How to Build a White-Label App

However, this industry is quite specific and may have some aspects that require a more detailed review. For example, whether it’s technically possible to make a white-label app out of an existing solution.

So, if you’d like to start providing white-label-related services, in this article we’ll try to cover all the important questions that might bother you so you’re all set for the development journey!

❓ FAQ on White-Label App Development

Even though the concept of white-labeling applications isn’t that sophisticated, there might be quite a few confusions. So, in this section, we’ll give you answers to some questions that you might search for.

Is it Possible to Make a White-Label App out of a Custom One?

Let’s say you already have a custom app. The question is whether it’s possible to build a white-label solution out of it.

There’s a lot of information going around that the so-called template apps are deleted according to guidelines — it’s especially relevant for the App Store.

We at Stormotion have been working on a project that helps to convert websites into apps and offers white-label solutions. So, from our experience, not even a single app was deleted in several years.

Yet, we’ve heard about the cases when apps got deleted. However, it doesn’t happen as often as people thought it would be.

What we can recommend here to avoid problems with the App Store or Google Play is to have as much design customization as possible. Not to change just colors, but offer different layouts, sizes, and shapes of components, etc. Further in the article, we’re going to talk about UI customization in detail.

🤖 Single- Vs. Multi-Tenant White-Label Apps

There are two types of white-label apps you can build: single-tenant and multi-tenant. The сhosen type will greatly define the scope of features, some technical characteristics of the app, and, thus, the development strategy and budget.

Let’s briefly review both options and take a look at their special properties. Additionally, we’ll give you some cases when a certain type of white-label app might suit you more.

Single-Tenant White-Label Apps

Single-tenancy provides a customer with a singular copy of a White-label product, which means that each client has a separate, highly customized (to an extent that’s possible in the white-labeling) application.

To build a single-tenant white-label app, developers reuse the backend code (if it already existed), but change the frontend of the app. In other words, while using the same technical architecture, the apps can have more UI customization options and a higher level of user engagement.

You should consider multi-tenancy if you are planning to:

• Target and work with a wide audience in little time.
• Focus on providing more affordable services by reducing customization.
• Target small- and medium-sized businesses, start-ups, companies that need a fully functioning MVP, etc.
• Provide an easy-to-launch product rather than focusing on covering each detail and take a lot of time to perfect it.

And single-tenancy might be a better match to those who want to:

• Have not that many clients but have a long-term partnership with most of them.
• Provide an experience close to a custom one.
• Work with companies that have a higher budget and want to update or modify the app in the future.
• Pay more attention to the consistency of the products with a client’s brand or other existing solutions.

These were the main aspects that you should know to be able to make an initial decision. To deepen the understanding of your idea and its technical implementability, you should ask your tech partner to tell you about other app architectures since single- & multi-tenancy themselves divide into types as well.

✅ White-Label Apps Customization

Since the main concept of white-labeling is reusing the backend for a big part but customizing visuals to make it branded, it’s essential to talk about how you can enable it in a customer-friendly way.

Splash Screen & App Icon

The first thing your clients’ users will see is the splash screen. That’s why it’s important to pay a lot of attention to its customization and provide rebranding options.

It might be a great idea to allow clients to customize components by changing their:

• Shape.
• Size.
• Color.
• Font & others.

Furthermore, you can offer optional screen layout templates, where you’ll give some ideas on how to structure the screen (where to place components, and so on). It makes the approach more user-centric since clients won’t have to design screens from scratch but make little adjustments and, thus, save time.

⚙️ Technical Aspects of White-Labeling

When providing white-label app services, there are a lot of technical parts of the workflow that you as a provider should be aware of. So, in this section, we’d like to draw your attention to them.

Server Choice & Error Monitoring

Depending on your white-labeling architecture model, you’ll have to handle the hosting of your clients’ apps, which often includes providing the server and technical support.

Talking about the server, you should think about where you’ll buy a place. The most popular options among white label apps are Google App Engine and Amazon AWS. They basically lift off the necessity of finding a server, plus, offer a bunch of different benefits like security ensuring. This 1-minute video represents how it works in detail:

In this way, next time they want to change color, make a button bigger or update the content, instead of asking you they simply open the dashboard and customize the UI themselves.

However, if you want to have full control over this process, you can simply build the dashboard for yourself, have all tenant’s apps stored in one place, and easily make adjustments on your own.

📲 Our Expertise: Mobiloud

The Stormotion team is a Tech Partner of MobiLoud - a white-label app provider. What's interesting about them is that MobiLoud provider several separate projects for different industries. We are working on 2 of them - Canvas and News.

We also set up an intuitive sign-up screen and a reliable paywall to protect the content that's accessible without subscription. Plus, we added a functional screen for managing pages in the app and enabled push-notifications.

💰 What Affects White-Label App Development Costs

When planning the development process, one of the most important things is budgeting the project. We can’t tell you the exact cost, however, some aspects need to be taken into account to make budgetary planning and cost prediction as precise as possible:

• Number and complexity of features. Plus, the more features you want to be customizable, the higher will cost be.
• Design.
• Your choice in terms of single- or multi-tenancy.
• 3rd-party integrations.
• An hourly rate of your development team.
• Whether you’ll use services like Google App Engine & others.

If you’d like to know a more or less precise cost, you can contact us to discuss your use case!

💡 Takeaways

So, white-labeling apps is quite a business to do — there’s a lot to take care of, but the benefits and demand are worth it. Now that we’ve covered all important aspects of the development, we hope that it has become clearer what steps you should take to start such a business.

Let’s briefly sum up what steps you should take to build a white-label app:

• Choose between single- & multi-tenancy.
• Decide on what UI/UX features will be customizable.
• Set up a UI/UX customization dashboard.
• Choose a server.
• Enable error monitoring.

We, from our side, would recommend you finding a great tech partner who could walk you through each essential detail and find the best way to put your idea into practice from a technical perspective.

If you need any help with the development, have questions left, or want to share your thoughts on white-label apps with us, feel free to reach out!