# What is the difference between an Individual and Company portal account?

> Source: https://support.associationsphere.com/what-is-the-difference-between-an-individual-and-company-portal-account  |  Updated: 2026-09-08T02:58:49Z

An Individual portal account is meant for a person with an individual constituent profile type. A Company portal account is meant for companies, organizations, businesses or groups that have a company constituent profile type.

When registering for a portal account, the top box, **Portal Account Type**, lets you choose between the **Individual**or **Company** profile. It defaults to Individual.

When creating a portal account, the software will validate by name and email address to look for an existing match in the software. If no exact match is found, a new constituent record will be created.

**Note that every portal account must have a unique email address.** While it is possible to allow companies and individuals to share an email address in the database, they must each have a unique email address if there will be two portal accounts. A constituent identified as the Primary 1 Company Contact will be able to access a company's record from the portal. So it may not be necessary to create a company portal account for an organization where the primary contact will manage the company's account. For more about this, see this article: <a href="./how-does-a-company-or-organization-access-the-portal" target="_blank">./how-does-a-company-or-organization-access-the-portal

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