White-label WordPress development for agencies
You have won a WordPress project and the build capacity is somewhere else. We take the designs and the scope and return a site your team can present, maintain and edit — with nothing on it that says we were here.
What we take on
WordPress is most of the outsourced work agencies bring us, and it arrives in six recognisable shapes.
Custom themes from your designs
We build the theme from your Figma files. Not a purchased theme reskinned to approximately match, which is what makes the second round of design amends expensive and the third round impossible. Your designer’s spacing scale, type scale and breakpoints survive into the CSS.
Block editor and editorial experience
Custom blocks, block patterns, locked templates and theme.json configuration, so the editor your client is handed can only produce pages that look like your designs. The most common WordPress complaint an agency gets six months after launch is that the client has broken the layout. That is an editorial-experience decision made at build time, and we make it deliberately.
ACF and structured content
Field groups, flexible content layouts, options pages and relationship-driven templates. Content modelled as content rather than as one long WYSIWYG field, which is what makes a site still restructurable in two years.
Plugin development
Custom plugins where no existing plugin fits, and extensions to existing ones where forking is cheaper than replacing. We write the functionality your client actually asked for rather than installing four plugins that each do a third of it.
Multisite
Network builds for franchise, multi-location and multi-brand clients: shared themes, per-site content, and the domain mapping and role structure that makes them administrable.
Migrations and rebuilds
Moving a site onto WordPress, off an ageing theme, or between hosts. Content migration, URL preservation, redirect mapping and metadata parity are part of the build. Traffic is the thing an agency gets blamed for losing, so we treat it as a deliverable rather than a risk to mention afterwards.
How we build, so your team can take it over
The test we build against is not whether the site works on launch day. It is whether a developer on your team, who has never spoken to us, can open the repository in a year and make a change safely.
Version controlled from the first commit.The theme is a repository, not a folder edited over SFTP. Readable commit messages, a branch per piece of work, and a history that explains itself.
Configuration in code where WordPress allows it.Templates, blocks and field definitions live in the repo, so a staging site and a production site do not quietly diverge.
Your conventions, not ours.Naming, folder structure, coding standard, linting — if you have a house style we follow it. If you do not, we use WordPress coding standards and document what we chose.
Built for the editor.Every template ships with realistic content in it, not lorem ipsum, so you find out before your client does that the testimonial block breaks at four lines.
Accessibility and performance are in scope by default.Semantic markup, keyboard operability, visible focus states, and a build that does not ship 400 KB of JavaScript to render a marketing page. If the client’s brief has a specific WCAG target, tell us at brief stage and it becomes a test criterion.
What we hand over
- The repository, with build and deployment instructions.
- A local development setup your team can run.
- A short editor guide written for whoever updates the content — neutral in tone, yours to rebrand.
- A walkthrough call with your developers.
- A written list of everything deliberately out of scope.
The code is yours after that. You are not tied to us to change it.
Who maintains it after launch
Three options, and none of them is the default.
Your team maintains it.The handover is built for this. It is the most common outcome and we do not treat it as a lost sale.
We maintain it, under your brand.Core and plugin updates, monitoring, and a defined response commitment, invoiced to you so you can resell it as your own care plan. See website support and maintenance and the SLA.
Nobody maintains it.This is what actually happens to most WordPress sites, and it is why hack recovery is a service we offer. Worth raising with your client at proposal stage rather than after.
Where WordPress is the wrong answer
Sometimes it is, and you would rather hear that from your build partner at scoping than from your client’s new developer eighteen months later.
WordPress is a poor fit when the project is mostly application logic rather than content, when the content model is genuinely relational, or when the front end needs to be an app and the CMS is incidental. In those cases we will say so and scope the alternative — usually a Nuxt or Vue front end with WordPress reduced to a content API, or something else entirely.
We are not trying to make every project a WordPress project. You have already sold the work; our job is to make the technical decision that you can still defend in two years.
Questions agencies ask
Do you work in our repository or yours?
Either. Most agencies prefer their own so the history stays with them from day one. If you would rather we host it during the build, we transfer it at handover.
Can you pick up a build someone else started?
Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. We will review it first and tell you honestly whether continuing is cheaper than restarting. Sometimes it is not, and that is a difficult conversation to have with your client — it is easier when it is backed by a written assessment rather than an opinion.
Do you use page builders?
Only when the project already has one and replacing it is not in scope. New builds use the block editor with custom blocks, because that is what your client’s next developer will expect to find.
Will our client know you exist?
Not from the code, the admin, the footer or an email. Nothing we build carries our name and we do not approach your client.
How do you price WordPress work?
Scoped per project from your brief, or as retained capacity if you have continuous volume. We are not the cheapest option available to you and we do not try to be — the value is that you do not manage the build.
Book a partner call
Bring the designs, the deadline and the plugin list you are worried about.