Your best project is under NDA and a prospect wants to see what you've done. Four ways to show it, what each one costs you, how to make a version you can send, and what a private link can't protect.
You're a freelance designer, or a product designer between jobs, and the project you're proudest of is the one you signed an NDA for. A prospect asks the obvious question on the call: have you done this kind of thing before? You have. It's the best thing you've made. And all you've got ready to say is "I can't show you that."
That answer costs you. The prospect hears "no proof", and the project that should be doing the selling sits in a folder.
There's usually something between "put it in the portfolio" and "show nothing". This page walks through it in order: what the NDA lets you do, the four ways people show this kind of work, how to make a version you can send, and what to check before it leaves your machine.
Start with the agreement, not with this page. We can't tell you what yours allows, and neither can any blog post. Read it looking for which of these it actually restricts:
Those are different promises. An agreement that covers the first two leaves a lot more room than one that covers the last.
If you can't tell which one you signed, ask the client who signed it. Something like: "I'd like to show a version of the project to one prospective client, with your name, logo and all figures removed. Would that be OK?" They may say yes, they may say no, and either way you have an answer in writing instead of a guess. If they say no, that settles it, and the rest of this page is for the next project.
Four, roughly. Each one gives something up.
| What you do | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Make a de-identified version and put it in your public portfolio | Anyone can see it, including people who might recognise the client from the problem alone. You have to remove a lot, and what's left can look thin next to your other work. Only do this if the NDA and the client both allow publishing. |
| Put the case study behind a password on your portfolio site | One password for everyone, shared indefinitely. And if a job posting says it won't open password-protected portfolios, believe it and pick another route. |
| Talk it through live and send nothing | Nothing to forward or lose, which often makes it the safest option. But the prospect has nothing to look at afterwards, and the person who wasn't on the call (their boss, their co-founder) never sees it. |
| Send one private link to that one prospect | The work leaves your hands. You decide who gets the link and when it stops working, but you can't control what happens on their screen. More on that below. |
None of these is right for every NDA. If the agreement says "don't show anyone", the third row is as far as you go, and even that is worth checking with the client.
Make a separate file for this. Don't send the real deliverable with a few things blurred.
What to take out:
What to keep: the problem in general terms ("a checkout flow for a subscription business"), your process, the decisions you made and why, and the shape of the result. If the client agrees, describe outcomes in relative terms ("checkout completions went up after the redesign") rather than with their numbers. Put placeholder text and blocks of colour where the real content was.
Which format. A PDF is fine for most case studies and opens the same on every device. If the work is interactive, like a prototype or a scrolling case study, a self-contained HTML file keeps the interaction. Sharing a portfolio piece before your site is live covers the HTML side. The steps below are the same either way.
Put a password on it, and send the password separately. If the link and the password are in the same email, anyone that email reaches has both. Send the link by email and the password by text message or in the chat you already use with that person. What an unguessable link does and doesn't protect explains why the password matters even when the address is hard to guess.
Set an end date that matches the conversation. A proposal that's valid for 30 days, or an application round that closes on a date, gives you the expiry. There's no reason for the case study to stay reachable after the decision.
Here's how that works on miinideck:
Drop in the PDF or HTML file, add a password, and get a link for one prospect. Open it yourself first, the way they will.
Their own link, in most cases.
One link per prospect means you can close one without affecting the others. If a conversation ends, let that link expire or delete it. Each one can have its own password too, so a password that travels further than you meant only opens one copy. On a free account, keep the files small: every link counts toward the 10 MB of storage, and each one expires after 7 days apart from the one you keep up permanently.
One link for everyone is less work and fine for a lightly redacted piece you'd be comfortable seeing passed around. But you can't close it for one person without closing it for all of them.
What you can see afterwards:
So with one link per prospect, "last opened yesterday evening" on that prospect's link is a reasonable sign they looked before the call. It isn't proof they did, and it can't tell you whether they showed it to someone else. Sending a deck and knowing whether it was opened goes further into what an open count can and can't tell you.
Be clear with yourself about this before you send anything under NDA.
If your NDA, or the client you're asking, needs those things, a private link isn't the right tool. Use a virtual data room. That's what they're built for: typically each viewer gets their own login, views are recorded against a named person, documents can be watermarked with the viewer's name, and access can be withdrawn person by person. They usually cost more and take longer to set up. For a single redacted case study going to one prospect, that's often more than you need. For anything a client would care about in a dispute, it's the right call.
Five minutes before you hit send:
AcmeBank_checkout_final_v3.pdf names the client before anyone opens it. Rename the file, and rename any images inside an HTML or ZIP export too.<title> tag and search the file for the client's name.If something you find makes you unsure whether the version is clean enough, that's the moment to send it to the original client and ask, rather than to the prospect.
You made a review game or interactive activity as an HTML file, attached it to a Google Classroom assignment, and students see code or can't open it. Post it as a link instead: the steps, what it takes to keep it working all term, and when you need Google Forms or your LMS.
You built a sample site for a local business on spec and it's still sitting in your AI builder. What the owner needs to be able to do with the link, what the builder's own URL, a Vercel deploy and a screen recording each give you, and how to send it as a private link that stays out of search and ends on its own.
Launching a site and handing it over have become the same click, which is why freelancers stall when a client says 'looks great, put it live' before the last invoice is paid. What you can hold back until payment, what you can't, six ways to show the work without launching it, and a step-by-step for static builds.
miinideck turns a single HTML file into an unguessable link with optional password and expiry. Default-private, never indexed.