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- A portal aggregates information and services. For example, it may draw together images and RSS feeds hosted elsewhere, presenting them together.
- A portal personalizes the selection and content of information and services presented. For instance, the portal might be aware of a student's class year and present special content about becoming acclimated for new students and on graduation procedures for graduating students.
- A portal *customizes" the selection and content of information and services presented according to end-user preferences. The individual portal user may customize his or her experience.
- A portal is an application container, providing abstractions for authentication, authorization, user attributes, group membership, locale, preferences, styling, and other cross-cutting concerns, making it easier to deliver small applications within the portal by allowing developers to focus more on their application domain and less on the things that every little application needs.
- A portal is a gateway, providing convenient links out to relevant applications and resources.