White-label vs build your own

The product is the business

If guest media is what you sell rather than something you attach to what you sell, the code has to be yours. Every part you rent is a part you cannot differentiate on, cannot price independently, and cannot promise a client will still exist in three years. No white-label arrangement fixes that, and none should pretend to.

A workflow nobody will build for you

Vendors build for the middle of their market. If your business depends on something specific — an integration with the venue system you already run, a hand-off into an editing pipeline, a rule your sector requires — you may be waiting for a roadmap that never reaches you. Building means you decide what gets built and when. That is worth real money, and sometimes more than the maintenance costs.

The first version is the small part

White-labelling starts at configuration: your logo, your domain, your wording, and the product behind it has already met the phones, the venues and the wifi.

A prototype that uploads a photo takes a fortnight. What takes years is the second half: the formats that fail on one phone model, the client who needs their own domain, the event where 200 people upload in ten minutes, and the fact that none of it can be postponed to next sprint when a wedding is on Saturday.

Somebody is awake at 11pm on a Saturday

With a white-label arrangement, an upload failing during someone's wedding is our problem to fix, and the fix reaches every partner at once.

With a build, it is yours, at the hour it happens — and no vendor escalation path exists to take it off you. That is not an argument against building; it is a staffing question that has to be answered before the first client signs, not after.

The parts nobody puts in the estimate

Moderation, transcoding, storage growth, deletion on schedule, certificate renewal for every client domain: all of it is included, and all of it stays maintained without a line item.

These are the parts that turn a three-month project into a permanent one, and not one of them is optional. Each is unglamorous, each is genuinely necessary, and together they are usually the difference between the estimate and the outcome.

Should we build our own event photo app or white-label one?

Build if guest media is the product you sell, or if you need a workflow no vendor will prioritise for you. White-label if it is a service attached to what you already sell, and you would rather not carry moderation, transcoding, storage growth, deletion schedules and out-of-hours support for the next five years. Gathmo's partner plans start at 79 EUR a month for 10 events a year.

How much does it cost to build one?

We will not give you a number, because any figure we published would be derived from our own team and quoted back as if it were research. What we can give you is the list of items that usually get left out of the estimate: uploads across every phone your clients' guests own, video transcoding, a moderation path with a person in it, storage that grows each year, deletion on a schedule, certificate renewal per client domain, and support cover at the hours weddings actually run.

What do the partner plans cost?

Studio is 79 EUR a month or 790 a year: 10 events a year, one seat, one custom domain. Agency is 199 a month: 50 events, five seats, unlimited custom domains and sub-brands, end-to-end white label and API access. Enterprise is 699 a month: unlimited events, branded SMS and single sign-on. Checked against our pricing configuration on 20 August 2026.

Can we put our own brand and domain on it?

Yes, from the first plan: your logo and one custom domain on Studio. Agency adds unlimited custom domains and sub-brands and end-to-end white label, so each of your clients can have their own. Certificate renewal on those domains is handled rather than being another calendar reminder for your team.

Can we build around it instead of on top of it?

API access is included from Agency upwards, so you can drive events and media from your own systems and keep your own interface where it matters. It is the middle path: your workflow and your surface, our moderation, transcoding and storage underneath.

What happens to our data if we leave?

Your media and event records are exportable, and the deletion obligations attached to media you collected stay with you either way — they do not disappear because the tool changed. If you move away from us, keep your old system read-only until the last event's retention period has passed, then close it.