What is white label web design?

What does white label web design mean?

White label web design is when a studio designs and builds websites for agencies, who sell them to their own clients under the agency’s name. That studio is called a white label web design partner. Your client signs with your agency and pays your agency’s invoice, while the partner works behind you, in your accounts. If the client never hears the partner’s name, everything is working as it should.

The name comes from shop goods: a supermarket’s own-label range is made by someone else and sold under the supermarket’s name. In web work the product is a website. Your agency’s name goes on it, and the partner’s appears nowhere (not in the footer, the code, the emails or the invoices).

People use the term loosely. Some mean design alone; others mean design and build together, and plenty of partners also take on the work around a site, such as branding, SEO and maintenance. Ask a supplier which one they mean before you put their price next to anyone else’s.

How does white label web design work, step by step?

Your client asks you for a website. You get a price from a white label partner, add your margin and quote the client. The partner designs and builds the site inside your accounts; you check it, present it as your own work and launch it. From the first call to launch, your client only ever talks to you.

There are eight steps. You handle the first three and the last one, and the partner does most of what happens in between.

1. Your client asks for a website, and you scope it.

   That conversation is yours: what the site is for, which pages it needs, the platform and the deadline. The partner isn’t in the room, and doesn’t need to be.

2. You send the partner a brief and get a price.

   A good partner comes back in writing with a scope, a fixed price and a delivery date. An hourly estimate is no use to you here, because you can’t quote your client a firm price from one.

3. You quote your client at your own price.

   What the partner charges you stays between the two of you. What you charge your client is up to you, and the gap between them is your margin.

4. You sign an order with the partner and give access.

   Create the accounts yourself and invite the partner in: an email address on your domain, your project board, your Figma team, staging. If you created the access, you can switch it off.

5. The partner designs, and you present.

   Designs land in your Figma. You gather your client’s comments and your own into one list for each round. Already have an approved design? Then you skip this step.

6. The partner builds and tests.

   The site goes up on staging (a private preview link) and is tested before you see it. It’s worth asking who checks the build apart from the person who built it.

7. You review, then your client does.

   You check staging against the design, then show your client. If something doesn’t match what was agreed, it’s a defect and should be fixed free; if it’s new, it’s a change, and it gets a price before anyone starts on it.

8. Launch and handover. You keep the client.

   The site goes live in accounts you or your client own, with documentation under your agency’s name. When the client wants updates, new pages or the next project, they come to you.

What work can be white labelled?

Nearly everything that goes into a website can be white labelled: the design, the build on a platform such as WordPress, Shopify or Webflow, and the work around it (branding, SEO, conversion audits, analytics set-up, speed work, migrations and monthly maintenance). The client relationship, the strategy and the final sign-off stay with the agency.

What usually stays with the agency is finding and keeping the client, the strategy, the content and the final say. A few things also sit outside most partners’ prices. We don’t shoot photography or sell hosting, for instance, and page copy isn’t in our build prices (we write it only for an extra fee, quoted before we start). Whoever you talk to, ask which of these they cover.

Everything we sell is listed on the services page, and the sites our team has designed and built are in our work.

Who is white label web design for?

It suits anyone who sells websites to their own clients and would rather not design and build every one in-house. In practice that’s two groups: web and design agencies with more work than their team can take, and marketing, SEO, PPC and creative agencies whose clients want a website when there’s no web team to build it.

• Web and design agencies. Overflow in a busy month, or a platform nobody in-house builds on. More on StudioPartner for web agencies.
• Creative and branding agencies. You’ve designed the brand and want the site built to the same standard. There’s a page for creative agencies.
• SEO agencies. Your recommendations need a developer to carry them out, or a client needs a rebuild that keeps its rankings. See for SEO agencies.
• PPC agencies. Each campaign needs its landing pages built, with the tracking connected (for PPC agencies).
• Marketing and social agencies. A client asks for a website, and without a partner you’d have to refer it away. See for marketing agencies.
• Freelancers and consultants who resell. You sell the project and want a team behind you for the parts you don’t do yourself. See for freelancers.

White label, reseller, outsourcing, subcontracting: what is the difference?

Outsourcing is paying anyone outside your business to do work, and subcontracting is the contract behind it. White label is outsourced work delivered under your name, with the supplier out of sight. A reseller program is a supplier’s set terms for agencies that resell its work. The four overlap; one project can be all of them at once.

We wouldn’t get hung up on the labels; the contract is what counts. Two suppliers can both say “white label” and still differ on whether they may contact your client, show the work in a portfolio, or pass it to someone else.

What are the benefits of white label web design, and what do you give up?

You can sell websites without a web team on payroll, take on platforms nobody in-house knows, and quote from a price you already have. What you give up is day-to-day control of the build, and you rely on a supplier whose work carries your name. A good contract and a small first project take most of the risk out of both.

Each risk, with the control and the contract term that deal with it, is in the outsourcing guide.

How much does white label web design cost?

It depends on how the work is priced: a fixed price per project or per template, a monthly plan, or by the hour. Our own prices are fixed and published. A landing page is $500, a five-page Starter Site is $1,500, and design alone is $200 per template. That’s what the agency pays. The agency sets its client’s price.

Do you have to tell your client the work is white labelled?

Not always. It depends on your contract with that client and on the law where you both are. If the contract forbids subcontracting or names the people who will do the work, you need the client’s consent. If it says nothing, a right-to-subcontract clause settles it. And if a client asks you directly, tell them the truth.

White label is ordinary subcontracting with the supplier kept out of view. An agency that sells a website and has a partner build it is in the same spot as a builder who brings in an electrician: the client hired the builder, and the builder answers for the wiring.

So if the partner is late or the build is wrong, your client’s claim is against you. That’s why we’d pick a partner whose contract gives you a remedy you can pass on.

Our white label agreement template has a right-to-subcontract clause for your client contracts, with three levels of disclosure to choose from. It’s a starting draft, and we’re not lawyers, so have yours review it.

What should you check in a white label partner?

Check eight things before you sign: what stops the partner dealing with your clients, confidentiality, who owns the work, how it’s tested, what happens if a date is missed, how prices and changes work, who actually does the work (and who covers for them), and how logins and data are handled.

Our partner vetting checklist asks 30 questions in 8 groups, each with what a good answer sounds like. Use it on any partner you’re considering, us included.

Three habits make the answers worth more. Get the contract before the sales call, and read the non-solicitation, ownership and lateness clauses first. Ask for answers in writing, since a promise on a call costs nothing to make. And ask who will actually do the work. Is it the partner’s own staff, or freelancers it passes the job to?

Then run a small paid project before a big one. One landing page or one template will show you how the partner communicates, whether the date holds and what the build is like.

Open the checklist: 30 questions, free, no login