A client signs off on eight thousand menus. Every code on those menus resolves through a redirect domain belonging to your QR vendor, not to you and not to the client. The arrangement is fine right up until you switch vendors, lose the account, or the client leaves and asks for their codes back.
White-label QR buying is mostly about that one dependency. Everything else is negotiable later; the domain baked into a printed pattern is not.
The redirect domain is the whole contract
A dynamic code encodes a URL. Whichever domain sits in that URL is fixed in the printed pattern permanently. If it is the vendor's default domain, the client's print run is tied both to that vendor's continued operation and to your continued relationship with them.
Custom redirect domains solve it. You point a domain you control, or better one the client controls, at the platform, and the printed codes encode that instead. Change platforms later, repoint DNS, and the print keeps working. Without it, migrating means reprinting.
Ask specifically: can each client have their own domain, or is there one custom domain per account? Is certificate issuance and renewal automatic? What is the process if a client wants their domain moved to a different platform later? A vendor supporting custom domains but only one per account does not solve the problem for an agency with thirty clients. Note also that design and domain are independent decisions; codes built through a custom generator still inherit whatever domain the redirect uses.
Sub-accounts and client separation
Running every client inside one flat workspace works until it doesn't. Check whether the platform models clients as separate entities with their own users, codes, analytics and billing, or whether separation is a naming convention you maintain by hand.
Concretely:
- Can a client user log in and see only their own codes?
- Can you grant read-only analytics without granting edit rights on destinations?
- Can staff be scoped to a subset of clients?
- Does removing a user cascade anywhere it shouldn't?
- Is there an audit log of who changed which destination, and when?
That last point matters more than it sounds. When a code starts resolving somewhere unexpected, the first question is who changed it and the second is when. Managing codes across a team covers the same ground for in-house groups, and the requirements only get stricter once the codes belong to someone else.
Who owns the codes and the scan data
Read the terms, not the feature list. Three separate questions hide behind the word ownership.
Who owns the code records? If the contract makes the platform the owner of account data and you a licensee, an ended relationship can mean losing access to the destinations behind live printed material.
Who owns the scan data? Scan analytics can include timestamps, coarse location and device type. A client subject to GDPR or a similar regime will eventually ask where that data lives, how long it is retained, and who the processor is. Have the answer in writing before they ask, with a data processing agreement if one is needed.
What happens at termination? Ask for the sequence in detail: notice period, export window, whether redirects keep resolving during it, and whether a paid wind-down option exists. "We would work something out" is not a sentence you can put in a client contract.
Getting the inventory out
Export is the difference between a platform and a dependency you cannot leave. You want every code with its short URL, current destination, creation date, label or campaign, and cumulative scan history. Ask for a sample export file during evaluation instead of trusting a bullet point on a feature page.
Test the round trip too. If you exported everything today, could you recreate the same codes on another platform without reprinting? The answer is yes only if you control the redirect domain. Otherwise the export is a record of what you used to have, not a migration path. Stale or unrecoverable inventories are also how dead codes accumulate, which is a separate cost covered in auditing for dead codes.
Branding the scan experience
White-label runs deeper than a logo in the dashboard. Map every surface a person can see:
- The redirect domain, visible in the address bar mid-redirect and in link previews.
- Any interstitial or loading screen between the scan and the destination.
- Landing pages the platform hosts, if you use them, including their URL structure.
- Error pages when a code is paused, deleted or over a limit.
- Emails the platform sends to client users.
- The dashboard itself, if clients log in to it.
Error pages are the surface people skip. A vendor-branded "this code is inactive" page appearing on a client's product packaging is a worse look than the outage behind it. Ask to see that page during evaluation, and ask whether it can carry the client's branding.
Billing models and margin
Reseller pricing usually takes one of a few shapes: a flat platform fee with unlimited sub-accounts, per-sub-account pricing, per-code or per-scan metering passed through, or a wholesale rate you mark up. Each shape changes how you quote and where you make money.
Model your actual client mix against each one. Per-code metering punishes agencies serving retail clients who want a code per SKU. Flat platform fees punish agencies with two clients and reward agencies with forty. If you expect to generate codes in bulk for product catalogs, get a written quote at your realistic volume rather than reading the list price of the tier above your current size.
Settle two more things in the contract: who pays if a client leaves mid-term, and whether that client's codes keep resolving while an invoice is disputed.
Questions to ask before a client's print run
Send these to every candidate vendor and keep the replies.
- Can each client use their own redirect domain, and who holds the DNS?
- If we cancel, how long do redirects keep resolving, and can we buy an extension?
- Can we export all codes with destinations and scan history, and may we see a sample file?
- Which surfaces stay vendor-branded, including error and paused-code pages?
- Who is the data controller and who is the processor for scan analytics?
- Is there an audit log of destination changes, and how long is it retained?
- What notice applies to price changes for existing sub-accounts?
Take the largest print run you have planned this quarter and check that its codes would survive every answer you got back. Any answer that arrived verbally, get in email before the file goes to the printer.
