The website shipped. The requests never will.

Two doors: a custom intake form on your domain that asks for the brief, files, deadline, and priority up front, or plain email. Emailed requests become tracked queue items automatically, so clients who will only ever email are fully supported.

Yes, and this is deliberate. Email stays the front door for clients who want it; Sideline turns each message into a request with an owner, status, and due date. The portal is there when they want to check status without asking you.

Each client can carry a list of team members who are automatically assigned to every new request from that client. The assignees are notified immediately and can start working, so nothing waits on a project manager to read a thread and delegate.

Time tracking per request, per person, and per client is built in today, with reports that show what each client consumed in any period. Retainer plans with caps, alerts, and billing are in development now, and founding agencies get input on how they work.

Yes, if you want them to. The client portal includes a real-time time log in plain terms: who worked on what, for how long. Studios use it to make retainer value visible before the renewal conversation ever starts.

That workflow is exactly what Sideline was built inside an agency to run: the stream of content updates, plugin issues, and small fixes that follows every launch. Requests arrive by form or email, get routed to the right developer, and the hours accumulate against the client.

A shared inbox organizes conversations; Sideline organizes commitments. Every item has an owner, a status, a priority, and a due date, plus a client portal, time tracking, and reports. You stop reconstructing promises from threads.

Engineering ticket tools assume the reporter is technical and the workflow is sprints. Your clients are not filing tickets with reproduction steps. Sideline gives clients a form and a portal a non-technical person actually uses, and gives your team the queue behind it.

Yes, with their existing email address, no Google Workspace seat or Slack account to provision. Clients never see their personal contact info, and when a contract ends, deactivating them takes one click and is reversible.

Sideline exposes a remote MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Make, or Zapier can read your requests, clients, time, and reports and, if an Account Owner allows writes, update status, priority, and due dates or draft replies a human still has to send. Ask questions in plain language, build a morning digest, or pull hours into a report.

Retainer management is built in: set up a monthly allowance or a prepaid block of hours per client, with custom rules on each, and logged time draws it down as your team works. Sideline does not issue the invoice itself, so the numbers export into whatever you bill with.

The trial includes concierge setup: tell us about your studio and we configure your workspace, import clients, and set up your intake form within 24 hours. There is no database to design and nothing for your clients to learn beyond clicking a magic link.

Studio is $49 per month flat with 5 team seats and unlimited clients and requests, so adding your eleventh or fiftieth maintenance client costs nothing. Extra team seats are $9 per month each.