Caveats for the client-portals brief: source-incentives are pervasive; the independent anchors are McKinsey and Gartner; market-size figures unreliable; the viral 42% stat is misattributed

The honest summary of source quality across this brief:

• Source incentives are pervasive. The large majority of pricing, ROI, deflection, and demand claims originate from companies that profit from portals (SaaS vendors, dev shops, report-sellers).
• The independent anchors are McKinsey (2022, ~3,500 US SMBs) — SMBs use digital channels 20-30% more frequently than analog; "assisted" channels (chat, email) beat pure self-serve; <15% want phone/voice (SMB channel preferences) and Gartner (Aug 19, 2024; survey of 5,728 customers Dec 2023) — only 14% of customer service / support issues are fully resolved in self-service; even for "very simple" issues only 36% resolve fully + Gartner (2019, 8,398 customers) — only 9% of customers report resolving their issues completely via self-service (self-service resolution rates).
• Market-size figures are unreliable — Portal "market size" projections range ~7× between sources (US$1.47B - $10.47B for the same period) — the spread itself is the finding shows a ~7× spread for the same period.
• The "42% abandon portals / 43% prefer email" stat is misattributed — see CORRECTION: the viral "42% abandon portals out of frustration / 43% prefer email" stat is misattributed — the 42% traces to Namogoo e-commerce cart-abandonment research, not portal logins. Do not cite.
• Pricing current as of 2026 but volatile; the Clinked pricing conflict — agiled.app reports $77-297/month; Clinked's own pricing page (via Capterra) reports plans from $239/month; flagged for verification is the explicit example. Verify directly before quoting.
• The Forrester TEI deflection studies (Forrester TEI studies report ~35% support-ticket deflection from portals — but every TEI study is commissioned and paid for by the vendor whose product is studied; enterprise-scale) are vendor-commissioned and enterprise-scale.
• Breach-cost averages (IBM/Ponemon Cost of a Data Breach (Jul 30, 2024; 604 orgs; Mar 2023-Feb 2024): Canadian average CA$6.32M (down from CA$6.94M in 2023); 2025 figure ~CA$6.98M per separate edition) are large-organisation figures, NOT SMB-specific.
• No causal evidence links portals to SMB client retention ("Portal users retain better" is a textbook selection effect — engaged clients both use portals AND retain; the portal does not cause the retention) — treat all retention claims as correlation/selection effects.
• Internal frameworks referenced, not re-derived: this builds on the studio's existing "brochure-vs-platform" and "owning-your-stack / build-vs-buy / data-custody" framings.

Cross-brief: This is the portal sibling of Caveats for the customer-facing-calculators brief: every conversion-lift figure is unproven; nearly all are vendor-self-reported and Caveats for the data-driven-tools brief: vendor self-reporting on conversion; enterprise-scale benchmarks; named-user quotes; macro projections. Same posture, same source-incentive asymmetry.