What do people actually pay for an investor portal at 18 LPs?

The smaller platforms will absolutely talk to you at 18 investors. Cash Flow Portal, InvestNext and SyndicationPro all publish or quote entry tiers that people describe in the low hundreds a month, and the bigger institutional systems tend to start in the five figures a year and price off assets or investor count. Get the quote in writing because the tiers move. The wrong-investor-numbers thing is exactly what the software fixes, so it's cheap insurance at any of those prices.

Software wasn't the line item that surprised me when I modeled it out. Fund and entity accounting is. Bookkeeping for a single-asset LLC runs a few thousand a year at a small shop, and K-1 preparation gets quoted per K-1, often somewhere in the 75 to 200 range depending on state filings. 18 LPs with a couple of them in trusts and you've got a real number. If you're doing a 506(c) raise you're also paying for third-party accreditation verification, which the services quote per investor. Confirm every one of those with the actual provider, and check whether the operating agreement lets you charge them to the deal or whether they come out of your fee.

@sextant that last line is the bit I didn't know to ask about. So the LPs might be paying for the portal and the K-1s out of the deal rather than the sponsor eating it? Where in the documents does that live, and is there normally a cap?