and gives your clients a smooth project experience from start to finish—all while showcasing your unique brand.

Adding your HoneyBook client portal to your website is easy, whether it’s built on Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, or any other platform.

In this article, we’ll show you exactly how that’s done.

The benefits of an integrated HoneyBook client portal

By following the steps below, the end result will be an on-brand client portal that’s easily accessible through a link on your website. 

This creates a cohesive experience for both you and your clients in several ways:

• Stay organized – The HoneyBook client portal acts as one easily accessible hub where both you and your clients can track activity history, files, payments, and job details in one place.
• Create a white-labeled experience – By customizing your client portal URL and login screen to match your brand, your client portal will feel like an authentic extension of your business.
• Require log in, or not – You can decide whether your clients need to log in to access their client portal, giving you the ability to decide what level of security makes the most sense for your business.
• Keep everything documented – The HoneyBook client portal makes it easy to reference any and all versions of documents shared between you and your clients. That means contracts, project scopes, email threads, and payment due dates can be accessed in only a few clicks from your website.
• Stay secure – The HoneyBookclient portal is built to protect the information shared between you and your clients, making it a more secure option than exchanging sensitive communication over email or chat.
• Capture communication in one place – Even when clients respond to HoneyBook emails with their own email, everything will be pulled into one central communication feed within the client portal. That way, no communication will ever be lost.

Three steps to integrating HoneyBook with your website

Integrating your HoneyBook client portal with your website can be done in three simple steps:

1. Creating a custom URL on your website domain
2. Linking to the client portal from your website
3. Customizing the client portal with your company’s branding.

Here’s how to make it happen:

1. Customize your client portal URL

You have two options when it comes to creating a URL for your HoneyBook client portal: using the HoneyBook domain or your domain.

By default, your client portal will be set to use the HoneyBook domain through an auto-generated URL in the form of prefix.hbportal.co/app, where the prefix can be edited from your Company Settings menu. You can check out this Help Center article to learn how to use the HoneyBook domain.

However, we strongly recommend using your domain. By using your own domain, your client portal URL will be in the form of prefix.yourdomain.com, where prefix is customizable to anything you want, and yourdomain.com is your existing website URL. 

For example, if your website were perfectwebsite.com, you could set your client portal URL to project.perfectwebsite.com.

Why is it so important to use your own domain?

Using your brand everywhere you can is the easiest way to ensure a consistent experience for your clients. The more touch-points your clients has with your brand—whether it’s your company name, your logo, or your colors—the more they will come to associate your brand with trustworthiness, professionalism, and reliability.

By using your own domain for your client portal, your clients will feel like they never left your site, as the URL still stays true to your branding.

To customize your HoneyBook client portal URL:

1. From HoneyBook, click your profile photo. Select Company Settings > Domain & client portal
2. In the URL field, click the “Use Company Subdomain” button
3. Register your subdomain with HoneyBook by entering your domain name, choosing your subdomain, and creating the subdomain with your website host by creating your CName record name

The last step is the most involved. Every domain host has their own unique instructions, whether it’s WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy, or other providers.

For full instructions on how to register your subdomain, check out this Help Center article on using custom domains with HoneyBook.

2. Customize your login screen branding

To add to your clients’ feeling that they never left your website, you can customize your HoneyBook client portal’s Login Screen to match your company’s branding.

You can customize both the background color and company logo on the login screen.

To do so, visit your Company Settings from HoneyBook and click the Domain & client portal tab. Then, click Customize Screen in the Login Screen Preview section.

From there, you can customize your background color and company logo, ensuring a completely beautiful and on-brand experience for your clients.

For detailed instructions on customizing your Login Screen, check out our article on Your clients’ HoneyBook experience.

3. Link your client portal from your website

Once your HoneyBook client portal URL has been customized, it’s time to add it to your website.

This is easy! Simply add a link to your website wherever you’d like. This can be in your website’s top navigation, footer, or as a button on a page.

When your clients click the link, they will be taken to the HoneyBook client portal where they will be asked to log in.

While clicking this link technically takes your clients off your website, it will still be on the same domain (as you set the URL to a custom subdomain in the last step). Therefore, they won’t even notice they’ve left your site.

Using a small business management platform will transform your business.