R2 — Run a 90-day adoption test with a cheap bought portal before committing; if <40-50% of clients log in, the portal is solving a problem the client base doesn't have

Rule: Before committing to any portal (custom or paid annual), deploy a cheap bought portal to a subset of clients for 90 days. Introduce at onboarding. Measure login + usage. Benchmark: if fewer than ~40-50% log in within 90 days, the portal is not solving a real problem for this client base — stop.

Why: Practitioner data: 40-60% of clients haven't logged in in the last 90 days (Practitioner data: "Most firms find 40-60% of clients haven't logged in in the last 90 days" — the ghost-login problem stated by an adoption-tool vendor). Gartner: only 14% fully resolve issues in self-service (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). The patient-portal academic literature tops out at 26-51% (Patient portal usage (academic, adjacent benchmark): cross-sectional study 32.1% used (range 26-51%); ER real-time 17.4% of 1.28M; US national 2022: 77% offered, 68% accessed) despite far stronger adoption incentives than most SMBs have. A 90-day live trial reveals the truth at low cost.

How to apply:

• Pick the cheapest credible bought portal (SuiteDash — CRM + portal + projects + invoicing + scheduling; portal core; from $19/month unlimited users (2026)).
• Introduce at onboarding for new clients, not by retrofitting existing ones (changes the test).
• Track login frequency by client; measure proportion who logged in at least once in 90 days.
• Mirror the calculator brief's "operational test before you commit infrastructure" discipline (R6 — A lead-capturing calculator is wasted infrastructure without a 5-minute follow-up SLA; build the SLA first).