Portal
Links to try any product at any moment with no setup
196 followers
Links to try any product at any moment with no setup
196 followers
Portal exists because trying software is still weirdly fake. We send landing pages, videos, and demos - but the first time someone actually uses a product still requires signups, installs, or a sales call. Portal lets you send a browser session, which can be open to any real, running state of your product. That could be opened to localhost:3000, with an extension installed, or logged into a demo account with safety, resets, and optional AI. You get analytics. The link allows a temp session.
Portal
📌 Hey Product Hunt - I’m Zach, founder of Portal
👉 Try a live Portal here: www.makeportals.com/try-producthunt
Portal started with a simple question:
Why is it still so hard to let someone actually try software?
Last year I was in a disability lab in Seattle, showing someone a Chrome extension I’d built to control a computer with voice.
They were excited - but when it came time to install, they hesitated & didn't trust downloading this thing.
I remember thinking: Why can’t I just send a link to a computer where this is already running?
That question stuck with me.
What Portal does
Portal turns a browser session (a real product state) into a shareable link.
Clicking a Portal feels like opening someone else’s browser - already set up - that you can safely explore.
When multiple people open a Portal, each gets their own isolated session automatically.
A Portal might open to:
a logged-in dashboard
a demo account with real data
a specific onboarding step
a localhost or Chrome extension w/ 10 min temp/limited access & analytics on use
No installs. No signups. No pretending.
Just click & you’re in.
How it works (high level)
Think of a Portal like a booth at a science fair - an iPad already open to the app, with guardrails.
Each Portal is:
the real UI, fully interactive
opened in a specific chosen state
sandboxed with guardrails & expiring access
optionally joined by an AI you control (to answer questions or run a demo)
instrumented with analytics on clicks and hesitation
You choose the state, who leads (user or AI), and the rules of the sandbox that is contained in a stateful URL.
When someone opens the link, that session comes alive. Most Portals take under a minute to create, with zero code.
Demos (led by an AI agent or self-serve w/ AI to answer Qs) are just one use case
People use Portals to:
share hard-to-set-up products instantly, trialing conversion / user insight lifts
run self-serve onboarding or research
send links in Slack instead of Looms
end presentations with actual software, not slides
soon embed specific experiences on their sites
Using an unreleased multiplayer beta, I send Portals to my parents to scroll through news articles together instead of screen sharing, and drop a Portal instead of sharing on Zooms.
A moment that made it click
At a South Park Commons demo event, I ended with a QR code.
25 founders scanned it - and instantly opened isolated instances of my localhost app on their phones, with a Chrome extension already installed.
No installs. No screen sharing. No pretending.
They didn’t watch a demo.
They experienced the product.
The vision
We’re building Portal as a new primitive for the web: shareable links to live product states, for the next billion stateful products.
If Google Docs made documents shareable, Portal makes software experiences shareable.
www.makeportals.com/try-producthunt
Vid making a Portal: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7422078545230843904/
If anything feels unclear, broken, or surprisingly powerful, I’d genuinely love your feedback - and how you’d want to use a Portal.
@zach_gold this is one of those ideas that feels obvious once you see it but nobody built it right until now. letting someone try the actual product instead of watching a video changes everything.
the chrome extension demo use case is huge. getting people to install extensions is the hardest conversion step. skipping that entirely with a sandboxed live session removes so much friction.
the analytics on clicks and hesitation is smart too. knowing where people get stuck in a real session beats any survey or heatmap on a marketing page.
Portal
@topfuelauto Appreciate it!
Felt that way too when exploring the space, so a huge goal is abstracting the complexity away from Portal builders so they can just focus on sharing & not learning new code/frameworks.
Excited to see what you’d use a Portal for 👀
@zach_gold This product is golden! What friction were you personally hitting that made ‘no setup’ feel essential?
Congrats on the launch! Portal makes “try the real product, not the demo” finally feel native to the web—links to live, sandboxed sessions are such an obvious next primitive
Portal
@zeiki_yu Thanks Zeiki! Curious what sort of things you think will be built on the primitive?
Line0
sick product! congrats on the launch Zach 🔥🔥🔥
Portal
@ivan_ivanovv Appreciate it Ivan!
This is sick! 🚀 I’m curious in terms of how it works - like users can navigate the software with and without chat? And is there an option to reset the db changes that were made or something like that?
Portal
@killian_dunne Thanks, great Q's - on AI, 3 options:
a) User clicks: No AI (focus is on the state)
b) User clicks: AI answers Q's (what the examples have)
c) AI clicks & leads: User asks Q's (Watch Mode, not shown in vid)
Working with early users on best method db-wise- some folks want reset, others like the analytics, other block APIs.
Will DM - love to hear which works best on your end & continue the conversation, and great notes to add to our documentation we'll release soon! Less about "fixing" PLG flow- majority of which are great, more about helping in moments with high friction like alpha testing, analytics, self-serve calls, presentations, et.
@zach_gold Very cool! Yeah send a message would be keen to try!
Technically, it’s an interesting idea — I hadn’t thought about this before. But what about marketing? Usually, registration equals an email address, which is valuable information, and if the user doesn’t buy, you can follow up with emails and convert them later.
Portal
@mykyta_semenov_ Great Q - Portal isn’t fully replacing email capture - it’s making sure you only ask for it after someone’s felt value.
Curious if you'd agree some folks might not be willing to leave an email but would press try. For cases where they would leave an email, behavioral analytics from Portal could be more helpful. Having said that, most folks don't use Portals on landing pages but instead for specific users/scenarios so marketing post a live presentation, as an example or on a specific surface.
You've got a great point though- Portal really is meant for the moments when you want folks to try a specific experience but there's friction right now - solving it by letting you drop people directly into that experience. If you just want to educate passively at scale & there's no friction, current solutions do a good job. Appreciate the question!
@zach_gold From a founder’s perspective, I always need the email — I try to get it by any means :) From a user’s perspective, for unfamiliar sites I have a spam email address that I use for such sign-ups and never even check what comes in afterward.
I see one possible approach here: let the user access the product without collecting an email, but require it after certain actions. That said, this really needs A/B testing on conversion to see what works better.
Portal
@mykyta_semenov_ For sure - and one of the advantages of Portal is you get user research level analytics no matter what alongside the conversion metric you'd be A/B testing that could be audience dependant. Agreed on emails being low signal, though ideal from a founder POV!
Pep
Huge congrats on the Portal launch Zach! Such a clean idea -- makes me wonder if we can do the same for app launches too. If it’s a React Native app, can Portal help test specific features?
Also love the low-res product video -- 2006 throw back
Portal
@yanffyy Happy the video landed well, I definitely need to get a new mic-
right now web mostly, but can let you know as that changes!
saw your post on our pm community, really sick idea and would love to try it but what if I don't want to jump on a 10 minute call with you and just want to insert my URL to see how it works?