Allow Customers to log in to view tickets for free

Currently if I want a customer to have access to view a history of tickets for their company, I have to pay for a license for them to have access as well as provision special permissions which I believe Atlassian could provide for free as part of the help desk service like Zoho.com or Freshdesk.com provides.

This would be great if a customer could create an account that attaches to the help desk which allows them to view the full history of support tickets without charging my company to give them a license.
This would require special permissions to allow for only customer portal login and no provider side access. Thanks!