Send a prototype to a client for review

The review loop: one link for every round

Sending a prototype is the easy part. The mess comes later: v2 in an email, v3 in a chat, a zip attachment the client can't open on their phone, and feedback on a version that's two rounds old. With Flatpage the link belongs to the site, not to a file. The loop looks like this:

1. Send the link once, at the start of the project.
2. The client opens it on whatever they have to hand, usually a phone between meetings, and sends you notes.
3. You make the changes and choose Replace on the same site. The new version is live in seconds.
4. You reply "updated, same link". Nobody has to dig for the newest attachment.

Your dashboard shows how many times the link has been opened, so you can tell whether the client has looked before you chase them.

How it compares to the usual ways

• Email the zip. Phones can't open it, desktop mail may block it, and the client has to unzip it and double-click the right file. Every round is a new attachment.
• Put it on Google Drive or Dropbox. They show the HTML as code or download it, so the client never sees the page. See why Drive shows HTML as code.
• Screen-share or screenshots. Fine for a first look, but the client can't click around on their own time or check it on their phone.
• A tunnel to your laptop (ngrok and similar). Good for a live app with a backend, but the link dies when your laptop sleeps.
• A full hosting platform. Netlify, Vercel and GitHub Pages all work and are free to start, but they expect a repository or a build setup, and their default addresses are built for developers rather than clients.

Keeping client work private

A link that isn't published anywhere is hard to stumble on, but links get forwarded. For anything under NDA, use a password (Starter and Plus). The password is checked on our server before any part of the page is sent. Some free hosts offer a "password" that is really a bit of JavaScript on the page; anyone who views the source can read the content behind it.

When the project is over, delete the site from your dashboard and the link stops working straight away.

What breaks and how to fix it

• The page is blank or unstyled. The HTML points at files with absolute paths, like /Users/me/site/style.css or C:\site\style.css. Change them to relative paths (style.css, images/logo.png) and zip the folder that contains index.html.
• The upload is rejected for a missing index.html. The zip has several HTML pages and none of them is called index.html, so there's no way to tell which one is the start page. Rename the first page to index.html. An extra folder level inside the zip is fine; we unwrap it.
• Links between pages work, but refreshing a page gives a 404. The prototype is a single-page app (React Router, Vue Router) that expects the server to send every path to index.html. Use hash routing (#/about) for the review build, or link to the pages as separate .html files.
• Images show a grey placeholder. The page refers to images that weren't in the upload. We swap missing images for a placeholder so the layout holds; add the files to the zip and replace.

When Flatpage isn't the right fit

Flatpage hosts static files: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images and PDFs. If your prototype needs a server, a database or server-side rendering (a Next.js app with API routes, a Rails or Django app), deploy it to a platform that runs code, or share a static export. And if the client should leave comments pinned to parts of the page, a design review tool will serve you better than a plain link.