Building private apps
What Are Private Apps?
Unlike apps listed in Clio's App Directory, private apps are meant to serve the specific needs of a single Clio account. Private apps might be built in-house at a law firm, or built on behalf of a Clio user by a third-party developer. Private apps and private app developers are still covered by Clio's developer terms of service.
Clio Platform Private Apps
Apps built in the Clio Platform developer portal start as private by default and can only be authorized by users of a single Clio firm/account at a time. You must provide a Clio Firm ID in the configuration of your app – see the section on private apps in the Clio Platform API docs for more information.
If you wish for your app to be used by more than one firm, once your app is ready for launch, you can apply to become a public app.
Clio Manage Private Apps
Private apps for Clio Manage are not reviewed by Clio and cannot be published in Clio's App Directory. You will need access to a paid Clio account to create apps and get your app key and secret. Other than these points, private apps are built in the same way as public apps – they manage authorization through OAuth, and use the API in the same way.
Apps and integrations – including private apps – are not available on the EasyStart pricing tier. See Clio's pricing page to learn more.
To build a private app, you must have login credentials to the account that will use the app – this is either your own law firm's Clio account, or the account for a client for whom you are building an app.
Once logged in, you can follow the standard steps to create a Developer Application and start building your app. Note that private apps follow the same OAuth authorization process as public apps – each firm user will need to be authorized in this manner to connect their Clio account to the private application.