You've won work you can't staff, or you keep declining projects because they need backend, mobile or DevOps and you're a design shop. We're the engineering team you can sell without hiring — working in your repositories, your tools and your name.
White-label software development is engineering delivered by one company under another's brand. Canopus builds custom software, web, mobile, eCommerce and cloud work for agencies and consultancies who sell delivery without keeping a permanent engineering team — invisible to your client, contractually barred from approaching them, with IP assigned to you.
Four partner shapes, each with a different reason for being here.
You've won a client on strategy and design, and the build is a web application, a mobile app or something with a real backend. Subcontracting to freelancers works until one disappears mid-project with your client's deadline attached.
The client wants a portal, a calculator, a booking system or a headless build. You could decline it and watch the whole account move to an agency that says yes.
You've produced the strategy and the client asks who's going to build it. Recommending a third party puts the relationship at risk; delivering it yourself means hiring for a project.
You have engineers, but not a mobile developer, or nobody who's built a RAG pipeline before. You need one capability for one project, not a permanent hire.
Every one of these exists because agency-subcontractor relationships fail in predictable ways. They're in the partnership agreement, not just on this page.
Not for a testimonial, not for a case study, not for follow-on work, not after the partnership ends. Contractual non-solicit with a defined term. This is the single thing agencies are most afraid of, and it deserves a clause rather than a reassurance.
Documents, demo environments, commit conventions, deployment naming. If your client sees it, it's yours. We keep no attribution and we don't publish your work as ours without written permission naming exactly what may be shown.
Your Jira or Linear, your GitHub or GitLab, your Slack, your email domain if you provide accounts. No parallel Canopus board that your client might glimpse in a screen share, and no exports between two systems that then disagree.
Scope changes come to us as change requests from you. We don't negotiate with your customer, don't advise them on your pricing, and don't get pulled into a conversation about whether something should have been included. That's your relationship to manage.
We quote you a cost; what you charge your client is your business and we deliberately stay out of it. We don't publish suggested resale rates, because that would put a floor under every pricing conversation you have.
If a deadline is at risk, you hear it before it's visible. You get an honest internal view — including "this will be late" — early enough to manage your client rather than being surprised alongside them.
On payment, with the explicit right to assign to your client. We retain nothing, licence nothing back, and use no proprietary framework of ours. Your client's contract with you is unaffected by our existence.
With a full handover: documentation, credentials, known issues and a knowledge-transfer session. A partnership that's painful to leave isn't a partnership, and you shouldn't have to explain a vendor transition to your client mid-project.
You allocate the capacity across your clients as you like. Prices better than per-project and guarantees people are available when you win something.
Works like any engagement, with you as the client. Suits agencies whose pipeline is irregular or who want to try the partnership on one project first.
We don't white-label our own marketing services to marketing agencies — you'd be reselling a competitor's core offer, and it ends badly for both of us the first time a client asks a direct question. Engineering only. If a partner wants SEO and paid media, we'd rather have that as a direct conversation with their client, with their agreement and their margin protected.
What you sell, what you can't staff, and whether we're actually the right partner for it.
NDA, non-solicit, IP assignment with onward rights, rate card and working rules.
Accounts in your tools, your review conventions, your definition of done, your escalation path.
We suggest starting with something contained. Both sides find out how the other works before a flagship account is at stake.
Not unless you choose to tell them. We work in your repositories, your project tool and your email domain where you provide accounts. Deliverables carry your branding, commit authorship follows whatever convention you set, and we never contact your client directly or approach them afterwards. That last point is contractual, not a promise.
Two structures. Retained capacity buys a defined number of engineer-days each month that you allocate across your clients as you like — what it costs depends on the disciplines you reserve and the notice period you want on scaling down. Per project works like any fixed-scope engagement, quoted in writing after a scoping call, and suits agencies with irregular pipeline. Partners who send consistent volume move to retained capacity because it prices better and guarantees availability.
That's your commercial decision and we deliberately stay out of it — we quote you a cost and you price your client. We don't publish suggested resale rates, because doing so would put a floor under your pricing conversations.
You do, always, by default. Some partners prefer us on client calls as their named technical lead, using their brand, and that works when it's agreed in advance rather than improvised. What never happens is us contacting your client independently or continuing a relationship with them after the partnership ends.
We treat you as the client, so the change comes to us as a change request with cost and schedule impact, and you decide how to handle it commercially with your customer. We won't be drawn into that conversation — a subcontractor negotiating with your client is how agency relationships fail.
That's the most common reason agencies come to us. Design and front-end shops need backend, DevOps, mobile or AI engineering; marketing agencies need anything past WordPress. We're also happy being a specific missing skill on a project you otherwise deliver yourselves.
Two to four weeks for a new partnership including paperwork and process setup. Once a partnership is running, work usually starts within a week because the contracts, accounts and conventions already exist. Retained-capacity partners get availability by definition.
IP assigns to you on payment, with the right to assign onward to your client. We retain nothing, licence nothing back, and build on no proprietary framework of ours. Your client's contract with you is unaffected by our existence. More on how IP assignment works in our contracts.
The work you decline because you can't staff it is the clearest signal of what a partnership should cover. Send it over — a delivery lead replies within one business day, and the NDA comes first.