The Agency White-Label Playbook

You already did the hard part. You signed the clients, you earned their trust, and you send them an invoice every month. The question is how much revenue each of those line items carries, and how much of it survives when a client tightens their budget.

Most agencies sell hours. Websites, ad management, retainers. Every dollar of revenue costs you a dollar of somebody's time, and the month you stop working is the month the revenue stops.

Software margin works differently. You sell the same product to client thirty that you sold to client one, and your cost per client barely moves. White-label SMS closes that gap: you resell a texting platform under your own brand, at your own prices, billed through your own Stripe. Your clients log into yourbrand.com and see your logo. Because you already have a roster, you're not building from zero, you're adding a line item to relationships that already exist.

This playbook walks through the actual numbers, three pricing models with worked examples, who to pitch first, the pitch itself, and a 30-day launch plan.

Part 1: The math nobody shows you

Two costs. That's the whole cost structure.

1. Platform fee: $149/mo flat. Your branded software, your subdomain, unlimited clients.
2. Wholesale credits: 2.5¢ each. One credit sends one SMS segment. You buy them in bulk and resell at whatever price you set.

Most resellers charge clients between 4¢ and 10¢ per credit. At 6¢, you're marking up 140% on a product you didn't build and don't maintain.

Here's a typical local client. A restaurant, salon, or retail shop with a decent list sends 2,000 to 4,000 texts a month. Take 2,500: you charge $199 (plan incl. 2,500 credits), your credit cost is $62.50, your margin is $136.50. Now scale it across a roster:

Break-even is 1.1 clients, so the platform fee is a rounding error at agency scale. The number that matters more than any of these: churn. A client can pause their Facebook ads without losing anything. If they cancel their texting plan, they lose their number, their list, and their opt-ins, which took months to build. Resellers routinely see texting clients outlast every other line item on the invoice.

Part 2: Three ways to price it

There is no single right model. There is a right model for how your agency already bills.

Model A: Pure per-credit markup

You charge nothing monthly. Clients buy credits from you at 6¢ to 8¢ and burn them as they go. Worked example: a client sends 3,000 texts/mo at 6¢ = $180 revenue, your cost $75, margin $105/client/mo. Use this when your clients are small, irregular senders who would balk at another subscription. Easiest yes, least predictable revenue.