A secure environment for your dealers, resellers and distributors to place orders, check stock, access pricing tiers, submit claims and retrieve marketing content. Custom built, integrated with your ERP, PIM and CRM, and in your own brand look.
A dealer portal, sometimes called a reseller portal, distributor portal or partner portal, is the central working platform on which your indirect sales channel operates. The dealers, resellers, importers and distributors who pass your products on to the end customer do their daily work there: they place orders, check stock and lead times, request discounts, submit claims, retrieve marketing material and keep their certifications up to date. If that work runs through email, spreadsheets and phone calls, it takes a disproportionate amount of time from your channel managers, sales support team and accounts department, and gives dealers an experience they quietly compare with that of your competitors.
A well-built dealer portal removes that workload by becoming a single source of truth for your channel. The dealer sees their own pricing tier, available stock across your warehouses, open orders and ongoing warranty requests in real time. On the other side, your internal team sees each dealer's revenue, MDF balance, training status and compliance position, and can steer decisions based on that data rather than gut feeling. The difference between a dealer portal that falls into disuse after a few months and one that thrives rarely lies in the technology. It lies in how well the portal fits the work your dealers already do, in the language their product managers and salespeople use, and in the moments when they seek contact.
Since 2015 we have been building dealer, vendor and partner portals for manufacturers, wholesalers and importers. This type of platform sits close to a B2B e-commerce portal, but it stands apart through its focus on channel management: pricing tiers per dealer contract, MDF budgets, distribution of your end-customer leads to your dealers, and controlled access to brand assets. For the reverse direction, where suppliers supply you, you may be better served by our page on a vendor portal. For a marketplace model in which several sellers operate side by side, we have a separate approach to custom marketplace platform development.
Which type of platform you need depends on the size of your channel, the complexity of your pricing structure, and how deeply the portal has to connect to your existing ERP, PIM and CRM. In the first conversation we advise which option makes sense for your situation.
A secure environment where your dealers can see their open orders, easily reorder, check stock in your central warehouse and download marketing materials. SSO, role-based access, simple pricing tiers per dealer. Suitable for manufacturers and wholesalers with a few dozen to a hundred active resellers.
For manufacturers for whom after-sales service plays a major role: claims management for warranty and defects, warranty registrations, distribution of consumer leads to the nearest dealer, and contract-level marketing content. Including integrations with order management and CRM.
A mission-critical platform that connects in real time to SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, AFAS or a proprietary ERP, with multi-region pricing, contract management, MDF (marketing development funds) budgets, training tracking, certifications per product category and EDI integrations with major retail partners. Multi-tenant theming for different brands or business units.
A production-ready dealer portal plus everything around it, so you can manage and expand it yourself as your channel grows.
Four patterns in which a dealer, reseller or distributor portal noticeably takes work off your hands, both for your own team and for your channel partners. If you recognise one of them, a conversation is usually worth the time.
Your dealers email or call sales support to check stock, ask about delivery dates or place an urgent order. Your staff pass these back and forth in a shared mailbox and then key the orders into your ERP themselves. Versions get lost, errors creep in, and nobody has an overview.
Different dealers receive different discounts based on volume, contract or certification level. Those pricing tiers live in spreadsheets that your sales team maintains by hand, and changes only come through with a delay on the invoice. A dealer often only sees their own price afterwards.
Defects, warranty claims and RMAs currently run through separate forms, photos sent by email and manual processing. Your service team loses days searching for the right parts, photos and dealer details, while the end customer waits for an answer.
Your dealers request product photos, datasheets and logos by email. Consumer leads coming in through your website are manually allocated by your marketing team to the nearest dealer, with delays and no visibility on follow-up. MDF budgets are tracked in a spreadsheet.
A conversation to understand which flows the portal needs to cover — orders, stock, claims, marketing content, leads, MDF, training, reporting — which ERP and CRM systems sit around it, and what your dealer tier structure looks like. At the end you have an initial outline of the scope and a sense of where we start.
A workshop with your channel team plus short interviews with a cross-section of your dealers — a large A-dealer, a mid-tier partner and a smaller reseller. What do they do today, where do they run into problems, and what do they expect from your portal? At the end: scope, screen flow and a plan per module.
A working build every two weeks. Your team tests along the way, as does a small group of pilot dealers. We start with the most critical flow — usually ordering plus pricing tier — and expand in later sprints with claims, marketing, leads, MDF and reporting. This way you see value early and can adjust scope sprint by sprint.
We roll out in phases to your full dealer base, run onboarding sessions, and provide ongoing management for security, ERP integrations and development of new modules. As your channel grows, the portal grows with it.
A dealer portal is built from a set of recognisable building blocks. Which ones you need depends on your situation and your sector, but the following modules come up in almost every project — sometimes as the core, sometimes as an extension in a second phase once the foundation is running.
SSO via Azure AD, Okta, Google Workspace or your own Identity Provider for your internal team. For dealers we work with an invitation flow plus multi-factor authentication, and SSO where the larger dealer offers it themselves. Multiple roles per dealer organisation: dealer admin, buyer, service engineer, marketing manager. This way every user sees only what they need.
Dealers see available stock per location in real time, along with planned incoming stock and their open orders. Simple bulk ordering via SKU list, CSV upload or CSV template, with direct validation against your ERP. Urgent orders, partial deliveries and split shipments are supported. Status feedback (ordered, in production, shipped, delivered) per line item.
Pricing is driven by the contract the dealer has with you — volume tier, certification level, region or strategic status. The portal shows the correct net price per item, optionally with volume discounts and time-limited promotions. Changes in your ERP flow through automatically, without sales having to make manual updates.
Dealers submit claims through a structured form covering defect type, serial number, photos and customer details. The portal automatically routes the claim to your service team, links it to any open warranty record and tracks SLA timers. On request, end customers receive a unique warranty claim link, without the dealer needing to be involved.
A secure DAM environment with logos, product photos, datasheets, videos and social media templates. For each asset you set which dealers may use it and in which regions. Co-branding templates with automatic logo injection and a pre-approval workflow for dealers who want to create their own advertisements.
Each dealer receives an MDF budget based on turnover or contract. Dealers request budget for a specific marketing activity, provide proof of execution (campaign report, invoice, photos), and once approved, their claim is processed. Your channel team gets an overview of where the marketing spend goes and what return it delivers.
Consumer or B2B leads that come in via your website or comparison site are assigned to the nearest or best-suited dealer through a dealer locator or strategic routing. The dealer sees the lead in their portal, accepts or declines it, and you see the follow-up outcome. This prevents a lead from sitting in a mailbox or being picked up by several dealers at once.
For sectors where product knowledge is critical — automotive, agriculture, electronics — a training module with online courses, knowledge tests and certificates. Per dealer and per employee we track who has completed what, with automatic renewal reminders. Certain product lines or pricing tiers can depend on active certifications.
Insight into dealer turnover, claim frequency, stock velocity, MDF spend and lead conversion. Dashboards for your channel managers and self-service reports for dealers, so they can track their own performance and adjust course before you need a conversation. Exportable to Power BI, Tableau or Looker.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →The terminology varies by sector: some brands call it a "dealer portal", others a "reseller platform", "distributor portal" or "channel partner portal", but the underlying patterns are similar. In automotive and agricultural machinery, this often involves deep warranty flows, certification per product line and integrations with factory software. In building materials and electronics, stock visibility and pricing tiers play a greater role. For white-label manufacturers, the focus is often on brand asset management, co-branding templates and separate tenants per customer brand.
In automotive and trailers, we often work with manufacturers who sell through importers to independent dealers, with workshop certifications and spare-parts flows on top. In agri and agricultural machinery, heavy EDI integrations with mechanisation companies come into play, along with warranties that run for years on costly components. In building materials and sanitaryware, we see a lot of volume pricing, project pricing and specified delivery times per construction site. In electronics and household appliances, training tracking and compliance play a major role: your dealers may only sell certain product lines after passing certification. And for white-label manufacturers who produce for multiple brands, multi-tenant theming with separate DAM vaults is often the norm.
We decide on the right architecture case by case. For one client, a lightweight solution with Sanity Studio or Strapi as the back end may be enough; for another, a deeper integration with SAP S/4HANA and a custom React front end is the right route. For yet another, a marketplace model in which dealers can buy and sell actively is also worth considering, and then we'd also look at our page on marketplace platforms as a reference. We always advise based on what your team already runs and what your management partner supports, not on a preferred stack.
We build dealer portals as modern web applications on a stack that works in virtually any enterprise environment and stays maintainable. Front-end on React, Vue or Next.js with TypeScript, back-end on Node.js, Python (Django or FastAPI) or .NET, depending on what your own IT team knows. Ultimately the portal needs to be managed by your people, or at least be understood by whichever party takes over from us. An unfortunate stack choice can make that unnecessarily expensive in the medium term.
On the ERP side, we typically integrate with SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain, Exact Online, Exact Globe, AFAS Profit, Unit4 or a custom ERP. For product data, we work with Akeneo, Pimcore, Salsify, inriver or a custom PIM. For digital assets, Bynder, Brandfolder, Aprimo or a custom DAM. For CRM, Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Pipedrive. For BI and reporting, Power BI, Tableau, Looker or Metabase. For EDI with large retail chains, we work with the usual standards (EDIFACT, X12) or via an EDI broker.
Compliance is not an afterthought with dealer portals. GDPR and the cookie law are the baseline; in addition, export control and dual-use regulations (DUL) come into play if you sell products that may fall under European export restrictions, such as electronics, machine parts or dual-use components. Product liability requires you to be able to demonstrate which dealer route a specific serial number has followed, including any training and certifications. We therefore build an immutable audit log as standard, with traceability from order to end customer. For the broader architecture, you may also want to look at our page on smart API integrations, which covers the integration foundation a dealer portal depends on.
What clients usually want to know before we start.
A no-obligation introductory call of half an hour. We listen to your channel structure, your ERP landscape and the pain points that currently cost the most time, ask pointed questions, and give you direction you can actually use, even if we turn out not to be the right partner in the end. For the wider context of our approach, you may also want to look at our software development page.
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