Nitromule

What are Nitromule customer portals?

Updated 2026-09-07

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A customer portal is a branded site where your customers compare UPS, USPS, and FedEx rates and buy labels. It uses the same carriers and label engine as your Nitromule dashboard — you operate the back office; they self-serve shipping.

Who portals are for

Portals fit when you repeatedly ask customers to ship something to you, from you, or both:

  • Event registration with ship-to-venue labels
  • Gear, costume, or instrument rental (outbound, return, or round-trip)
  • Gallery, lodge, or school inbound shipping
  • Self-serve return labels after a purchase
  • “Mail this kit back” workflows without emailing PDF labels manually

If you only ship your own warehouse orders from Woo/eBay, you may only need the orders dashboard. Portals shine when someone else pays for or initiates the label.

Portal types at a glance

Portal / flow Customer goal Start here
Outbound storefront Buy a label to ship a package out Outbound storefront
Return label checkout Buy a label to ship something back Return label checkout
Round-trip checkout Outbound + return in one flow Round-trip checkout
Forms with labels Collect form answers, then generate a label Forms with labels
Get Label pages Hosted label purchase page you share Get Label pages

How a portal differs from the dashboard

Dashboard Portal
Who uses it You and your team Your customers / guests
Branding Nitromule app UI Your logo, colors, subdomain
Payment Your Billing for platform postage (typical merchant fulfill) Customer pays in checkout flows you configure
Packaging Entered per shipment Often constrained by portal packages

Building blocks

Most portals combine:

  1. General + Appearance — subdomain and branding (branding guide)
  2. Packages — boxes from Settings → Packages assigned to the portal (portal packages)
  3. Pages — outbound, return, round-trip, forms, or Get Label experiences
  4. Checkout — customer pays; Nitromule creates the label PDF
  5. Optional FAQs / forms — portal FAQs widget and form fields before labeling

Settings → Automation is for your dashboard order rules (auto-assign package/ship-from), not a portal “shipping rules” tab — Automation rules.

Suggested setup path

  1. Pick the portal type that matches the customer journey (table above).
  2. Set subdomain + branding.
  3. Assign portal packages.
  4. Publish the page and place a test purchase yourself before sharing the link.

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