Quick Summary: White-label WordPress maintenance is a way that digital agencies can generate recurring revenue through partnerships with specialized companies. Digital Agencies are able to create their own white-label services when they partner with a company to provide their clients with outsourced WordPress Technical Support. The white-label partnership model also has several operational benefits such as reducing operational costs of providing service while maintaining consistent security monitoring and uptime. The white-label partnership will allow the agency to have access to an expert team of professionals who will be able to provide them with expert-level branded reports on all of their client’s sites; thereby allowing them to reduce or eliminate the need for developing these types of capabilities internally.
You create amazing websites for your clients. They are happy with the design, the strategy, and the results you bring them. However, after launching their website, your clients begin asking you questions about maintaining their new site. “How can I update this plugin?” “Why is my site taking so long to load?” “I received a security alert — what should I do?”
You understand the importance of having regular maintenance on your client’s websites. You also realize that employing an in-house full time WordPress developer to take care of updating plugins, installing security patches, and backing up sites every day is very costly; especially when working with fewer volume clients; and takes away from the time spent focusing on the creative and strategic aspects of growing your business.
The above mentioned issue is exactly what white label WordPress maintenance solutions help solve. You maintain control over the client relationship, branding, and margin. The technical maintenance tasks are completed by a separate organization behind-the-scenes without your client being aware of who they really worked with.
This White Label Maintenance Guide explains how white label maintenance partnerships function, which types of partnerships there are, how to charge enough money for services to remain profitable, and how Deutrix Care functions as a silent partner for agencies regardless of size.
What Is White Label Maintenance?
A white label maintenance relationship is a strategic agreement between an independent third-party (a specialized WP support company) and your agency. In this relationship, the WP Support Company provides all of the technical daily work needed to maintain a client’s website, while using your Agency’s branding. So, when your client receives their monthly report, it has your logo; when they send in a question via e-mail, they hear from your Agency. If you decide to provide a ticketing portal, again it would be branded as your Agency.
The above is self-explanatory: Your agency sells maintenance contracts for WordPress to its customers at whatever price you choose. Underneath the hood of your business, Deutrix Care (or whichever white label partner you have) is performing the necessary tasks to keep a customer’s WordPress Site up and running including updates, security monitoring, uptime checks, backups, speed optimizations and troubleshooting issues.
Your Client will see nothing but your Agency. They will communicate with your Agency and trust your Team to take care of their WordPress Sites. And even though the White Label Partner did the work, they remain invisible.
This type of partnership works so well because both parties are playing off each other’s strengths. Your Agency does best at Client Relationships and Strategy and Design and Growth. The Maintenance Partner does best at providing technical detailed labor required to keep a WP Site up, safe and fast.
Benefits for Agencies
White-label maintenance provides your agency the opportunity to build a stable revenue stream through a predictable monthly fee. Agency project income is typically cyclic, peaking at times when there are many projects being completed (i.e., Q1) and low during slower periods of time (e.g., late Summer/Fall). White-label maintenance helps reduce this cyclical nature by providing a reliable source of revenue each month.
For example, if you can establish a contract for 25 clients who pay $149 per month for white-label maintenance services; you will generate $3,725 in recurring monthly revenue ($44,700 per year), regardless of how many new project sales you make in any given month.
There are additional benefits of offering white-label maintenance services to your customers. These include:
No need to hire/retain personnel. The white-label service provider already has their own staff, training programs, etc. in-place and ready-to-go.
Instant Expertise. Providing security hardening, server level optimization, malware removal, as well as establishing emergency response procedures, etc. requires significant experience and knowledge which a white-label service provider has from Day-1.
Scalability without growing pains. Once you add your 30th or 50th customer to your white-label maintenance program, you don’t need to worry about adding additional resources to support that new customer. The service provider has scalable infrastructure designed to handle large numbers of customers.
Higher client retention. Customers that purchase your agency’s white-label maintenance services tend to be loyal to your agency because they have an ongoing relationship with your company and receive monthly communication.
Increased lifetime value. With a white-label maintenance service contract in place with a client, it becomes much easier to up-sell additional services such as website design/redesign, feature development, SEO services, etc.
Types of White Label Models
There are many types of white label maintenance models. Each agency may prefer to be involved in their white label maintenance model differently than others. White label maintenance agreements typically can be categorized as follows:
Fully Managed: The partner does it all. They will do updates, monitor, backup, security, reporting, and even respond to client facing help desk calls. Your agency simply sells this service and collects the margin. A fully managed white label maintenance agreement would be best suited for an agency looking for a totally turn-key, recurring revenue stream.
Co-Managed: You take care of some of the client facing issues (i.e., content update, minor design changes, etc.) while the partner takes care of the back-end (updates, security, performance, backups, etc.). In a co-managed model, you have much more client contact than you do in the fully managed model but don’t have to worry about doing all of the technical work.
Overflow Support: You maintain your clients internally most of the time. However, you may choose to call upon a white label partner when you need to due to heavy volume (busy times), vacation, or if there is an issue with one of your clients that goes beyond what your internal team is capable of handling. If an agency has never used a white label maintenance model before, they should consider using an overflow support model first.
As each of these white label maintenance models have different price points, levels of agency participation and profit margins, please refer to our article on Top White Label Maintenance Models for Digital Agencies for additional details on all five white label maintenance models.
Managing Client Expectations
Your ability to manage client expectations is the biggest factor in the long-term success of your white label agreement. Your clients should always be able to look at your services as an improvement over those of your competitors (including the quality of your technical support) regardless of where you get your technical work done.
Branded Reporting: Each time your client receives a monthly report regarding the work completed on their website, it should include updates made to the site, uptimes, security scans, backup confirmation and performance metrics. The report should display your agency’s logo and branding and not that of your partner.
Transparency into SLAs: You should clearly define response times and resolution windows to give your clients an idea of how quickly they will hear back from your agency if there is a problem with their website. For example, if your partner has guaranteed a two hour response to all critical issues, you may safely offer your clients a four hour response window. This will give you a buffer and still exceed most client expectations.
Client Communication Protocols: You should determine before hand how client requests will flow through your agency. Will the client call or email your agency and you will forward them to your partner or will your partner handle all tickets received from your agency? Both methods have merit but you want to choose one method and use it consistently.
Clear Escalation Paths: When things go wrong your clients need to understand what options are available to them. Clearly defining an escalation path from a normal ticket to an urgent issue to an emergency situation will give your clients confidence in knowing that their site is being taken care of.
How Deutrix Care Acts as Your Silent Partner
Deutrix Care was developed as an extension of this service delivery model. We are not a typical freelance marketplace nor a remote, anonymous group of people working overseas. Rather, Deutrix Care is a formally-structured WordPress maintenance company which will be able to provide consistent and reliable services that will always be presented as part of your agency’s brand.
Below outlines the process by which your agency will be partnered with Deutrix Care:
Partner Onboarding: Once a partnership has been established we conduct a partner onboarding call to gain a better understanding of your agency’s branding, communications styles, and client base. Additionally, we will assist with configuring branded reporting templates, establishing preferred communication methods, and determining Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that meet the level of service your agency commits to providing to its clients.
Ticket Submission: Each client site will have an account created on our ticket management system. Tickets may be submitted using either the partner portal or via email; alternatively, tickets can also be submitted via a shared Slack channel. We will manage all tickets entered into our system, ensure timely response per SLA requirements, and keep you appraised throughout the entire process.
Escalation: All routine maintenance activities will be performed automatically. Any issues requiring approval/input from you will be escalated to you along with a detailed description of the issue and recommended course of action. This way you remain in complete control of the work product without having to become bogged down in the technical aspects of the project.
Monthly Reporting: By the last day of each month we will prepare a branded report detailing the performance of each client site. These reports will include any additional information you would like included, such as client-specific comments, etc., which will then be sent to your clients. If instead you would prefer that we send these reports directly to your clients under your agency’s branding, we fully support that arrangement as well.
Scaling: Adding a new client site is quick – usually taking no longer than a few minutes. We will perform the necessary setup steps for monitoring, backup verification, initial security scans, etc. You simply need to forward us the client login credentials and we will take care of the rest.
If your agency also needs development support for new builds, redesigns, or custom functionality, Deutrix (our parent brand) offers full-service WordPress and web development for agencies.
Cost and Pricing
White labeling allows an agency to make money off of a service without taking on the costs associated with the product. The prices offered by Deutrix Care are lower than the normal cost charged by other companies for similar products allowing for a greater margin of profit for your agency when reselling those products to your customers.
Here is a realistic pricing example:
| Scenario | Wholesale Cost | Your Client Price | Monthly Profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 sites | $65/site | $149/site | $840 |
| 25 sites | $60/site | $149/site | $2,225 |
| 50 sites | $55/site | $149/site | $4,700 |
Deutrix Care’s volume discount structure means your profits will grow faster as your business grows. A successful agency with 50 customer locations using a white label partnership should be able to produce at least $4,700 per month in net profit (maintenance only) with little to no increased labor.
For a deeper breakdown of the revenue math and strategies to reach $5,000 or more per month, see our article on How Agencies Can Add $5K+ per Month with White Label Maintenance.
This is the pillar page for our White Label WordPress Maintenance series. Explore related articles on how white label maintenance works, revenue strategies, partnership models, outsourcing pros and cons, and a real-world case study.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. That’s the whole idea behind white label — invisibility. All reports will carry your branding; all communications will come through your channels. Deutrix Care operates entirely behind the scenes. Your clients will always see your agency name on everything.
Absolutely. In fact, most white label arrangements start off with just a few client sites (five to ten) and expand over time. Our pricing model has been designed to make our white labeling options workable even at low volume levels. Therefore, you don’t have to wait to sign up fifty clients to utilize our white labeling options.
Yes. We provide modules of service-based packaging. This way you can create the types of maintenance based plans that best fit your clients’ needs while also staying within your price structure. For example, some agencies may initially provide only security and updates, but then later add performance optimizations and/or additional support hours once their business grows.
A freelancer represents one individual who takes vacations, gets ill, takes on other clients, and doesn’t necessarily possess extensive knowledge base across the three areas of security, performance, and server management. A white labeling arrangement using Deutrix Care provides you access to a team, established procedures, monitoring tools, and redundancy should anything fail during an update process. We won’t go away.
We backup everything prior to each update cycle. Should an update result in a conflict, or disrupt functioning of any sort, we will immediately roll-back the update and diagnose/determine why the update resulted in the issues identified by us — typically before your client ever realizes that we had to address an issue.
