Coordinator vs Assembly (formerly Copilot)
Assembly is the prettiest portal shell in the category — priced by how many clients you serve, with project management its admitted weak spot. Coordinator's portal is free at any client count, backed by real projects and real books.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
Assembly, side by side
The polished client-portal platform for productized services — rebranded from Copilot in 2025, now priced by contact count with per-app and AI-credit add-ons.
| What you're paying for | Coordinator | Assembly |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 — unlimited clients | Contact-tiered; ~$20–$140+/mo |
| Client count as billing | Never | The pricing axis |
| Projects behind the portal | Full PM with job costing | Its most-cited gap |
| Books behind the billing | Included — statements, reconciliation | Stripe payments; international billing complaints |
| Portal polish | Clean hosted pages | Best-in-class UX — its edge |
Assembly pricing and plan limits are approximate, from their published plans as of August 2026 — check their site for current figures. Coordinator's column doesn't change: $0.
The Assembly line on your P&L
Assembly's free tier covers 5 active contacts; Starter is $20/mo for 50, Professional $90–$140/mo for 500 — plus $5/mo per extra app and $0.60 AI build-credits. Serving more clients is precisely what raises the bill.
Users: Contact-count tiers + app and credit add-ons.
What you get that Assembly doesn't give you
Assembly meters exactly the thing you're trying to grow. Client number 5,000 costs what client five did: nothing.
Assembly's portal fronts messaging and payments; PM is the acknowledged gap. Here the door opens onto real projects, real scheduling, real books.
International billing complaints don't happen when the billing runs on your own processor with real multi-entity books.
What Assembly users complain about — answered
Recurring themes from public reviews and forums (G2, Capterra, Reddit), paired with what changes here. We only list complaints Coordinator actually solves.
“Cost grows with every contact we add”
Contacts aren't a billing dimension. Unlimited clients, unlimited portals, $0.
“Project management is missing in action”
Full staged projects with sign-off and job costing — and clients on the network see them live.
“Invoicing didn't survive our international billing”
Multi-entity books with per-entity currencies, on your own rails.
What they love about Assembly — kept
Kept: one link for invoices, quotes, meetings and questions — no password.
A real founder-signed address here too — the small-team ethic shared.
Where Assembly may still fit
No tool wins everything, and we'd rather you pick with open eyes.
Assembly's client-facing polish and app-store model are genuinely impressive — and their support is famously responsive.
Full branding including custom domains is deeper than our hosted pages.
Enable portals for your contacts, connect your own payment rails, and let clients keep one login for everything — including the projects Assembly never showed them.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
The free Assembly (formerly Copilot) alternative, summarized
If you're searching for a Assembly (formerly Copilot) alternative, the short version: Coordinator is free for unlimited users — no tiers, no usage meters, no renewal-day surprises — and it covers what Assembly does for client portals alongside the rest of a small business's operations: real accounting, projects with job costing, booking pages and staff scheduling, client records and forms, team chat, and a cross-company network where your invoice lands in your client's books. Assembly still fits some buyers — see the fair print above — but if the complaints on this page sound familiar, switching is usually an afternoon.
Explore the client portals side of Coordinator on free-client-portal, see everything it does, or read why it's free.
Keep the Assembly money
Set up free in minutes, import what you have, and put the subscription line to better use.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.