The White-Label AEO Checklist: 22 Checks Before You Sell a Client Retainer

Most agencies buy AEO software backwards. They admire the dashboard and the logo on the PDF, then discover at client five that prompt caps, per-domain fees and unfinished work have eaten the retainer. I used to tell clients a tool was enough. I was wrong. The purchase is what the platform executes and what it costs your agency per domain, not what it tracks. Keep this checklist open on the demo call. Score each item pass or fail while the rep shows it working on a second domain; screenshots and roadmap promises do not count. Start with execution, then check what the client sees, what you pay, and what your team still has to do.

A. Verify that it does the work, not just watches it

1. Generates a brief from a missed prompt, not just a red score. Ask the rep to show a prompt where the client is absent and the brief the platform produced from that gap. If the answer is a chart and a suggestion to write content, your team still owns the work. A breakdown of Peec AI alternatives describes exactly that monitoring-to-execution gap.
2. Drafts the page or edit inside the platform. Have the rep open the draft, not a sample document prepared for the demo. Ask where a strategist reviews it before anything goes live. If your writers must move every brief into another tool and build every page themselves, put those hours in the fulfillment budget. Do not call them software savings.
3. Publishes to the client CMS without copy-paste. Ask for the actual push or scheduled publish to WordPress, Webflow or Shopify on the second domain. An integration that exports a CSV is not a publishing workflow. Check where approval happens, who presses publish and whether your team has to move the finished copy by hand.
4. Ships technical fixes, not just tickets. Test a meta change, schema issue, internal link or crawl block. Can the system make the fix, or does it only queue work for your developer? A useful ticket still has a labor cost. Write down who diagnoses, implements and checks the change before you mark this one pass.
5. Builds citations you can audit per domain. Ask to see live placements, not a list of suggested sites. Check which client each placement belongs to and what proof appears in the action record. If someone on your team must find, place and verify every citation, this is another service line hiding behind a platform fee.
6. Logs every action with a reason and timestamp. Open a single domain’s history. The log should distinguish completed work from recommendations and show why each change was made. If you cannot use it to answer a client who asks, “What happened this week?”, your account manager will have to reconstruct the answer.

B. Test every surface your client can see

A logo on a PDF is not white-label. The test is whether a client can log in on your domain, see your brand and receive a scheduled report from your address without finding the vendor behind it. Vendors use “white-label” for everything from branded PDFs to own-domain portals, read-only links and API output. Ask for the login, not the brochure.

7. Runs on your domain, not the vendor’s. Ask to open reports.youragency.com with your logo and colors in place. Check the URL bar, footer and navigation. A branded export does not pass this check if the client has to visit a vendor-branded portal to see current work.
8. Sends scheduled reports from your address. Have the rep schedule and send one while you watch. Check the sender, links and report content, then decide whether you could forward it untouched. If your team must download, relabel and resend a PDF every week, count that time for every domain.
9. Gives clients a login that hides the vendor. Sign in as a client, not as an agency administrator. Open the report, help links and any notification the client can receive. If the platform name appears when the client needs an answer, plan for the question on the next call.
10. Controls what each client can see. Show scores and wins; hide costs, internal notes, prompt lists where appropriate and every other client’s work. Check permissions with two client accounts open. One agency-tool comparison notes that Otterly branding and URLs cannot be customized, a limitation worth finding before you promise a client portal.

C. Price the retainer at client fifteen, not client two

At ten domains, the listed recurring software cost in the examples below ranges from $990 to $4,089 a month. That is a price range, not a like-for-like choice: the $990 line is a monitor, while the flat per-domain line is listed for execution. At five domains, the examples range from $495 to $2,094; at fifteen, from $1,485 to $6,084. None includes your team’s hours. Get the prompt, engine and workspace rules in writing before a low entry price becomes the basis of a flat retainer.

11. States the prompt cap per domain, engine and day. Ask the rep to calculate coverage for your actual client roster, not one demonstration account. Otterly Standard lists $189 a month for 100 prompts across four engines, with another 100 prompts at $99 a month. If the answer is “unlimited,” ask what is throttled and when.
12. Prices extra engines separately. List the engines in the client promise, then ask for the price of covering all of them. One agency-tool breakdown puts Gemini at $59, AI Mode at $59 and Claude at $109 as add-ons for seven-engine coverage. On that example, the $189 plan becomes $416 before any other extras.
13. Discloses every per-domain or per-workspace fee. Ask whether a new client creates a billable workspace even when your agency uses one login. The Profound model in this comparison is $99 base plus $399 per client workspace for 100 prompts on three engines: $2,094 a month at five clients. Multiply by your roster.
14. Explains what a credit buys. Have the rep convert the allowance into prompts, models and tracking frequency for one domain. In the Peec AI example, one prompt on one model for one day uses one credit; 25,000 Growth credits cover about 277 prompts at daily tracking. More frequent checks consume more credits. “25,000” alone tells you little.
15. Lists setup fees, minimums and lock-in. Separate one-off charges from recurring ones before you sign. Ask what annual prepay buys, what cancellation requires and whether your margin survives the commitment. Managed AEO programs are cited at $1,000–$3,000 a month at entry level and $3,000–$8,000 for growth; those costs do not fit inside a $600 retainer.

The cost breakdown to run on the call

Say you sell AEO for $800 a month per client. Ten clients bring in $8,000 before platform costs or labor. The table shows listed recurring costs, not equivalent capabilities; a cheaper monitor can leave more fulfillment with your team.

Hidden recurring cost: publishing, fixes, reporting and client questions your team still handles. At ten clients, the $4,089 workspace-monitor line leaves $3,911 before labor; what the flat per-domain execution line leaves depends on the fee set on your fit call. Those are not profits. At a $75 loaded hourly cost, six hours per client adds $450 per retainer. Even on a flat per-domain platform, that hypothetical leaves only a thin slice of an $800 retainer before revisions. Compare the result with the 30–50% gross margin after fulfillment target, labor included.

One-off and contractual cost: get setup fees, minimum commitments and annual prepay terms on the same sheet. The quoted recurring price will not tell you what it costs to start or leave. This is why I argue in Don’t Sell AEO by the Prompt against making a capped allowance the foundation of a client promise. An extra engine add-on is the cheaper mistake. The expensive one is signing a cap that makes the next client unprofitable by contract.

D. Make onboarding work on a second domain

If every new domain needs a developer, you have a services project with a software logo on it. Ask for a live connection on the second client site while you watch the clock.

16. Connects the ad account and website without a support project. The groas agency offer describes connecting a client’s ad accounts and website in a couple of clicks across platforms or CMSs. Ask the rep to show the connection, not merely the finished account. If step one becomes DNS edits and a support thread, record the onboarding work.
17. Builds from scratch or takes over what already runs. Ask to see both paths. A platform that works only after your team rebuilds the client’s existing setup has an onboarding cost, even if its invoice says “no setup fee.” Put the required migration tasks beside the recurring price before you compare vendors.
18. Audits before it acts. Check that the platform maps campaigns, pages, technical structure, citations and AI answer presence for each domain before changing spend or content. The audit should give the person setting direction a starting point. Otherwise, “autonomous” can mean moving quickly without showing what it found.

E. Check the report and the people behind it

Generic reports make white-label fulfillment look generic, whatever logo sits on the cover. Agency complaints about reseller work cluster around reports, communication, link quality and work that misses client goals. A plumber and a SaaS startup should not receive the same explanation with different names. Demand proof of work, not just a score.

19. Sends a branded weekly report with actions and reasons. Open the scheduled send as the client would. It should say what changed, why it changed and what remains to do. A monthly PDF of impressions does not answer a client asking what their retainer bought this week. If you must rewrite the report, count the rewrite.
20. Tracks Google and AI visibility weekly, per domain. Ask to see prompts, citations, share of voice and what moved in one client’s view. Then switch domains and confirm the records stay separate. Tracking matters here because it should guide work and explain outcomes, not because another graph makes the deck look more technical.
21. Keeps a human strategist behind your team, not in front of the client. Ask who sets the roadmap, who answers a difficult question and how your team reaches them. Private Slack and monthly calls are useful only if the strategist can help your agency own the relationship. If the vendor must join every client call to explain its report, the service is not white-label.

22. States your team’s hours per client in writing. This is the check agencies skip, and it decides the margin. Ask what your team touches each week after onboarding: briefs, drafts, publishing, fixes, citations, reports and client questions. Put the answer beside the per-domain fee and the prompt-and-engine cap before pricing the retainer; How to Price an AEO Retainer That Still Pays at Client Ten makes the same labor-first case. On groas for Agencies, the offer pairs content, technical fixes and citations handled in the platform with weekly visibility tracking, reports under your brand, a strategist behind your team and a flat monthly fee per domain with no setup lock-in. Verify those working parts on the demo rather than accepting brochure copy. If the rep leaves your hours blank, do the math yourself: six hours at $75 costs $450 per client every month. That blank line is the most expensive item on the order form.