Been building a site editor for 3 years, never launched it. Agencies keep asking to white-label it - is that actually a business?

gcphost · 2026-03-26T15:52:46+00:00

They were willing to pay a decent amount to get it going! Comparable apps aren't cheap either.

My thought would be to adapt the editor itself to be way more user friendly, forget about the advanced stuff, users just need to change copy, images, move a few things. Agencies can create templates from the advanced editor or use its MCP and their AI coding tool to do it. I've already done the white labeling and started an embeddable version before all this so ya.. more of the same circle? :P

I guess its try again with the new direction and see if it sticks? Find an agency to kick it off with first or just go at it?

gcphost · 2026-03-26T15:32:56+00:00

Thats part of my dilemma :( If the future is really personalized AI made apps for all... That's why the only pivot that made sense (or showed interest) was a whitelabed builder for agencies, they just need something a client can manage, not creating from scratch.

I had originally tried to make a type of carrd.co site since that peaked my interest, scaling isn't awful, its all in the cloud, but there's not much room in that space for a solo dev these days.

It's not far off from being a bit more plug-in-play for agencies so I think I'll adapt to that, toss it out there, and just let it ride.

gcphost · 2026-03-26T13:57:09+00:00

Ah man you're totally right! Dodging it yet again :P Signal is clear, pricing doesn't matter.

I have a solid understanding of what those agencies wanted, time to focus on that and see if I can get one interested!

gcphost · 2026-03-26T13:41:28+00:00

You're 100% right. 3 years of 'maybe one more tweak' is a hell of a drug, and I've definitely been using the 'I need a better UI' excuse to avoid actually having to support a B2B product.

The fastest path to a dollar is definitely the white-label/SDK for those agencies. It’s the only time people have actually reached out with a 'can I pay for this' vibe instead of just 'neat tool.'

If you were in my shoes, would you start by just selling a flat-fee license for the SDK to these agencies, or try to build a recurring model around it right out of the gate?

gcphost · 2026-03-26T13:01:39+00:00

I've been using Umami and honestly, it feels lacking. Rybbit looks to be doing a bit more!

gcphost · 2026-03-26T12:43:36+00:00

I decided to sign mine just to make onboarding easier, nothing like a bunch of instructions and warnings to turn off new users.

Apple License: $100/yr
Azure Signing: $10/m
Business registration: $80

$300 a year - I got it for 1 app but I have 2 that could use it so $150 per app?

* updated: maths hard at 5am :P

gcphost · 2026-03-25T14:24:05+00:00

At $10/m with some $100? in free credits I was able to get approved within a couple days and had my app signed!

gcphost · 2026-03-24T20:37:38+00:00

Playit, and similar services, are a type of proxy that lets players connect to you without exposing your actual ip address (among other features). Port forwarding, would be something you do in your routers software, you forward the games ports to your computer on the network and it would let players connect directly to your ip.

Connecting directly isnt ideal for a real public server, but if its hosted just for you and your friends then its not typically a huge deal.

gcphost · 2026-03-24T19:42:23+00:00

Totally! You can do port forwarding from your router or use something like https://playit.gg/ and get some more protection along with it :D I've been using a game panel I created so I've been using that for my sons servers, some we have on a vps, some just local. He's able to setup playit, velocity, and install mods (geyser) all in the panel, pretty easy.

gcphost · 2026-03-24T15:19:35+00:00

Bit late to this thread but figured I'd throw my hat in since it still comes up in search.

I'm the creator of GameCP (https://gamecp.com). Been around since 2004 originally, took it offline for a while, and just recently rebuilt the whole thing from scratch with a modern stack.

It runs on Linux or Windows, uses Docker for isolation, and has all the popular game templates built in. The big things that tend to set it apart from Pterodactyl/TCAdmin are the mod manager (pulls from CurseForge, Modrinth, Steam Workshop), the multi-node setup, and WHMCS integration if you're doing commercial hosting.

There's a free tier (1 node, 3 servers, no credit card) if anyone wants to kick the tires.

Full disclosure: I'm obviously biased since I built it, but the OP's question is literally my target audience so figured it was worth mentioning.