How web and marketing agencies can sell online stores as a monthly service

Package your plans, set prices with a clear margin, and onboard and support every client the same way.

Why agencies are moving from projects to monthly plans

Most web and marketing agencies are paid by the project. You build a website, send the invoice, and start looking for the next one. A shop changes that, because a shop is never finished: there are always new products, new offers and new questions. If you host your clients’ shops on a white-label ecommerce platform, that ongoing work can become a monthly plan under your own brand.

For your clients, a monthly plan is easier to say yes to than a large build fee. For you, every new client adds to income you can count on next month. That is the core idea behind every ecommerce platform for agencies.

Step 1: Decide who the service is for

Start with the clients you already have. Look for businesses that:

• ask you for “a shop” on top of their website;
• sell through social media or messaging and take orders by hand;
• run ads you manage, but send the traffic to a shop someone else controls;
• pay for several tools (a shop, an email tool, a separate site) and would like one.

If many of them are in one field, such as fashion, food or home goods, you can set up your plans for that field and become the agency that knows how those shops work.

Step 2: Package your plans

Two or three plans are enough. More than that, and clients struggle to choose. A simple pattern:

On DripFunnel you build these plans yourself in the partner console. You choose the name and description your clients see, switch features on or off, set limits (each up to DripFunnel’s maximum), and add a free trial of 7, 14 or 30 days, or none. The guide is in the help centre: Create your plans.

Keep your own work out of the plans. Shop set-up, product photos, content and ads are services you sell on top, priced by you. That way a client can move up a plan without renegotiating your whole contract.

Step 3: Set your prices and know your margin

With a white-label platform you pay the platform a wholesale fee for each store, and you charge your client your own price. The difference is your margin. Work it out for every plan before you publish it.

In DripFunnel, your wholesale fee for each plan is set in your contract. When you type a price, the console shows DripFunnel’s fee next to it and what you keep, and warns you if a price is below the fee. You can set monthly and yearly prices in each currency your contract includes.

Some tips for pricing:

• Look at what your clients pay today for their shop, email tool and plugins. Your plan replaces some of that.
• Offer a yearly price with a discount. Clients get a better deal, you get fewer cancellations.
• Don’t compete on the lowest price. Your value is that you set things up, answer questions and know the client’s business.
• Raise prices with notice. When you change a plan that stores are already on, DripFunnel lets you apply it to new sign-ups only, or to everyone at their next renewal, with an email 30 days ahead.

Step 4: Onboard each client the same way

A repeatable onboarding process saves hours and keeps every shop to the same standard. A checklist you can adapt:

1. Agree the plan and the services you’ll add on top.
2. Create the store for the client in the partner console: store name, owner’s name and email, country, plan and trial. The owner gets an invitation to set their own password.
3. Build the storefront. The client, or you, describes the shop and DripFunnel’s AI designs it. Nothing goes live until it’s approved.
4. Add the first products and connect a payment method the client’s shoppers use.
5. Connect the client’s own domain for the shop, if they have one.
6. Walk the client through their portal in a short call, and send them your help centre link.

The console shows a set-up tracker for each new store, so you can see where it’s up to. The guide is in the help centre: Create and manage stores.

Step 5: Support clients without getting in their way

Clients will come to you, not to the platform, so decide early who answers and how fast. Give your team the right roles: in DripFunnel, these are Owner, Admin, Support, Finance and Read-only (Your partner team).

When a client needs you to look at their shop, use a support session rather than asking for their password. In DripFunnel, a support session only works if the client has support access switched on. It is read-only and lasts 30 minutes, so you can see what the client sees and guide them through the fix. Every session appears in the activity log.

Keep an eye on stores that are close to their plan limits. The store list has a filter for stores near a limit (80% or more), which is a natural moment to suggest an upgrade.

Step 6: Measure and grow

Check your numbers every month: new stores, stores that left, revenue by plan and how much each store uses. DripFunnel’s partner reports cover growth, revenue (including monthly recurring revenue by plan), plans, store performance, usage and set-up health, and each can be exported as a spreadsheet.

If you’re still choosing a platform, read Choosing a white-label ecommerce platform: questions to ask before you sign. If you’re new to the idea, start with White-label ecommerce: what it is and how agencies use it. When you’re ready, talk to us about the partner programme.

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