If you've hired a marketing agency in the last few years, there's a good chance it also sold you software. It's usually described as an all-in-one platform: a CRM for your leads, text messaging, email campaigns, a phone number or two, and maybe an automated assistant that follows up with new customers. It carries the agency's name and logo, and you pay for it every month, for every person on your team.
Then the bills start to grow. Line items appear for text messages, phone minutes, emails, AI features, automation "triggers" and something called a wallet top-up.
Most owners assume their seat fees pay for the software. They don't. The agency didn't build the software, doesn't run it and usually can't fix it. And the company that did build it doesn't receive a penny of your seat fees.
If that describes your business, you didn't make a careless decision. You made a reasonable one, based on what you were shown. This article is about what you weren't shown: where your money goes, and why the arrangement works so well for everyone except the business paying for it.
How resold software works
At a high level, there are three parties.
The platform company builds the software, runs the servers and keeps it working. Instead of selling mainly to businesses like yours, it sells to agencies. For one flat monthly license, an agency can create as many client accounts as it likes, with unlimited users in each.
The agency puts its own name and logo on the software and sells it to each client at whatever price it chooses. It doesn't build the software or host it. What it adds is a logo and a price.
You, the business owner, use the software and pay the agency every month.
Where your monthly fee actually goes
Most business software is sold per seat: a monthly fee for each person on your team. Resold platforms are sold the same way. At around a hundred dollars a seat, a business with fifteen employees pays fifteen hundred dollars a month. A sales floor of fifty pays five thousand dollars a month, every month.
Now look at what the agency pays. One of the best-known platforms in this market charges agencies a flat fee of roughly three hundred to five hundred dollars a month. That covers unlimited client accounts, with unlimited users in each. The agency can sell as many seats as it wants, at any price it wants, and the platform doesn't receive a cent more. It's paid the same whether the agency has five clients or five hundred, and five users or five thousand.
Seen from a high level, the arrangement is simple. Every seat fee you pay stays with the agency. None of it reaches the company that built the software, runs the servers and keeps it working. Adding your business costs the agency next to nothing. Adding your fifteenth employee costs it nothing at all, and your bill still goes up every month.
Some agencies charge one flat fee per business instead, often several hundred dollars a month or more. It works the same way: the agency keeps all of it.
Try this with your own numbers
Take the number of seats on your last invoice and multiply it by what you pay per seat. Multiply that by twelve. That's what your business paid this year to someone who didn't build your software, doesn't host it and, when it breaks, has to call someone else to fix it.
Your seat fee calculator
- Every month
- US$1,500
- Every year
- US$18,000
- Over three years
- US$54,000
If you pay an agency on a flat-license platform, none of this reaches the company that built the software. And it doesn't include a single text, call or email.
So how does the platform company make money? Mostly from the meter.
High-level promises, fine-print bills
The pitch is always big: all-in-one, unlimited, everything your business needs. The costs are in the fine print. The seat fees get you in the door. Using the software is billed separately.
When you send a text, make a call, send an email, use an AI feature or buy a phone number, the platform charges the agency, usually from a prepaid balance. That's where the platform earns its money. The agency then bills you for it, either at what it paid or with its own markup on top. In most cases you can't tell which.
So many businesses end up paying twice for the same system. First, a monthly fee for every seat on their team, all of which the agency keeps. Then again, message by message and minute by minute, for the parts of the system that actually do something for their business.
Why it spread so quickly
For agencies, the numbers are hard to resist. One flat license, unlimited client accounts, unlimited users in each, and they keep every dollar of every seat fee. The platform companies know this. They designed the licensing, and they market it to agencies as a business opportunity: a way to "start your own software company" without writing a line of code. A whole industry of courses and coaching has grown up around it. The platform isn't selling software to you. It's selling an opportunity to the agency, and you're the opportunity.
For business owners, the pitch is convenience: one vendor, one bill, marketing and software from the same people.
A vendor, not a partner
A real partner's success is tied to yours. It earns more when your business grows.
In this arrangement, the agency earns more when your bill grows. More seats, more messages, more phone numbers, more automations, whether or not any of it brings you a single new customer. Every incentive points toward charging you more, and none of them point toward helping you grow.
That isn't a partner on your team. It's a toll booth between your business and its own software.
Where it goes wrong for the business
You may be paying for what you already have. Many businesses already pay for email through Google or Microsoft, and for a phone system. A resold platform can charge you again to send email and carry calls, on top of the tools you already own.
Support is two companies away. When something breaks, you call the agency. If the problem is in the platform, the agency has to take it to the platform company, and you wait. Agencies are rarely staffed like software companies, and that gap matters most when your phones go down on your busiest day.
The account isn't yours. In most resale arrangements, the agency owns the master account and your business is a sub-account inside it. Your contacts, phone numbers, call recordings and automations sit under the agency's control. If you part ways, getting all of it back can be difficult.
Automation speaks in your name. Automated follow-ups can text and email your customers at any hour. If those messages break the rules on consent or calling hours, the responsibility generally falls on the business that sent them. That's you, not the agency and not the platform.
The problem is the structure, not the people
Plenty of agencies are honest about all of this. They tell clients who built the platform, pass usage costs through at what they pay and charge fairly for their time. But the structure itself works against the business owner. It puts a middleman between a business and its own software, it lets the middleman keep every seat fee, and it makes hidden markup easy.
If you feel frustrated reading this, that's fair. You were paying for a partner and getting a toll booth.
Two very different meanings of "white label"
"White label" means putting a brand on software someone else built. Who that brand belongs to makes all the difference.
White label for a middleman
In the resale model, white labeling puts the agency's name on the software. It exists so the middleman can present the platform as its own product and sell it to you.
White label for your business
White labeling can also put your business's name on the platform your business runs on. Your employees log in to your company's system on your company's web address. Your customers get emails, documents to sign, support replies and meeting invitations under your name. There's no middleman, because you're the customer.
Questions to ask before you sign
Whether you're buying from an agency, a consultant or directly from a software company, these questions will tell you most of what you need to know:
- Who built this software, and who runs it? Can I see their pricing?
- How do you pay for the software? Do you pay the software company anything for my seats, or is your license a flat fee no matter how many seats you sell?
- What does a text, call or email cost you, and what do you charge me for it?
- Who owns the account? If we stop working together, do I keep my contacts, phone numbers and history?
- When something breaks, who fixes it, and how quickly?
- Am I paying for anything I already have, such as email or a phone system?
- Who approves the automated messages sent in my business's name?
A good partner will answer every one without hesitating. If the answers are vague, take that as your answer.
Know someone who should be asking these? Send them this article.
How KamoCRM is different
KamoCRM is built for the business that uses it, not for a middleman to resell.
Your seat fee pays for your software.
When you pay KamoCRM for a seat, that money goes to the people who build the platform, run the servers it lives on and answer when you need help. Nobody sits in between keeping the subscription. Compare our per-seat price on the pricing page with what you pay per seat today.
Your business is the organization.
Every business on KamoCRM is its own organization, kept completely separate from every other one. You create it, you own it, and you deal with us directly. Creating an organization is free, and the Free plan doesn't require a credit card.
Every price is published.
Our pricing doesn't need a high-level overview. Every plan and add-on is listed on one page. No prepaid balance quietly drains in the background, and no markup hides inside a message count.
Keep what you already pay for.
If you have email with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho or Exchange, connect it. If you have a phone system, connect that too. We work with RingCentral, Microsoft Teams Phone and FreePBX/Asterisk. For texting, you can use your own account with a carrier such as Twilio, Sinch, Infobip, Vonage or Flowroute, so your messages bill straight to you at your carrier's rate. Connecting a mailbox or phone extension has a small published fee. It's never a charge on every message you send.
White label means your brand.
Custom domains and branding (your logo, your colors, your login pages) are included on every plan. Your staff work in your company's system, and your customers see your name on every email, document, support reply and meeting invitation.
One platform for the whole business, not just marketing.
KamoCRM brings together your CRM, business phones, email, documents, e-signatures, support desk, knowledge base, video meetings and HR. You aren't buying a marketing tool and then paying separately for everything else.
It grows the way your business grows.
A larger business can run each location, brand or division as its own organization under a parent organization, with each one branded and managed to fit.
Support from the source.
When something in KamoCRM breaks, it's ours to fix. You reach the team that builds the platform, not a middleman waiting on someone else.
Keep your agency. Own your platform.
If you work with a marketing agency, you don't have to choose. Invite them into your organization to do the work you hired them for. The organization, the data and the phone numbers stay yours.
The bottom line
Here's the high-level summary. If you're paying an agency for every seat on software it didn't build, the company that built it isn't getting that money, and you're probably paying again every time you use it. You deserve a software partner on your team, not a toll booth between you and your own business.
Before you sign with anyone, us included, ask who built it, who runs it, who keeps your seat fees, and who owns what you put into it.
If you'd like to see what simple answers look like, create your organization for free and compare it with your current bill.