How this desk checks a white-label claim

Every number on this site comes out of the same short procedure, and it is written down here so you can disagree with it specifically rather than generally.

The four permissions

A platform is scored on four questions, weighted equally. Not on how good the editor is, not on template quality, not on page speed — those are builder questions, and there are better places to have them answered.

1. Naming. Can the platform's brand come off the surfaces a client touches? Scored on scope, not on marketing copy.
2. Billing. Can a client pay for their own subscription without the site leaving your management, or can the subscription be handed over cleanly if that is what you want?
3. Permissions. Can a client be given an editing role narrow enough that they cannot break the layout, enforced by the platform rather than by hope?
4. Exit. When the relationship ends, does the work leave in a form somebody can host — a transferred subscription, or an export file with the content still in it?

The six meanings of white label

When a vendor page says white label it is making one or more of six quite separate claims, and the difference between the narrowest and the broadest is enormous. Ranked from cheapest to give away to most expensive:

• The vendor's logo is hidden inside the editor while your team works.
• The live site goes out with no vendor badge and no credit line in its footer.
• The client's login screen is on your domain rather than the vendor's.
• The dashboard the client uses is branded as yours throughout.
• System, lifecycle and payment emails come from your address, not the vendor's.
• Support the client receives appears to come from you.

Two platforms deliver most of the list. Most deliver the first two, which almost every paid plan in the category delivers anyway, and call it white label.

The rule about unpublished figures

This is the part that makes the scores differ from other rankings.

If a vendor does not publish a figure, the sheet records that the figure is not published and the platform is scored as though the permission is unavailable to an agency doing normal budgeting. Not zero — unavailable-to-plan-around.

That is a deliberate judgement rather than a neutral one, and it is worth stating plainly. A platform that will only quote on request may be the right answer for a large book of sites. But an agency comparing options cannot compare a number against a quote request, and a ranking that fills that hole with a third-party estimate is a ranking that has quietly stopped being checkable. Where sources conflict — and on one platform they conflict by a factor of four — no figure is used at all.

What a fit number is not

The fit number on the best website builder for agencies rack is not a product rating. A platform can be the best design tool in the category and score in the low sixes here, because the question being asked is narrow and deliberately unflattering: how much of the client-facing relationship does this plan let you own?

Read it alongside a proper product review, not instead of one.

Dates, and what happens when a tier moves

Every figure carries the date it was read. Vendors move features between tiers without announcing it, and a plan sheet that was correct in March can be wrong by September — this site has already found one widely repeated support claim that the vendor's own live page contradicts. When a tier moves, the sheet is re-read and the date changes. If you have spotted one that has drifted, tell the desk.