How White-Label Development Actually Works: 10 Years of Doing It

I've been doing white-label development for agencies for about a decade now. And the thing that surprises most people when I explain it is just how invisible you have to be.

White-label, in plain terms, means I build things for agencies and their clients never know I exist. The agency sells the work, manages the relationship, handles the account — and I write the code. My name appears nowhere. If the client ever visits the agency's office, they won't see my face on the team wall. If they check the git history, they'll see commits from an agency email address, not mine.

That's the deal. And it works brilliantly for everyone involved.

How It Actually Starts

Most of my white-label relationships started the same way. An agency has a project they've sold but can't resource internally. Maybe their senior dev left, maybe they've taken on more work than they can handle, maybe they need specific skills they don't have in-house.

They find me — usually through a referral, sometimes through my site — and we have a conversation. The first project is always a test. Can this bloke actually deliver? Does his code match our standards? Will he cause problems with the client?

I did this with a design agency in London about eight years ago. They had a beautiful brand, brilliant designers, but their development was inconsistent. They'd been burned by freelancers before — missed deadlines, messy code, the usual horror stories. So they were cautious. Fair enough.

The first project was small. A marketing site with some custom WordPress work. I delivered it clean, on time, and matched their existing code style. No drama. The second project was bigger. Then bigger again. Within six months, I was their primary developer for all new builds.

The Mechanics of Being Invisible

Here's what white-label actually looks like day-to-day:

Communication. I join their Slack workspace. Not as "Stu Mason, External Contractor" — just as part of the team. Some agencies give me a company email address. Others just add me to the relevant channels. Either way, from the inside, I'm just another team member.

Project management. I use whatever they use. Jira, Linear, Asana, Basecamp — I've used them all. Their board, their workflow, their ticket format. I don't suggest they switch to something I prefer. That's not the point.

Code standards. This is where it gets serious. Every agency has different standards — some formal, some just vibes. My job is to figure out what theirs are and match them exactly. If they use tabs, I use tabs. If they have a specific commit message format, I follow it. If their code is beautifully documented, mine is too. If their code has no documentation at all... well, I'll still write clean code, but I won't make the rest of the team look bad by suddenly adding JSDoc to everything.

Git and deployment. I push to their repos, through their CI/CD pipelines, using their branch naming conventions. Some agencies have me push to a fork and raise PRs. Others give me direct access. The point is: my workflow is their workflow.

Client calls. Generally, I'm not on them. The agency handles the client relationship. Sometimes, for very technical projects, I'll join a call as "one of our developers." The client doesn't need to know I'm not on the payroll. It's not deceptive — it's just how professional services work.

Why Clients Never Know

People sometimes ask if this is dishonest. It's not, for the same reason you don't ask your restaurant whether the sous chef is full-time or agency staff. The agency is selling a service. They're responsible for the quality, the timeline, the relationship. How they resource it is their business.

And honestly, when it's done well, the client gets a better outcome. They get the agency's design and strategy expertise plus a specialist developer who's built dozens of similar projects. That's a better team than most agencies could afford to hire permanently.

The key is that the agency remains accountable. If something goes wrong, the agency fixes it — whether that means I fix it or someone else does. The client's contract is with the agency, full stop.

Building Trust Over Years

The first year of any white-label relationship is probation. You're proving yourself every sprint. Can you hit deadlines? Can you handle feedback without getting defensive? Can you flag problems early instead of hiding them?

After a year, things change. The agency starts trusting your judgment. They'll say "we need X by Friday" and trust that you'll figure out the how. They'll include you in planning meetings. They'll ask your opinion on architecture decisions.

After three years, it's a partnership. With the London agency, I eventually had influence over their entire technical direction. They'd consult me before pitching technical solutions to clients. I helped them hire their first in-house developer. I wrote their code standards document.

That level of trust takes years. There are no shortcuts. You earn it by consistently delivering, being honest about timelines, flagging risks early, and never — ever — embarrassing them in front of a client.

What Goes Wrong

I've seen white-label relationships fail, and it's usually one of these:

The developer treats it like a transaction. Deliver the code, send the invoice, disappear. White-label isn't contracting. It's a relationship. You need to care about their reputation as much as your own.

The agency doesn't give enough context. If I don't understand the client, the business goals, the constraints — I can't make good decisions. Agencies that treat white-label devs as code monkeys get code-monkey-quality work.

No feedback loop. If I never hear whether the client was happy, whether the launch went well, whether there were issues in production — I can't improve. The best white-label relationships have constant, honest feedback.

Scope creep without communication. The agency promises the client something extra, doesn't tell me, and I find out when the deadline is already blown. This kills relationships fast.

The Commercial Side

Commercially, white-label is straightforward. I charge the agency a day rate or project rate. They charge their client a higher rate. The margin covers their account management, design, strategy, and overhead. Everyone's happy.

Some agencies mark up 50%. Some mark up 200%. I genuinely don't care. Their client relationship, their pricing. As long as I'm paid fairly for my time and the work is interesting, the arrangement works.

What I won't do is compete with my own agencies. If an agency introduces me to their client and that client later approaches me directly, I refer them back to the agency. Always. Burning a white-label partner for a single project is the stupidest short-term thinking imaginable.

Why I Still Do It

Ten years in, white-label is still roughly half my business. I love it because:

Variety. I work across industries I'd never reach on my own. Fashion, finance, healthcare, education — whatever the agency's clients need.
Focus. I just build. No sales calls, no proposals, no chasing invoices with clients who don't understand what "net 30" means.
Relationships. My longest agency relationship is eight years. That's longer than most employment contracts. There's something satisfying about that.
Stability. Agencies have pipelines. When their pipeline is full, my calendar is full. It's more predictable than direct client work.

If you're an agency looking for reliable overflow capacity, this is how the best arrangements work. Not as a one-off transaction, but as a genuine partnership where both sides invest in making it work.

And if you're a developer thinking about offering white-label services: be prepared to check your ego. Your name won't be on it. Your portfolio won't show it. But your bank account will reflect it, and the agencies you work with will keep coming back.

I've been embedded in agency teams for over a decade. If you're looking for senior development capacity you can trust, let's talk.