And it can be offered to many clients with only minor adjustments for each case. This industry, however, is very specific.
Some aspects may require a more in-depth review. You should know if creating a white-label app from an existing solution is technically feasible.
As the popularity of mobile apps grows, so does the desire of companies to increase their mobile presence. You can tap into the trend in several different ways: either as a company that wants an app or as a software vendor.
We believe that the best way to take advantage of the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets is to create and sell apps under a white label.What is a White Label App? How can you create one that increases your profits? This guide will cover the benefits and challenges of developing white-label applications and provide examples.
Our company provides companies with the senior technical talent and product-development expertise they need to create world-class software.
This article will cover the most important questions you may have so that you are ready to begin your development journey.
What is a White Label App?
How would you define software with a white label? When company A sells a product to a customer, it is white-labeled.
Walmart, for example, buys ready-made goods from third-party manufacturers and sells under its brand.
White labeling is a concept that can be used in any industry. Mobile app development does not fall out of this category.
Here's an example.
- Imagine that you've built an Android white-label app to deliver food.
- A restaurant (CompanyB) wants its customers to place orders from the menu using their smartphone. You sell the application to the restaurant.
- The restaurant styles and brands the solution, making it appear to the end users as though the restaurant built the app rather than you. Your support and maintain this application so that the employees of the restaurant can concentrate on their jobs. That's just the beginning.
- It has everything you need for food delivery. You can then offer the app to other restaurants and let them brand it in their way.
With the partnership described above, restaurants can get an integrated solution quickly and with minimum investments.
How did Company A, which sold the app to the restaurant, benefit? Find out.
What is the Difference Between Custom and White Label Mobile Apps?
Many people are confused about the difference between a white-label mobile app and a customized one. Let's begin by comparing what they share - both are built to serve your business or audience.
White-label and custom applications are designed to simplify your customers lives. These apps allow your customers to quickly find out more about you, about the services or products you provide, make orders, and resolve problems.
Lets now talk about the features that make them unique.
White-label apps are designed to be customized and branded, while custom apps are designed exclusively for your business.
The white-label app is built to easily be branded, customized, and adapted to fit your company's brand. You can change the colors, logos, and other design elements.
Because custom apps are created specifically to meet the needs of your business, you can't brand or customize them without major code changes.
Benefits of White-label App Development and Main Challenges
You'll see many results if you type "how to be a white label app reseller" in the search box on your browser. This shows that this partnership model is very popular today.
It's unsurprising that becoming a provider of white-label apps has many benefits.
- Focus on your expertise: The white labeling option is perfect for developers with excellent apps but lacks the resources or expertise to promote them.
- You don't need to code: If you have a team of in-house tech experts, you can build your white-label solutions independently. What if you're a reseller of apps and not a developer by birth? This market is also open to you if you outsource development to an established vendor or your app uses a platform that allows access to non-technical users.
- The popularity of mobile applications is growing: As the popularity and use of mobile apps increases, more companies are looking to increase their mobile presence.
- A one-time-investment is possible: Creating a single application to cover the requirements of multiple businesses will be more cost-effective than creating a solution tailored for each business. The idea behind white labeling is to sell the same product repeatedly.
White labeling is not all good news. There are some cons to white labeling. White labeling is a trick that implies the buyer does not have access to backend applications.
It means little or no customization, scalability, and security control.
Unsurprisingly, the white-labeling option is less attractive once a buyer can afford to pay for custom web design.
You can reduce the chance of losing partners. You need to be able to adjust your white-label app to meet the needs of current and potential customers.
What Industries Are Using White Label Apps?
A white-label application can provide a solution for companies that require an app with standard features. These are usually small and medium-sized companies from the following industries.
- Traveling: Building a tour booking or flight app requires much additional work. This includes developing itineraries and writing search algorithms. It also involves the integration of payment gateways.
- Public Catering: Restaurants don't often reinvent the wheel to attract mobile users. Restaurant apps typically include menus, information on restaurants, ordering and delivery options, reservations for tables, information regarding rewards programs, and information about restaurant reward programs.
- Retail: Shopify, the world's most popular online store builder, has increased its revenue annually by 97% since 2020. This proves that pre-built retail solutions are very popular.
- Ridesharing and taxi: Just like food delivery apps that allow you to choose a vehicle, date, and price, leave reviews and earn bonuses, ridesharing, and taxi solutions offer a set of standard features. It's only a matter of adding some branding before the app is launched.
The examples of white-label apps are just a small part. Many businesses, including banks, taxi services, gyms, beauty studios, dry cleaners, mechanics, and florists, use pre-built applications, such as white-label apps or app builders.
It doesn't necessarily mean that their applications are better in terms of security, performance, and usability or even cater to their exact needs.
This is how you can set your white-label apps apart from their competitors - add some novelty, and improve the security of your app to sell it better.
Multi-tenant Vs. Single-tenant White-label Apps
You can create two different types of white-label apps: one-tenant or multi-tenant. This will determine your app's features and technical aspects as well as the budget and development strategy.
Well briefly review both options and look at the special features of each. Well also give examples of when you prefer a particular type of white-label app.
Single-Tenant, White Label Apps
The single-tenancy model provides customers with one copy of the White Label product. This means each customer has their application customized to the degree possible through white labeling.
Developers can reuse existing backend code to build white-label apps for single tenants but must change the front end.
Apps can be more customizable and have greater engagement with users while still using the same technology architecture.
You can create a white-label app out of your custom app to increase brand awareness, but it could also damage your brand image as you don't know what companies will do with the service.
The architecture of single-tenancy is different from that of multi-tenancy.
- The server has a separate database.
- Since they will not affect other tenants, you can customize more. For example, adding features or making structural changes. Multi-tenancy also offers customization, but the architecture of such a system means changes are made to each tenant's application.
- Tenants can update the app at any time in the future, as they are not tied to another tenant or server.
You should implement CI/CD when developing this kind of white-label app. CI involves updating code on the git repository and using special CI tools to test it and build automatically.
The CD is then used to make the necessary changes in the code of the app on the server. Continuous means the changes are applied immediately after successful testing.
Stop-motion also uses Xcode for schemes to help provide minor changes in the code of each version. The Xcode Schemes help set up customizable items, such as app name, icon, bundle ID, and info.
List. In Android Studio, the same feature is known as "Build Variants."
You should be aware that the number of apps will affect the resources required to update them.
Read More: Drupal Vs WordPress: Which Is A Better Choice For Your Business?
Apps with Multi-Tenant Label
Multi-tenancy is an alternative. This Saas model (Software-as-a-service) supports more users (tenants). While the UI design of such apps is adjusted, the underlying platform remains the same for all tenants.
This is because only one server hosts the software and stores customer data. Companies prefer multi-tenant applications because they are easier to manage and more cost-effective than single-tenancy.
This means that each application on the server is affected by all actions, such as updating and breaches. The market for application development software is expected to generate US$182.70 billion in revenue by 2024, according to Statista.
White-label single-tenant mobile app development comes closer to the custom-made app because each brand and business can have a solution with greater customization.
Customers can also customize designs or features, just as before. Here, the focus is less on personalization and customization but on cost-effectiveness and quick development.
Maintenance, testing, and QA are much easier with a single app configuration. As the provider, you also have just one app - bug fixes will be automatically applied to your tenants.
You can help yourself and your clients by creating a set of tenant onboarding guides. These can be videos, texts, or support experts who will guide clients through the various onboarding stages.
If you select multi-tenancy, we assume you want to reach a larger audience and are not as concerned with UX customization (features, Integrations).
It might be wise to decide in advance what terms and functionality of coworking you will customize and then place that information on your landing page or website.
It will help you and your client to save time.
The benefits of white-label app development for your business are many. You can expand the customer base or offer more options to clients if you provide services as a mobile developer.
This is also important because, in a white-label model, the customizable features are usually limited to those enabled during the development phase.
Your tenants may be able to change their logos or color schemes but not the page layouts or specific features - unless your provider anticipated and enabled this capability when creating your white-label product.
Use Cases for Single- and Multi-tenancy
Let's look at some examples of situations where you might want to choose between the two choices.
White-label app developers may offer single and multi-tenancy depending on the business objectives.
If you plan to:
- In a short time, you can target and engage a large audience.
- Reduce customization to make services more affordable.
- Small and medium businesses, startups, companies needing a fully functional MVP, etc.
- Launching a product that's easy to use is better than spending countless hours perfecting it.
Single-tenancy may be the best option for those:
- You may not have many clients, but you will be in a partnership with most of them for a very long time.
- Offer an experience similar to one you would get from a tailor-made service.
- Working with larger companies with more money and wishing to modify or update the app.
- The consistency of products should be considered when comparing them to a customer's existing brand and other solutions.
You should know these main factors to help you make an informed decision. Ask your tech partner about the different types of app architectures to better understand your idea.
White Label Apps Customization
It's important to discuss how to enable white labeling in a customer-friendly way.
Splash Screen & App Icon
Your clients will first see the splash screen. It's, therefore, important to customize it and offer rebranding possibilities.
White-label solutions can be easily built for businesses with custom apps. This can allow them to target more users.
Splash Screens can be created by combining images or logos which represent and are consistent with the message and brand of the company, as well as an introduction animation.
You can also offer your clients the option to customize onboarding by adding widgets and animations.
Consider a few more things:
- Can you change the colors and layouts of the images?
- Will you limit your users ability to customize splash screens to the elements you provide, or will you allow them to create their own?
- You can ask for a time limit and the video size if you want to put it on your splash screen. It would help to consider screen adjustments since they are all different sizes. Your development team will know how to do this.
The concept of an icon is the same. That is okay if you want to offer your clients various options, such as changing the icon's color or providing them with a kit to make their own.
Colors & Elements of the In-App UI
You can adjust the UI in the app to make it as customized as possible while maintaining the advantages (such as cost efficiency) that make white-label apps so popular.
This includes fonts, colors (size, type, style), and spacing. This includes spacing, colors, and fonts (type, style, size, etc.).
Review the system of coloring in more detail. Most white-label providers of apps offer an easy-to-use two-level system.
This means there are different color palettes for the various parts of an app. Let's call these primary and secondary palettes.
If a business offers to develop white-label apps for your company, ensure that they are addressing your specific needs and those of the markets you operate in.
The color scheme is the primary palette to alter the main app components, such as CAT buttons and action icons. It's unreasonable to restrict the colors available, as you don't know what your customers will need.
Ask your clients what colors they need, and add those to the app. This way, you don't have to load up on extras that are unlikely to be used.
It's fine if they want the entire palette. You can also allow the user to adjust their shades, saturation, brightness, etc.
This palette can be used to color most sections and backgrounds. You can choose from various shades, ranging from lightness to darkness.
The palette is not likely to be overly heavy on data, so it's okay to leave out some colors even if the client thinks they dont require them.
App Components & Templates
In this context, components include the title, CTA button, buttons to help navigate an app, and other elements that make up a screen.
Others also separate them as primary and secondary. A primary button, for example, would be larger and have more distinct UI components.
They will take less space and may be more subtle if necessary. It's entirely up to you and your client, but we recommend only one primary button per screen.
This will avoid confusing users.
It is important to understand the market and save as much as possible on app development without compromising quality.
You could allow customers to customize components by:
- Shape.
- Size.
- Color.
- Fonts & Others
You can also offer screen layout templates that give you some suggestions on the structure of the screen. (Where to put components, etc.).
This makes it more user-friendly, as clients don't need to start from scratch but can make small adjustments.
The Technical Aspects Of White Labeling
As a white-label provider, you should know about many technical aspects of the app development process. In this section, we would like to bring them to your attention.
Server Choice & Error Monitoring
You may have to host your clients apps depending on the white labeling architecture you use. This includes the provision of the server as well as technical support.
When you think of the server, you must consider where you will buy your place. Google App Engine or Amazon AWS are the most popular white-label options.
These services remove the need to find a server and offer many other benefits, such as security. The following 1-minute video explains how the system works:
App Engine within a Minute
Google App Engine is a good choice because they are focused on apps. However, it's your decision.
Reporting and fixing bugs is another important part. Suppose you're using a hosting provider that offers a wide range of services, like Google App Engine.
In that case, this will likely be part of your subscription.
When using these services, you can tag all your apps and link them to one account. When the problem is reported, tracking which app was responsible will be possible.
It can also be labeled as a server-wide issue if it is.
Client Dashboard
In our previous posts, we discussed how to customize white-label services. We want to share some tips on how customizations can be made easier and more user-centric.
You can create a dashboard for your clients to manage customizations. You and the client will have access to the app's components.
Entering the white-label market is a good way to reach out to business groups who need mobile apps or websites for less.
The next time you want them to update content or change the color of a button, they can go into the dashboard and make the changes themselves.
If you'd like to be in complete control, then you could build your dashboard, store all the apps of tenants on one page, and make changes yourself.
How Does White-label App Development Affect the Cost?
Budgeting is a key part of planning any development project. Budgeting and cost estimation are not possible without taking into consideration certain factors.
- The number and complexity of the features. The more customizable features you choose, the greater the cost.
- Design.
- You can choose between single or multiple tenancies.
- 3rd-party integrations.
- Your development teams hourly rate
- You can use Google App Engine and other services.
Contact us to talk about your specific use!
Takeaway
White labeling is a big business, and there are many things to consider, but it's worth the effort. We hope you now understand the steps to launch a white-labeling business.
Here's a quick summary of the steps to building a white-label app.
- Choose between single- & multi-tenancy.
- Choose which UI/UX elements will be configurable.
- Create a UI/UX customization dashboard.
- Select a server.
- Enable error monitoring.
We suggest you hire an app developer or find a tech partner to help you with each detail and who can also guide you in finding the most effective way of putting your idea into action from a technological standpoint.
White labeling seems a foolproof way to get into the app market. It is true, but if you choose the wrong approach to product development, your white-label partners may leave quickly.
White-label products are often limited in customization, scalability, and other factors.
