Onboarding clients,
without the chaos.
Onbord is a branded checklist portal that lets consultants send one link, track every task, and stop chasing clients over email.
- Solo consultant tool
- 2024
Active onboardings
4 clients in progress
Client type
Solo consultant
Scope
Full-stack web app
Stack
Next.js, Neon, Drizzle, Clerk, Resend
Timeline
3 weeks
Problem
Email is not an onboarding system.
A solo consultant was onboarding 8 to 10 new clients a month. Every kickoff lived in email — checklists pasted into message bodies, follow-ups sent manually, and no clear view of who had completed what. The process was leaking hours every week and signaling to clients that things were less organized than they actually were.
What they needed wasn't a project management tool or another Notion template. They needed something they could hand to a client in one click — something that looked professional, required no account to use, and showed them exactly what to do next.
Solution
One link. Full visibility.
We built Onbord — a lightweight portal where the consultant creates reusable onboarding templates, invites clients via a single email link, and tracks task completion in real time. Clients get a clean, mobile-friendly checklist at a unique URL. No login, no friction, no confusion about what's next.
Token-based client access
Clients access their checklist via a secure URL. No account required, no password to forget.
Provider dashboard
See every active onboarding, completion percentage, and overdue tasks at a glance.
Reusable templates
Build a checklist once per service type. Spin up a new client onboarding in seconds.
Automated nudges
Clients with overdue tasks get a reminder email automatically. No manual follow-up needed.
Under the hood
Built to stay live and stay simple.
Neon over Supabase
We chose Neon Postgres over Supabase for one practical reason: free tier databases don't pause. Portfolio projects and early-stage apps need to be live when a client clicks the link — not spinning up from a cold start. Neon's serverless driver also pairs cleanly with Next.js edge functions.
No client auth
Client authentication would have added friction with zero benefit. Instead, each onboarding gets a cryptographically random token embedded in its URL. The client bookmarks one link and they're done. Clerk handles the provider side — workspace login, team member invites, and role management.
Vercel Cron for nudges
Rather than a separate background job service, nudge emails are triggered by a Vercel Cron job hitting a protected API route once per day. It queries for tasks past their due date and fires reminder emails via Resend. Simple, serverless, zero infrastructure to maintain.
Outcome
3 hours back every week.
The consultant replaced a fragmented email workflow with a single tool their clients actually used. Onboarding completion rates went up because clients always knew what was next. The portal looked more professional than what larger agencies were sending — and it took one link to share.
saved per week
~3 hrs
to onboard any client
1 link
required for clients
0 logins
Stack