Real Results, No Buzzwords

Building the Impossible: A Custom Client Portal for a National Photography Brand

This fast-growing photography company had a bold vision: a centralized portal where clients, photographers, editors, and project managers could collaborate seamlessly around each event.

 

Industry
Photography & Event Services

Region
United States

Company Size
Small Business

Stakeholder
Founder / Owner

Tech Stack (Before)
HubSpot, Wrike, AWS

🚨 The Challenge

This fast-growing photography company had a bold vision: a centralized portal where clients, photographers, editors, and project managers could collaborate seamlessly around each event. The problem? Everything lived in disconnected tools — Wrike for projects, AWS for storage, HubSpot for CRM, and email/text for communication.

The siloed workflows led to:

  • Missed details between teams

  • Delays in photo delivery

  • Frustrated clients asking for refunds

  • Negative public reviews on Google and social media

The owner needed a way to unify these operations before scale made the problem irreversible.

🔧 Our Approach

We stepped in as both architects and developers, collaborating with HubSpot agencies, contractors, and internal teams to bring the portal to life.

Our focus:

  • Translate the owner's vision into a working, scalable architecture

  • Build within HubSpot's ecosystem using Operations Hub, CMS Enterprise, and serverless functions

  • Replace all third-party tools with a seamless, branded client experience

💡 The Solution

We designed and built a fully customized client collaboration portal inside HubSpot, featuring:

  • Onboarding + Intake Forms tailored by role (client, photographer, editor, support)

  • Dynamic Event Dashboards with status updates, files, comments, and change requests

  • Automated Notifications sent to relevant parties based on stage or update

  • Serverless Functions for creating, updating, and syncing CRM data with user input

  • Custom Objects and CRM Mapping to track every event, team member, and milestone

By eliminating dependency on Wrike and AWS for collaboration, everything lived in one platform — reducing friction and improving accountability.

📈 Results & Outcomes

  • A one-of-a-kind customer experience that became a core differentiator for the brand

  • Streamlined communication between internal teams and clients

  • Elimination of missteps that had previously resulted in refunds and poor reviews

  • Fewer platforms, more clarity, and simplified support workflows

“It’s wild to think we built all of this in HubSpot. This is what I always imagined, but didn’t think was possible.” — Owner (paraphrased)

🔍 Key Takeaways

You can build full-scale applications inside HubSpot.
This project pushed the boundaries of what most consider possible with CRM tools. With the right architecture and communication cadence, even a multi-user, event-driven portal can be done — without writing a traditional app.

💬 Why It Matters

Many growing service companies hit a wall when off-the-shelf tools stop working. This case proves that, with the right team and platform expertise, you don’t need to compromise your vision — even if it means building something no one’s seen before.