White label web development pricing: what agencies pay, and what to charge their clients

In short

• With Spectivis, agencies pay the same prices as our direct clients, in US dollars: websites from $500, web applications from $1,500, Laravel maintenance at $49 a month per app, and managed Laravel hosting from $99 a month with that maintenance included.
• The partner's price is only part of your cost. Your own project management, client calls, revision rounds and the bug-fix window after launch decide whether a white label job makes money.
• Our view: mark up on your total cost of delivery, not on the partner invoice alone, and get the partner's quote in writing with revisions, change requests and aftercare spelled out before you quote your client.
• The quiet money in white label work is recurring. A maintained, hosted app pays every month for years. A one-off build pays once.

Prices are from our white-label Laravel development page, checked on 2 Nov 2026.

Who asks this, and why the usual answer is incomplete#

Most agencies that ask about white label pricing already sell websites. A client then asks for something bigger: a member portal, a booking system, a dashboard that pulls from their CRM. Nobody in house writes Laravel, and hiring for one project makes no sense.

So the agency needs two numbers. What will a partner charge, and what should we charge our client? Most guides online answer the first with WordPress and Shopify price tables and the second with a single multiplier. Neither helps much when the job is a custom application, where scope moves more than on a brochure site.

One example from 2026: a US agency brought us a client portal to build for one of their clients. The project came in between $2,000 and $5,000. Every requirement came to us through the agency. Our only direct contact with their client was one QA meeting before launch, and the client dealt with the agency the whole way through.

What a white label partner charges for Laravel and web app work#

Our prices for agencies are the same as for anyone else. We don't run a separate agency rate card, and we don't add a discount that gets clawed back in change requests later.

Starting prices are floors, not typical totals. A five-page site is close to its floor. A web application rarely is: the final figure depends on user roles, integrations, data migration and billing. Most projects run 3 to 12 weeks, and the written scope fixes the timeline before work starts.

Other partners price differently. Some sell hourly, some sell a dedicated developer per month, some sell wholesale packages. The model matters more than the headline rate, because it decides who carries the risk when scope grows. With hourly billing, you carry it. With a fixed quote against a written scope, the partner does, up to the edge of that scope.

What the partner's quote should include before you mark it up#

Most margin is lost in the gaps between the partner's quote and what your client thinks they bought. Before you put a number in front of your client, get answers in writing to these questions:

1. Is design included, or only development from your designs?
2. How many rounds of changes are included, and how is anything beyond that priced?
3. Who writes the content and enters it?
4. How long is the bug-fix window after launch, and what counts as a bug?
5. Who owns the repository, the hosting account and the domain on handover?
6. What does the first month after launch cost?

Here is how we answer those for our own white label work.

Design: we build from your designs or produce them, and interface design is included in our web application price, not added as a separate line.

Changes: every project starts with a written scope and a fixed estimate, agreed before any work starts. Minor changes after that are included at no charge. A major change gets discussed first: we work out the extra time it needs and update the quote before doing it, so nobody is surprised by the invoice.

Bug-fix window: four weeks after launch, we fix bugs in the work we delivered at no charge. After that, framework updates, security patches and monitoring are covered by the care plan below.

Ownership: your client owns the repository, documentation, data and every account. There is no lock-in to us, which also means there is no lock-in to you. Price that in honestly. Your recurring revenue has to come from being useful, not from holding the keys.

How to set your markup on white label work#

Mark up on your total cost of delivery. That is the partner's invoice plus your own hours: the discovery call with your client, turning their wishes into a brief, reviewing each demo before your client sees it, and answering their emails. On a custom application, those hours are not small.

A worked example, with example figures only, not a real project:

partner fixed quote                      $6,000
your hours: brief, reviews, client calls  20 h x $80 = $1,600
total cost of delivery                   $7,600

client price at 2x total cost            $15,200
gross margin                             ($15,200 - $7,600) / $15,200 = 50%

Note what happens if you mark up the partner invoice alone. Twice $6,000 is $12,000, and after your own $1,600 of time the margin drops to about 37%. Same project, same partner, very different result.

Some white label vendors publish benchmark multipliers. BSS Commerce's pricing guide and S1 Digital both suggest billing two to three times partner cost, aiming at a 50 to 70% gross margin. Treat those as their benchmarks, not ours. For custom application work our rule of thumb is simpler: know your own hours, add them, then charge what the result is worth to your client.

The multiplier should drop when your agency adds little beyond passing work through, and rise when you own the strategy, the design and the client relationship. Be wary of a quote that only works at a very high multiplier. If your client can find the same build elsewhere for half the price, the margin won't hold.

The recurring part: maintenance and hosting#

A one-off build gives you one invoice. A live Laravel app needs framework and package updates, security patches, backups and someone watching for errors, every month. That work is predictable, and it is where white label relationships usually earn their keep over time.

Our maintenance is $49 a month per app, and managed hosting is from $99 a month with maintenance included. What you charge your client for the same cover is your decision, and it should reflect that your agency stays the first point of contact when something goes wrong.

Reselling our maintenance and hosting under your own brand is fine. A Spectivis account is set up at organisation level, so every invoice goes to your agency, and you bill your client however you like.

Our Laravel maintenance cost post lists what a care plan should and should not include, which is a useful checklist to compare against before you resell one.

What goes wrong with white label pricing#

The partner rate is rarely what breaks the numbers. These three things do.

Scope that was never written down. A client says "a portal like our competitor's" and everyone imagines a different portal. Without a written scope, the first demo turns into the real briefing session, and the extra work lands on someone's margin.

Your own hours, uncounted. On a design-led agency's first app project, the time spent relaying questions between client and developers is usually much larger than planned. Count it from day one.

Aftercare nobody priced. The client calls in week six about a broken form. If the partner's bug-fix window ended in week four and you quoted a fixed price, you are paying for the fix.

When we would not recommend white label for a project#

Don't white label a project your agency cannot review. If nobody on your side can tell a good demo from a bad one, you are reselling on trust alone, and your client is relying on you for exactly that. Bring the partner onto client calls openly instead, or refer the work.

Don't white label an online shop to us. We don't build them. If a project is mostly a store, we'll say so early.

And don't white label if the margin only works because the client won't learn the real price. Clients do find out, usually from the next developer. Charge for the work you actually do.

What would change our mind: an agency with a strong client relationship and someone who can read a pull request, even roughly. That is the setup where white label work goes smoothly for everyone, client included.

What to do next#

If you have a client project that needs Laravel, send us the scope you have, the deadline and the stack. We reply within 24 hours with questions, and if it's a fit, a written scope and a fixed estimate you can price against. Start on our white-label Laravel development page. If the app already exists and came from another supplier, read your developer left: how to get your Laravel app and hosting back first.

Sources and further reading#

• Spectivis prices and process: white-label Laravel development, web applications, Laravel maintenance, Laravel hosting. Checked 2 Nov 2026.
• BSS Commerce, white label development pricing (vendor benchmark, cited for its markup range)
• S1 Digital, white label web development pricing (vendor benchmark, cited for its markup range)
• Laravel 13 release notes and support policy