How a client portal helps a contractor: site photos and updates in the right place, the latest version of every plan, and approvals you can still show months later.
A client portal gives a contractor one file per project: the photos and updates from that site, the latest version of every plan, and a record of who approved what and when. Ziggu brings those three together in one space in your own branding, so the back and forth about the site leaves the inbox and the group chat.
Yes. In a client portal, site photos land in three places, each with its own job: with an update that reaches everyone involved in that project, with a report point that carries an owner and a deadline, and with a document the client can still open years after handover.
The difference with a group chat is not the photo. It is what the photo is attached to. A photo in a chat is a photo. A photo on a report point is an agreement with a name and a deadline on it.
In Ziggu you write that update on site. The client gets a notification, opens his own file, and sees the photo next to the milestone it belongs to. Anyone joining later reads the series in order instead of scrolling a chat.
Marc Wagner, Owner and CEO of Polyform, on what is now called Client Updates: “Ziggu also offers a very useful tool, the news feed. You can use it to share photos of the construction with your customers. We didn’t share enough of those updates before Ziggu, because it was a cumbersome job, but now you only need a few clicks.” How that runs at Polyform is in the Polyform story.
A client portal removes the status question by letting the client look for himself: the milestones on his project, what is done, what comes next, and the answers to the questions every client asks.
A contractor’s client is usually one person building once in their life. They do not know what a progress statement is and would rather not ask. So they call.
You do not want to be the walking FAQ. You also do not want to be the contractor nobody hears from. A portal settles that by putting the answer somewhere they come and get it.
The difference between email with a shared folder and a client portal is not a feature. It is where the truth sits. With email it is spread across the inboxes of everyone involved. With a portal it sits on the project.
WhatsApp is the hardest case, because it works. Until someone deletes a message, until a new subcontractor joins, or until you have to show three months later what was agreed.
The cost of the wrong channel never lands in the inbox either. It lands on site, on the day a crew stands waiting, or something goes in according to a drawing that is two weeks old.
| Subject | Email and WhatsApp | Client portal |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | Spread across inboxes and groups | Conversations by topic, inside the project file |
| Site photos | In a chat, unfindable after a month | On the milestone or report point they belong to |
| Documents | Versions side by side, hunting through folders | Latest version on top, with who viewed it |
| Progress | A phone call, and an email when there is time | Milestones the client checks himself |
| Approvals | Verbal on site, or somewhere in an email | Who approved what and when, on record |
| Subcontractors | Forwarding them what they need | Their own access to what concerns them |
The gain is not in any single row. It is that they all sit in the same place, so you stop having to remember where something was agreed.
A client portal lets a contractor put partners straight into the project, with rights per party, so the electrician sees the drawing that concerns him and the client does not have to read along with everything.
A large part of a contractor’s day goes into forwarding. The kitchen fitter wants the plan the architect changed yesterday. The floor layer wants to know when the screed is dry. The client wants to know whether that is sorted now. Three messages, three channels, and you in the middle.
In Ziggu every partner has their own access to the project. What they may see is fixed in the project and is no longer negotiated by email. That means they work on the version that is there today, not on the one they were sent once.
Notifications follow the same logic. A partner does not get a message about everything happening in the project, but about the one thing that concerns them, one click away from the version that is there at that moment. That is usually the difference between a partner who opens the portal and a partner who waits for your call.
Ken Alleweireldt, Director at Volus, puts it small and concrete: “The electrician has access to the kitchen contractor’s documents, for example.” That is the moment you drop out of the chain yourself.
For a firm working with the same partners, that becomes a way of working after a few projects instead of an arrangement per site. What it means for studios and construction firms is on the Ziggu for architects and contractors page.
A client portal puts choices to the client and keeps the answer with a name and a date, so variations and material choices stop being an argument after the fact.
The scenario is always the same. The client hesitates about the kitchen, you send a revised plan, they say yes on site, and three months later nobody remembers it the same way.
Variations rarely arrive at a convenient moment. They arrive while work is going on, usually verbally, and they are about money. A portal puts that question as a choice with a price and a consequence, and keeps the answer where the rest of the project already sits.
Under those approvals sits the log. Every action by every user is kept, and your client opens that log as easily as you do. It is not a file you keep on them: it is a record both of you can point at.
Laura Callewaert, Interior Architect at Hoprom, saw both younger and older clients take to it immediately. The client installs nothing and gets an email as soon as something is waiting for them.
Ziggu keeps project data encrypted server-side on Google Cloud in Belgium, backed up daily across two clouds and in at least two European locations. Access is set per project, every action in the project is written to the log, and the Ziggu team cannot open your data without a permission you grant from your own account.
You set up a first project and try it during the 14-day free trial, no credit card. Most of the time goes not into the software but into deciding which documents and milestones belong in every project by default.
