White label WordPress maintenance: what to check before choosing

Everyone in this market says white label. The word covers everything from "we will not put our logo on the report" to "we are invisible and contractually bound to stay that way".

The difference matters, because the failure mode is specific: your client discovers you outsource, and concludes they could go direct.

The questions about invisibility

1. Will you ever contact my client?

The answer you want is never, under any circumstances, with a process for what happens if a client emails them by mistake. A provider who says "only if necessary" has left themselves an opening.

2. What domain do reports and emails come from?

Yours, or a neutral one. If the report is generated by a tool with someone else's branding in the footer, that is not white label.

3. Will you sign an NDA or non-solicitation?

A serious partner will. The concern is not that they will poach your client tomorrow — it is what happens in two years when your client googles a phrase from the report.

4. Do you list clients as case studies?

If they publish a "sites we maintain" page, your client's site may appear on it.

The questions about the work

5. Who actually does it — and what happens when they are away?

One person is fine if you know that. It is a problem if you find out during their holiday.

6. What is the response time, and how does it work through me?

Your client contacts you, you contact them. That adds a hop. You need to know their response time so you can promise your client something slower than it, not faster.

7. Do you test on staging, and do you check the site after updates?

The difference between a service and a cron job. Especially for shops.

8. What happens when something breaks at 11pm?

Ask specifically. Emergency handling is where white label arrangements are actually tested, because your client is calling you, not them.

The questions about the commercials

9. Is it per site, and does the price drop with volume?

Expect $25–40 per site, dropping with volume. Anything much above that and you are squeezed on margin; anything much below and ask what is missing.

10. Is there a minimum, a contract or a setup fee?

You want to start with one site. Any provider confident in the work will let you.

11. What happens if I leave?

You should be able to take your sites elsewhere, with credentials and backups, with no exit fee. Ask what the offboarding process is.

12. Who holds the credentials, and how?

Encrypted vault with access logging, not a spreadsheet. Ask directly. You are responsible to your client for this, whatever your agreement with the supplier says.

Test with one site first

Do not move fifteen sites on the strength of a sales call. Give them your most annoying client site — the one with the oldest plugins and the most complaints — for one month.

Then judge three things: was the first report good enough to forward without editing, did they catch something you had not noticed, and did they tell you about a problem before you found it?

That last one is the real test. A provider who only ever reports good news is not looking.

The margin, so you can plan

At $32 per site charging $150, fifteen sites is $1,770 a month of margin on work you no longer do. Pricing detail here.

The point is not just the money. It is that care plan revenue is predictable in a way project revenue is not, and an agency with a maintenance base survives a quiet quarter.

Ours is $39 per site dropping to $26 at volume, no minimum, start with one site, and we never contact your client.