Confidentiality
Your clients hired your agency. That's what they should get.
Modern studios run on a mix of people — a developer in Belgrade, a motion designer for three weeks, a copywriter you share with two other shops. Sideline is the layer that keeps that flexible team delivering one brand and one standard, with client work kept somewhere you can actually protect it.
The usual workaround is expensive and leaky
To keep a freelancer looking like staff, agencies buy them a Workspace seat, mint firstname@youragency.com, provision Slack, share the right folders, and hope someone remembers to revoke it all in six months. That's real money and real risk, spent to maintain an appearance.
And it doesn't even solve the actual problem: the moment that contractor is on client threads, client information starts living in an inbox you don't control.
Dragan Petrović · replying to Grace K.
Hi Grace, the updated product photos are ready for your review. Let us know if the teal reads right on your screen.
Your contractor wrote it. Your studio said it.
Layer one
No personal email addresses. Ever.
Your contractors sign in with whatever address they already have, Gmail, Hotmail, their own studio domain. Clients never see it. Every reply, file, and notification carries your agency's name, so there's no direct line between the client who hired you and the freelancer you hired.
How names are shown
Applies everywhere a name appears, in the portal and in every email.
Layer two
Show as much of a name as you want
Full name, first name and last initial, or first name only. Set it once and it applies everywhere a person appears, in the portal and in every email. "Dragan P." tells your client exactly what they need to know: someone at your agency is on it.
Reply to Grace K.
Polishwe fix teal photo tomorow morning, send you eod. also banner is almost done i think. ok?
Thanks for the feedback! We're reshooting the teal colorway tomorrow morning and will have the updated photos to you by end of day, with the trade-show banner right behind them.
Same message, your agency's voice. Optional, agency-controlled.
Layer three
One voice, whoever is typing
Set your agency's tone once and Sideline holds every reply to it. One click of Polishfixes grammar, spelling, and tone; "Write for me" turns rough fragments into a finished client update. A brilliant developer whose English is their third language now reads exactly like your best account manager, because the words go out in your studio's voice, not theirs.
Content-free notifications
Keep message content out of email entirely
New message from Grace K. on request #846
View in SidelineBodies, attachments, even titles. Everything stays inside Sideline.
Layer four
Client data stops piling up in personal inboxes
This is the one most tools miss. Normally every client message is copied into your contractor's personal inbox as a notification, so months of client conversation quietly accumulates in a Gmail account you don't control, and stays there long after the contract ends. Turn on content-free notifications and emails carry only who acted on which request. The words stay in Sideline. There's nothing left behind to mine.
This person can see
Enforced on the server, not just hidden in the interface.
Layer five
People see only their slice
Scope anyone, including a Manager, to everything, only what is assigned to them, or only a named set of clients. A scoped person sees those clients' requests, files, reports, and contacts and nothing else: the rest of your book of business is invisible to them, not merely hidden behind a filter they could widen. Separately, decide whether Team Members can open your client list, your team roster, or agency reports at all, and note that in most workspace tools everyone you invite can browse everyone else. All of it enforced on the server. Owners can preview the app exactly as any person sees it before trusting it.
Team member access
agency settingWhat Team Members can open
- hidden
Clients page
the full client list
- hidden
Team page
who else works here
- hidden
Reports
agency-wide numbers
Invite anyone without handing over your client list or your roster.
Layer six
Permissions that cannot be widened sideways
The usual hole in a permission system is delegation: give someone the power to add teammates and they can quietly grant access they were never given. Sideline closes it. A Manager can only hand out the client access they already hold themselves, so a Manager scoped to three clients can staff those three and no more. Widening anyone beyond that is an Account Owner's decision. Enforced server-side, not just greyed out in the interface.
Dragan P.
Contractor · 4 open requests
Hand their open work to
Access ends immediately, and it is reversible. Their past replies and history stay with your agency.
Layer seven
Offboarding takes one click
When a contract ends, deactivate or remove them. Access stops immediately, their open requests hand off to a teammate, and every reply they wrote stays attributed and intact in your history. Deactivating is reversible, so the specialist you book every spring is one click from being back. No Workspace seat to reclaim, no Slack account to shut down, no shared drive to audit, because you never created any of it.
What a five-person bench actually costs
Per contractor, every month, just to make them look like part of the team.
| The usual way | With Sideline | |
|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace seat | $14 to $22 / contractor / mo | Not needed |
| Slack seat | $8 to $15 / contractor / mo | Not needed |
| Setup + offboarding time | ~1 hr each way | Two clicks |
| Client data in personal inboxes | Permanent | Optional, none |
Five contractors on Workspace and Slack run $110 to $185 every month, before anyone spends an hour setting them up. Your whole Sideline workspace is $49, flat, however many people you bring in.
Where the line actually is
We'll be straight with you, because security copy is usually where software starts fibbing. Sideline controls what your clients see and what leaves the system in email. It does not stop someone who can legitimately read a request from copying what's in it, no tool can, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is selling you a feeling.
What you get instead is real and worth having: no contact details crossing between client and contractor, no client conversation accumulating in personal inboxes, access scoped per person and enforced on the server, and offboarding that takes effect the moment you click it.
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