Live wholesale margin model

Quantify your platform’s monthly revenue leakage

Your customers already pay for site builders, logo tools and brand kits. Right now, that spend goes to Wix, Canva, agencies and freelancers. Pick your business model on the right and see, in real time, how much recurring subscription margin you leak to each.

35%
Defection rate for a hosting provider. Other verticals use their own rate.
$14.50
Net white-label margin per paying user, per month, on the vertical's bundle.
60 months
Compounded in the unlocked schedule, with a vendor-by-vendor breakdown of where the margin is going.
Platform input

Your leakage model

AI Model Live
500500,000
0.5%15%
$5$250
Monthly leaked margin $0
$0 Leaked in year one
0 Defected sites per month
Where that margin goes, per month $0

    Shared hosting users want site builders. They leave for Wix and Squarespace, and the subscription they would have paid you goes with them.

    Model: 25,000 base × 3.0% churn × 35% defection to tools × $14.50 net margin on a $29 bundle.

    Not sure where to start

    Load a realistic preset for your model

    Five starting points from the launch program. Click one and the calculator above fills with plausible numbers for that vertical. Then edit any input to match your actual billing data.

    The compounding view

    What 60 months of leakage looks like

    Three views unlock below. The 5-year compounding table, a vendor-by-vendor breakdown of where the margin is going, and your partner tier qualification based on your defection volume.

    1 Five-year compounding summary

    Five year compounding leakage and recaptured partner margin
    Year Paying users Cumulative leaked revenue Recaptured partner margin
    5 year totals 0 $0 $0

    2 Where the five years of margin actually went

    Vendor-category share of the cumulative leaked margin. The slide you walk into the meeting with.

    Five year leaked margin by vendor category
    Vendor category Share 5 year total Of which, year 1

    3 Sixty months of compounding, visualised

    Recaptured partner margin per month, growing with 25% YoY adoption on the base defection rate.

    Monthly recaptured margin, month 1 to 60. The curve climbs because recaptured users compound.

    4 Your partner tier qualification

    Locked schedule

    Unlock the full breakdown, the vendor table and your tier qualification

    Three things worth the email: a vendor-by-vendor view of where your margin is going today, the 60-month compounding chart for your inputs, and which wholesale tier your defection volume lands in.


      We will send the breakdown to that address and nothing else without your say so.

      Why the leakage is structural

      Three forces draining the recurring margin

      None of this is a sales problem. It is a product gap, and it compounds against you every month you leave it open.

      Shrinking hosting margins

      Shared hosting is a race to the floor. Retention lives or dies on what you can attach beyond the hosting plan. Without a brand and website product, there is nothing to attach and nothing to defend the ARPU with.

      The upsell happens somewhere else

      When a customer decides they need a site builder or a logo, the next conversation is with Wix, Canva or Squarespace. By the time they come back to your dashboard, they are paying someone else a subscription and the window is closed.

      Building AI brand tools in-house is not economic

      A credible brand, logo and site generator takes a team, a model stack and a product roadmap. For a hosting or registrar P&L, that is a seven figure bet. White-label buys you the product and the margin without the build.

      The three real options

      Build it, resell someone else's brand, or ship yours

      Doing nothing is also an option. The calculator above is what it costs. Here is what the other three roads actually look like, laid out side by side.

      Build in-house Your eng team, your model stack
      Resell Wix or Squarespace Affiliate link or storefront
      Recommended BrandForge white-label Your brand on our platform
      Time to launch
      12 to 24 months
      Days
      2 to 4 weeks
      Up-front cost
      7 figures, before any revenue
      Zero
      Platform fee only
      Ongoing cost
      Model stack, eng salaries, roadmap debt
      None, and no margin either
      Flat per tenant
      Who the customer sees
      You
      Wix. Every email, every dashboard, every renewal.
      You, start to finish
      Margin per user per month
      Full retail, after you have recovered the build
      Thin affiliate commission, if any
      $14.50 at $29 retail, scaling with tier
      What happens on renewal
      Customer renews with you
      Customer renews with Wix. You never see it.
      Billing stays on your platform
      Who owns the roadmap
      You, which is cost and focus
      Wix. You cannot ship anything.
      Shared. Partner requests go into the roadmap.
      Exit path
      You own the IP
      Nothing to exit with
      Export brands and sites in standard formats

      None of this is a close call for a hosting or registrar P&L. The build case only pencils at platform scale, and reselling Wix sends every customer and every renewal to a competitor you cannot out-ship.

      The economics

      Wholesale bands that move with you

      Starting bands for the launch program. Your real tier gets fixed on the founder call against your billing data and the volume you expect to run through in the first 12 months.

      Tier

      Launch

      500 to 5,000 paying users

      50% Partner share
      $14.50 Net per user, per month

      On $29 retail, per user, per month

      • Full white-label on your domain
      • All brand, logo, site and social modules
      • Standard REST provisioning hooks
      • Email and chat support
      Most partners
      Tier

      Scale

      5,000 to 50,000 paying users

      55% Partner share
      $15.95 Net per user, per month

      On $29 retail, per user, per month

      • Everything in Launch
      • WHMCS and Upmind modules, maintained by us
      • Co-marketing budget on launch and milestones
      • Named partner manager
      Tier

      Platform

      50,000+ paying users

      60 to 65% Partner share
      $17.40 to $18.85 Net per user, per month

      On $29 retail, per user, per month

      • Everything in Scale
      • Custom REST and webhook contract
      • Dedicated success and SLA
      • Roadmap input and private release channel

      Final split, floors and co-marketing budgets are set on the founder call. Nothing on this page is a binding quote.

      Fits your billing stack

      Provisioning without an integration project

      Three ways in. The two managed modules cover most hosts and registrars directly. For anything custom, the same lifecycle contract is exposed as a plain REST and webhook API.

      Managed module

      WHMCS

      Drop-in module for the most common hosting billing stack. Provisioning, suspensions, renewals and cancellations flow both ways without custom code.

      • One-click install, standard WHMCS module format
      • Product mapping to BrandForge plans
      • Automatic tenant creation on order activation
      • Suspension and termination mirrored both ways

      Live in a working day

      Managed module

      Upmind

      Native module for Upmind, kept in sync with their current API. Same provisioning contract as WHMCS, same lifecycle events.

      • Upmind-native product and lifecycle hooks
      • Automatic brand provisioning on first paid invoice
      • Dunning events respected on BrandForge side
      • Reseller-safe, no customer data leaves your tenant

      Live in a working day

      Custom stack

      REST hooks

      REST endpoints and signed webhooks for any custom billing or CRM. The same contract the managed modules use, exposed for your own integration.

      • OpenAPI spec, signed webhooks
      • Idempotent provisioning and lifecycle endpoints
      • Sandbox tenant for integration work
      • Reference clients in Node, PHP and Go

      Typically 2 to 3 weeks end to end

      Provisioning lifecycle

      What happens when a customer buys

      Same five-step contract whether the trigger comes from WHMCS, Upmind or your own stack. Signed webhooks on every event, idempotent endpoints throughout.

      1 1. Order Customer buys on your billing 2 2. Webhook Signed event to BrandForge 3 3. Provision Tenant created, branded 4 4. SSO Customer lands in your dashboard 5 5. Sync Renewals, dunning, cancel
      Steps 1 and 2 live in your billing stack. Steps 3 to 5 are owned by BrandForge and mirrored back to your webhook endpoint on every event.
      Example lifecycle event POST /webhooks/billing
      {
        "event": "subscription.activated",
        "tenant": "acme-hosting-eu",
        "customer_ref": "cst_7f3a9e",
        "plan": "brand-pro",
        "retail_price_cents": 2900,
        "currency": "USD",
        "signature": "v1,t=1735689600,sig=..."
      }
      The launch program, honestly

      Early, named, and shipping

      We would rather say what is actually live than paper over the launch stage with stock logos. Here is the real state of the program and the partners already on it.

      2 White-label themes live
      5+ Markets in launch
      2026 Launch program year

      In the launch program

      • CloudSite.ai Kilani Consulting
      • BizSiteBuilder Yomera
      • Blackwall Platform partner

      We are early, and we would rather say that out loud than paper over it with stock photos and borrowed logos. The platform is live, the margin is real, the integrations are shipping. If you want the next slot in the launch program, the call is 30 minutes and we go from there.

      Michiel Grotenhuis Co-founder & CEO, BrandForge
      Model and partner questions

      What the numbers are, and what they are not

      How is the leaked margin figure calculated?

      Monthly leaked margin equals your active customer base, multiplied by your monthly churn rate, multiplied by a vertical-specific defection rate (the share of churners leaving specifically for website or logo tools), multiplied by the partner margin per user per month. Each vertical uses its own retail bundle price. The exact per-vertical constants are shown in the model fine print under the main result.

      Why do the numbers change when I pick a different vertical?

      Because the economics genuinely differ. Agencies lose clients at a much higher rate than registrars, and the retail bundle they could resell is three times the size. Hosting providers lose at a moderate rate but at a bundle price that matches the market. The dropdown switches the model, not just the sentence.

      Where do the per-vertical defection rates come from?

      Conservative working assumptions drawn from BrandForge partner interviews and public exit-reason data. Hosting sits at 35%, registrars at 25%, SaaS at 30%, agencies at 55% (projects end), business formation at 65% (brand is the immediate next step after incorporation). Edit any of these in the config file against your own cohort data.

      What does the partner margin cover?

      It is your net share of the retail bundle, under the standard white-label split. There are no per-seat fees, no setup costs and no per-brand charges. The product ships under your brand on your domain, so the customer sees your name and never ours.

      Does BrandForge integrate with WHMCS or Upmind?

      Yes. Provisioning, billing and renewal events are available through WHMCS and Upmind modules, with REST hooks for custom stacks. The 30 minute call is the fastest way to confirm the integration path for your billing system.

      Who owns the customer and billing relationship?

      You do. Billing stays on your platform, under your merchant account, with your tax and invoicing rules. BrandForge supplies the product and the margin split, nothing else.

      What is the gated schedule actually worth?

      Three things: a vendor-by-vendor breakdown of where your leaked margin is going today (so you can walk into a meeting with "we send $X a year to Wix"), a 60-month compounding chart, and a partner tier qualification against our wholesale bands based on your defection volume.

      What happens on the founder call?

      A 30 minute working session with Michiel Grotenhuis, co-founder of BrandForge. Review your inputs against your actual billing data, agree a wholesale tier that fits your volume, and get a one-page rollout plan for WHMCS, Upmind or a custom integration. No slides, no sales script.

      Act on the number

      Stop paying Wix and Canva from your churn file

      Two paths from here. Spend 30 minutes with the co-founder and leave with a wholesale tier and a rollout plan, or apply to the launch program and get provisioning turned on for your tenant.

      • Direct founder consultation
      • Custom wholesale tiers
      • WHMCS & Upmind ready