Shopify Partner Program vs a white-label platform: what agencies earn and own

Shopify pays partners a share of what their clients pay Shopify. A white-label platform lets you set the client’s price and keep the difference. Here is how the two compare on earnings, ownership and control.

If your agency builds shops on Shopify, the Shopify Partner Program pays you for work you already do: build a store, hand it over, and Shopify pays you a share of what the client spends with it. The real question is whether that share is the best you can do, or whether running stores under your own brand would earn more.

This article compares the two models on the three things that matter: what you earn, how long you earn it, and who owns the client. It is part of our series on choosing a platform for client stores; the full checklist is in the best ecommerce platform for agencies.

How do Shopify Partners earn?

Shopify’s help centre lists several ways partners earn. For agencies that build client stores, the main one is the revenue share on stores you build and transfer:

• 20% of the monthly subscription fee the merchant pays Shopify, for 4 years.
• 0.1% of the merchant’s monthly eligible sales (GMV), also for 4 years, on up to $100 million of sales a year.
• To qualify, you create a client transfer store, transfer it to the merchant, and the merchant activates their plan through your transfer.
• Stores on Shopify’s Starter and Lite plans are not eligible.

There are one-time payouts too, such as $2,500 for a qualifying referral or upgrade to Shopify Plus, and separate shares for apps and themes. Shopify says the first payout is held for 30 days and that the final decision to grant payouts is at its discretion.

It is a real programme with real money behind it. Shopify says it has more than 100,000 partners and paid them $1.3 billion in 2025. If you only build a few shops a year and want no ongoing responsibility, it is a sensible default.

Who owns the client on Shopify?

This is where the models differ most. Shopify’s help centre is clear: after the transfer, the merchant owns the store and it leaves your organisation. The client signs Shopify’s terms, pays Shopify’s invoice and sees Shopify’s brand every time they sign in. If you keep working on the store, you do it as a collaborator, and the merchant controls which areas you can access.

That is fair to the merchant, and it is how a referral model should work. But it means your income depends on a relationship you don’t own. Shopify sets the subscription price, the programme’s terms are Shopify’s to set, and payouts are at its discretion. When the 4 years end, so does your share from that store. We look at these models side by side in white-label vs reseller vs affiliate programmes.

How does a white-label platform pay an agency?

On a white-label ecommerce platform the money flows the other way round. You agree a wholesale fee per store per month with the platform. You create your own plans, set your own prices, and your client pays you. What you keep is your price minus the fee, every month, for as long as the client stays.

The client signs in to a portal with your name, logo and colours. They call you for help. Their contract is with you. If you want to understand who owns what in more detail, including the shop’s data and domain, read who owns a client’s store on a white-label platform.

What agencies earn: a worked example

The figures below are examples only, without a currency, to show how the two models behave. They are not Shopify’s prices and not DripFunnel’s prices or fees. Replace them with your own.

In this example the white-label store earns more, and the gap grows after year four. But the white-label figure has a cost the table doesn’t show: you answer the client’s questions and you pay the wholesale fee whether or not you have priced well. The sums are worked through properly in agency margin maths.

A share of sales rewards you when a client grows. A white-label margin rewards you for every client, large or small. Agencies with many small shops usually earn more from a margin; agencies with a few very large merchants may earn well from a share of sales.

Which suits your agency?

Stay with a referral model such as Shopify’s if most of these are true:

• You build a handful of shops a year and hand them over completely.
• Your clients need Shopify’s app store or plan to grow into Shopify Plus.
• You don’t want to answer day-to-day questions from shop owners.

Consider a white-label platform if most of these are true:

• You already run websites, ads or email for clients and want a monthly product to sell them.
• You want your brand, not a platform’s, in front of the client every day.
• You want to set prices yourself, including bundles with your other services.
• You want income that doesn’t end after a fixed number of years.

You don’t have to choose overnight. You can keep existing Shopify clients where they are and put new clients on your own platform. When you are ready to bring an existing client across, follow our plan for moving client stores from Shopify. It also helps to understand how billing works on each platform: see who pays whom on Shopify, Wix and white-label platforms, and what your clients pay Shopify on top of the plan in Shopify transaction fees.

How DripFunnel’s partner programme works

DripFunnel’s white-label partner programme is built for agencies that want the second model. More than 75 partners across the globe run client stores on it. Here is what you get today:

• Your brand on the merchant portal: product name, logos, colours, font, support details and legal pages, on your own address. Whether a small “Powered by DripFunnel” line shows is agreed in your contract.
• Your own plans and prices: you decide what each plan includes, offer a trial of 7, 14 or 30 days if you want, and set monthly and yearly prices in the currencies your contract allows. For every price, the console shows DripFunnel’s fee and what you keep, and warns you if a price is below the fee. See Create your plans and prices.
• A fixed wholesale fee per store: agreed per plan in your contract. DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ orders.
• All your stores in one console: each store’s plan, status, last month’s sales and domain, with reports on growth and monthly recurring revenue. You see account figures, never your clients’ orders, customers or products.
• Safe support: with the client’s support access switched on, you can open a read-only 30-minute session to see what they see, recorded in the activity log.

Your clients get a full online store, including AI that designs the storefront from a plain description. Compare it feature by feature on DripFunnel vs Shopify. Getting started is a conversation: tell us how many stores you run and where, and we agree your contract. Our team reviews your setup before your first store goes live, usually within 2 business days. Talk to us about becoming a partner.

Still weighing platforms? Our guide to Shopify alternatives for agencies that want their own brand compares the options, and white-label ecommerce explained covers the basics.

Questions