Choosing a White label website builder vs WordPress

Both white label website builders and WordPress have their merits, yet neither platform can, nor should, suit everyone’s needs. Their suitability depends on whether you are an individual or a business; and whether your business is small or scaling. Let’s look at the pros and cons of White label website builders vs WordPress. 

Should I choose a white label website builder vs WordPress as a website reseller?  

The short answer is: 

• If you are an individual, you can choose an agency using a white label website builder, or you can go the DIY route and build your own website with a DIY platform such as WordPress.
• If you are a business, it would be highly beneficial for you to choose a white label website builder – especially if you are scaling. We will get back to this later. 

If you are an individual, you have the luxury of being able to choose between many more website builders than if you are a business. After all, most website builders, including WordPress, were designed with the DIY user in mind. 

Only a handful of website platforms were designed with resellers in mind. White label website builders are generally built for resellers (such as agencies). White label means that the website solution can be delivered white labelled, which means without a label, or not branded. This means you, as a company using the white label solution, get to display your own branding as if you own the solution.

But the actual white label functionality is only one of many reasons why a white label solution is the preferred option for many resellers. Yet many still start out with WordPress.

Let’s explore both options in greater detail.  

Why many small agencies opt for WordPress 

Many digital resellers start their business building customer websites on DIY-focused platforms such as WordPress, Drupal or even their own native platform. These platforms can all be a great place to start when your customer base is still small and easy to manage manually. 

WordPress is highly customisable. If you have the skills, you can build almost any website design. This can be a plus for tech savvy people who have the motivation and time to overcome a steeper learning curve in return for a tool with more customisation options than you get at comparable price points with other DIY website builders. 

With a small portfolio, WordPress can be a good website builder. You can self-host the solution, and choose your own preferred combination of email, domain and other third party providers. You can create beautiful websites, and it's possible to customise most aspects, especially if you have a team of developers. 

However, it’s one thing to custom build, and manually maintain, a handful of websites a year; it’s something else entirely having to produce hundreds or thousands of customer websites in that amount of time! It all comes down to whether you want to custom build a few sites, or whether your goal is to scale.

Once your customer base reaches the hundreds, let alone thousands, of websites, upgrading to a specialized white label website platform can become essential to scale efficiently. 

Why your agency might be growing out of WordPress

WordPress was originally designed for DIY bloggers and content creators.

WordPress was not designed for large scale website projects, or to be efficient for digital agencies that need to produce a high number of websites, and maintain them over time, in an efficient manner.

Common pain points for scaling agencies include:

• Managing large projects across many clients to tight deadlines
• Selling enough websites to stay profitable
• Keeping build times short and design quality high
• Having to constantly be on top of things like SEO, marketing, web vitals and accessibility for your clients, but also for your own business
• Pricing projects correctly – and keeping prices low regardless of the prices you yourself have to pay for your platform
• Keeping customer data secure
• Creating a sustainable way to invite team members, freelancers and customers to collaborate on a website
• Maintaining the customer websites over time including security and performance

All these pain points can be addressed by choosing a good white label website platform.  

WordPress was not created with website resellers in mind. Their platform fundamentally does not cater to the above pain points.

There are lots of plugins made to bridge the gap, and mimic a white label platform experience, but it will always remain a patch on the wound. To get all the capabilities you need for your client websites, you must put in a lot of hours to find the right plugins, such as WooCommerce, firewalls, analytics, white label, site management, Cookie Compliance etc, maybe pay for them, make sure they are kept updated for each and every site and manually research whether they clash with other plugins you might own.  

And even then, WordPress does not offer the same amount of automation and ease of use that a white label website platform would.  

If you are looking for a solution that will fit your growing business, then perhaps it is time for you to consider a white label solution.  

Benefits of a white label website builder vs WordPress

A specialised white label website platform is designed to make it easy for agencies to create websites at scale for their clients. 

A good white label site builder includes the following benefits that are lacking, or limited, on WordPress:

• Full white label functionality, meaning that the customer only ever sees your - the agency’s - branding, never the platform’s. This allows you to sell the website solution as if it is your own. 
• A white label CMS (content management system) or site management tool as it's also called. A good white label platform is not just a site builder. You should have an entire infrastructure at your fingertips to manage all parts of your website business, including customer websites, subscriptions, and client accounts. It should also make it easy for your customers to manage the content on their websites (content management). The white label part means the customer only sees yours – the agency’s - branding when they log in to manage their content. 
• Best-in-class performance and automated upkeep. One of the biggest benefits of a specialised white label website platform is that upkeep, performance and security are managed by the platform, so you don’t have to spend time manually fixing bugs, updating white label plugins or assessing performance issues, or fending off cyber attacks. 
• Easy fulfilment. When building a large number of client sites, you want it to be as easy and fast as possible. Specialised white label platforms should be built with this in mind, offering functionalities such as sitewide design (where you can update design features from one place across the entire website, instead of updating each design element manually), white label templates and integrated up-sells.
• Best in class core functionality. You want a platform that has built the infrastructure right, so you don’t have to think about core functionality such as SEO, accessibility, and page speed.  

Mono white label website builder vs WordPress 

Let’s use the Mono white label website platform as an example. After all, our white label solution is our expertise! That may make us biased - but we do genuinely believe that there are some major benefits to moving to a platform such as ours, if your business is scaling. 

Mono Solutions is a white label website platform designed specifically for agencies and other resellers that sell websites in the European market. 

Global data and design

While WordPress themes support global data to varying degrees, the Mono Platform is built with extensive global data properties. Use our dedicated central data hub, pre-created tags, and custom tags to speed up fulfilment and ensure consistency.

Free, enriched white label templates

There are many beautiful WordPress templates, yet these are not always designed for building at scale. Mono templates are enriched with global data and design properties to aid in quick fulfilment. With Mono, there are no limits to how many templates you may have.

Smart, efficient migrations

Mono offers smart, efficient code-based migrations with a dedicated QA team. Migrations to and from WordPress Multisite Network are more complex.

WYSIWYG white label website builder

With a 'what you see is what you get' page builder, you can be sure that the websites you build look and perform great on all devices. With WordPress, this requires third-party WYSIWYG plugins or builder for easy editing and updating.

User role security

Compared to WordPress, Mono provides extensive team and user roles for increased data security. Team user roles determine both editing and data access permissions.

Integrated multisite tool 

In Mono’s integrated multi-site tool, every partner can easily order and manage their customers’ website and add-on subscriptions, SSLs, as well as branded emails and domains. While WordPress has a multisite tool, 3rd party or custom-built tools may be needed.

Website backups

The Mono Platform creates automatic backups and offers the possibility to save manual backups. With WordPress, this depends on the hosting provider or additional plugins.

Branded extras and add-ons

Mono offers branded extras such as email, quick creator and ecommerce. For WordPress, extra features may require setup and manual management of several external 3rd party providers.

Reputable integrations

WordPress offers many plugins, maybe even some white label website builder plugins, but due to their open-sourced nature, it is hard to distinguish reputable developers. Mono offers native add-ons and integrations from reputable partners.

Partner-first

WordPress is an open-source DIY focused platform which means you are not going to get a personal relationship with the company. At Mono, we are partner centric. This means we consider ourselves a business partner more than a supplier. We are not just a hosting provider, a site management tool, or a white label website builder company. we are here to help our partners grow through collaboration. Our partners’ success equals our success. We understand we are in business together, so we approach each partner from a personalised perspective and see how we can best help them forward.

A focus on the European market

Unlike WordPress, Mono Solutions is a European company with special focus on the European market. This means we have built our platform with GDPR, languages and European accessibility requirements in mind. 

Final thoughts: should you choose a White label website builder vs WordPress?

Should you choose a white label solution provider or WordPress? It depends on your needs. If you are an individual, or a small business looking to create a single website, it would make more sense to either build the site yourself using a platform such as WordPress or get assistance from an agency who uses a white label CMS. 

If you are a small reselling business, it can also be okay to start out on WordPress while your business is small.

The main benefit of WordPress is that is easily accessible for someone starting out, and that customisation options are endless. This is good for someone who still isn’t growing too fast and has time for a lot of manual work and upkeep.

If you are a B2SMB website reseller who creates websites at scale – you could hugely benefit from choosing a white label website builder tool. It will allow you to get unstuck from manual processes and upkeep, and grow your business more efficiently.  

A white label white label drag and drop website builder can be a game changer for scaling website resellers due to its:

• white label capabilities
• quick fulfilment options
• user friendliness for the end customer
• easy site management
• migration options 
• streamlined white label add-ons. 

Choosing the right white label platform can give you the profile your business needs. If you for example build websites in the European market choosing a platform like Mono’s can be beneficial, as it is easy to buy the right domain extensions (.it, .fr, .de, .es, etc), having the white label CMS be available in multiple languages, and prioritising GDPR compliance. Additionally, some white label website platforms, such as ours, also take a more personal approach and can become a business partner more so than just a supplier.

And while we have looked at the pros and cons of one versus the other, you don't have to choose. We know of many website resellers that use both. Are you using WordPress but interested in expanding your solution offerings? Try the Mono white label website platform for yourself.

What sets Mono Solutions apart from other white label solutions?

Mono empowers digital agencies, telcos, SaaS, WaaS and other resellers with an all-in-one website building solution and multi-site management tool that can simplify and optimize the process of selling, building, and managing client websites.  

Operating exclusively B2B2B allows Mono to focus on the unique challenges and opportunities of digital resellers, our partners. We are not just a vendor. We are your business partner. Want to try our platform for yourself? Reach out to our team today to get set up with a free demo account.