Every agency hits this. You win a project that needs a skill you do not have in-house, or three projects land the same week, and the options are turn it down, hire for it, or partner. White label is the third option and it is widely misunderstood.
What white label actually means
You hold the client relationship. Your partner delivers the work under your brand and never contacts your client. You brief, they build, you present. To the client, your agency did it — because as far as the commercial relationship goes, your agency did.
That is different from a referral, where you hand the client over and take a fee, and different from subcontracting where the specialist is visible. In white label, your partner is invisible by design.
The economics
| Model | How you charge | Typical margin | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed project | Quote client above partner price | 30–50% | Defined scope: sites, audits, builds |
| Retainer | Monthly to client, monthly to partner | 30–40% | Ongoing SEO, maintenance |
| Hourly pass-through | Marked-up hourly rate | 20–35% | Overflow and ad-hoc work |
| Referral | One-time fee, hand off client | 10–20% | Work outside your positioning |
Fixed project is where most agencies do best, because your margin is known before you quote rather than eroding through the build. Hourly pass-through looks flexible and quietly transfers all the estimating risk onto you.
How to pick a partner
- ✓Ask what they have built for themselves, not only for clients
- ✓Ask what happens when something breaks after handover, and who pays
- ✓Confirm in writing that they will not contact your client
- ✓Ask for a fixed price before you quote yours, so your margin is real
- ✓Check the time zone — review cycles land on you, not on them
The cheapest hour is rarely the cheapest project
Offshore delivery is cheaper per hour and frequently more expensive per project, because every round of review comes back to you and every miscommunication costs a day. Work out your true cost as partner rate plus your own hours spent managing it. That number often reorders the options entirely.
How to brief so it goes well
The failure mode in white label is almost never capability. It is a brief that leaves the partner guessing, which produces work that needs rebuilding, which eats the margin the arrangement existed to protect.
- ✓Share the actual client goal, not just the deliverable list
- ✓Say what is fixed and what is open to judgement
- ✓Provide brand assets and content up front, or say who is producing them
- ✓Name the real deadline, including your own review time
- ✓Agree what counts as done before work starts
When white label is the right call
When the work is outside your core skill but inside your client relationship. When demand is spiky and hiring permanently does not fit the volume. When you want to offer a service before committing to build a team around it — white label is a genuinely good way to test whether a service line has demand before you staff for it.
We deliver white label for agencies and consultants: full site builds, e-commerce, technical SEO, custom software, and overflow development. Fixed price quoted to you before you quote your client, Canadian team in your time zone, and your client never hears our name.