Enhancing your product with new features and capabilities often brings up a critical question: Should you choose a white-label solution or opt for the flexibility of an SDK? While white-label tools offer simplicity and speed, modern SDKs can combine the ease of integration with the ability to customize and deeply integrate into your product.
In this guide, we’ll break down the benefits and limitations of both options, showing you how they can address different use cases. Whether you're looking for a solution to launch quickly or a platform that empowers you to create a highly tailored experience, this post will help you make the right choice for your business.
If you’re also considering a fully custom build, be sure to check out our Build vs. Buy Guide for additional insights.
What is an SDK?
A Software Development Kit (SDK) is an extensive toolkit that enables developers to create applications within their own development environment.
It offers a complete package of tools, libraries, and documentation, making it highly customizable to suit specific use cases and easily blend with a brand's identity. SDKs equip developers with the core components needed to build, enhance, and tailor applications across multiple platforms, including web, mobile, server, cloud, and desktop.
Key Features of an SDK
- Flexibility: SDKs provide an option to create a solution that best matches your business needs and branding. Unlike white-label, SDKs can be fully customizable, allowing you to tailor features and capabilities to seamlessly integrate with your use case.
- Deep Integration: SDKs typically come with APIs that allow for integration with other software, enabling you to connect with third-party services and facilitate the creation of not one solution but a comprehensive workflow.
- Technical control: While the integration and maintenance require the involvement of developers, SDKs come with greater control over the integrated tech that’s not available with white-label solutions. Developers can determine the extensibility of the solution and shape it to fit specific needs.
Many types of SDKs can enhance applications and workflows. If you would like to learn more about a design SDK, have a look at our extensive guide on what a design editor SDK is, its benefits, components, and types.
What is a White-Label Solution?
While SDK needs to be built with the provided tools, the white-label solution is an off-the-shelf and ready-to-use product that can be quickly rebranded and marketed. It allows businesses to get to market faster by utilizing a ready-made platform, eliminating the need for internal development from scratch.
Key features of a White-label solution
- Speed to market: White-label solutions are deployment-ready allowing businesses to launch their product quickly, bypassing the lengthy development process. This is especially useful when time is crucial and you need to deploy a solution as soon as possible.
- Limited customization: While white-label often offers some degree of customization, like the ability to rebrand or make small adjustments, businesses are mostly constrained to the provided features. This is a considerable limitation if you need unique functionalities or extensive personalization.
- Automatic updates: White-label is a low-maintenance solution, with updates being carried out automatically and not requiring a development team to maintain it, a factor especially important to businesses with limited development resources.
- Extensibility challenges: White-label solutions often lack the robust APIs or extensibility frameworks found in SDKs, making it difficult to implement complex integrations or custom features.
Which Solution is Right for Your Business?
Choosing between white-label and SDK depends on your use case, here are some of the points to consider:
Choose an SDK if
- You have unique requirements
SDKs are the go-to choice for companies building applications with unique needs. By leveraging SDK’s extensive tools and libraries, developers can create use case-specific functionalities that deliver a tailored user experience. - You need full customization
If your app requires specific features or user experience, SDKs provide the flexibility needed for complete customization and create a truly unique application tailored to their needs. - You want to create a seamless workflow
SDKs allow for deeper control over integrations, enabling the addition of APIs, and plugins, creating full workflows, and giving you the tools to create a unique solution. - You have technical resources
An SDK is ideal for businesses that have an in-house development team or the ability to hire technical talent.
Choose a White-label solution if
- You need a fast launch
If speed to market is a priority, white-label solutions offer pre-built features that can be quickly deployed with minimal development. This is ideal for businesses aiming to establish a swift market presence. - You are working with a tight budget
White-label products are generally more affordable, making them a good option for startups or businesses looking to minimize development costs, reduce initial costs, and avoid the resource demands of building a product from scratch. - You don’t need a tailored solution
As an out-of-the-box solution, white-label is a good fit for companies looking for a standard or generic use case that doesn’t require deep customization or seamless integration with the rest of the application. - You want to focus on marketing and sales
Companies with limited access to developers can benefit from white-label solutions, as these don’t require much technical involvement. You can dedicate more time and resources to customer acquisition and retention rather than technical development, allowing you a more strategic focus on market growth and sales efforts.
IMG.LY: Your Partner in Both White-Label and SDK Solutions
At IMG.LY, we understand that every business has unique needs for enhancing their applications with creative tools, hence, we try to combine the best of both worlds by providing both pre-configured, turn-key solutions while also giving you the opportunity to customize and extend the SDK flexibly. Whether you’re looking for a plug-and-play option with a white-label solution or the ability to build highly customized creative experiences through an SDK, IMG.LY empowers your application with world-class design, video, and photo editing tools that scale with your business.
Ready to discover more about our products? Test our demos or learn more about our plugin system.
Core Functionalities of IMG.LY Products
- Cross-platform compatibility: Our technology is optimized for iOS, Android, and web, ensuring your users enjoy a consistent, smooth editing experience regardless of device or operating system. Moreover, with the server-client processing, users can edit on mobile or web and you can run automation workflows on the server.
- Regular updates and feature development: We constantly update our solution to stay compatible with the latest operating systems and the fast-paced design editing industry. This guarantees that your application is secure, up-to-date with the latest technology, and performing at its best.
- One solution, multiple use cases: Our creative engine is a powerhouse that can enable a variety of applications, from automating and scaling design and video creation for social media, marketing, and print to templating and jumpstarting users’ design, the UI can be adapted to match a specific use case perfectly.
- Developer-friendly documentation: Our documentation includes clear, detailed examples, API references, and tutorials, making it easy for developers to start integrating and customizing right away. For white-label users, we provide guides that outline the steps for rapid implementation.
- Extensibility: We built our products for extensibility and modification, making sure our customers don’t need to rely on our roadmap. With our Plugin API, you can implement custom editor functionality such as background removal or vectorizer, giving you the autonomy to create a fully custom solution.
- Technical support and assistance: Both white-label and SDK clients have access to our support and solutions team who can assist with integration, answer questions, and provide recommendations to help you make the most of our tools. Our team can also assist you in designing custom solutions that align perfectly with your goals.
Unmatched Customization and Flexibility
Built for developers, our SDKs allow you to create an entirely customized design and editing experience that goes beyond standard white-label features.
- Customizable UI: The SDK comes with a fully customizable UI, providing options for adaptation of existing components or creating an interface from scratch. With adjustable theming, styling, and translation, businesses can create a UI that perfectly matches their unique use case and becomes a native part of their brand.
- Advanced editing features: Our products come with extensive features and capabilities, ranging from simple photo editing tools to extensive workflow automation. You have full control of which ones you want to integrate and how advanced or simple you want the design process to be.
- Plugins and third-party integrations: Outside of the core design, video, and photo editing features, our SDK is designed to seamlessly blend with other software ecosystems to create complex workflows, with both our own plugins and external APIs. Explore our plugins.
White-Label solution: Quick and Seamless Integration
Designed for simplicity and speed, our white-label solutions make it easy to integrate professional-grade editing features into your application with minimal developer setup needed.
- Ready-to-deploy editor suite: Our white-label editor comes pre-built with UIs for design, photo, and video editing, allowing you to integrate a professional-grade editor with just a few lines of code. Explore our showcases to find the UI that best matches our use case.
- Brand customization: You can easily customize the appearance of the editor to align with your brand’s identity. Change colors and configure default settings to create a cohesive user experience that looks and feels like a native part of your application.
Conclusion
Whether you’re a startup aiming to launch quickly or an established brand looking to create a unique user experience, IMG.LY offers flexible, powerful solutions that can be tailored to fit your use case. Our white-label options provide a straightforward way to integrate editing capabilities, while our SDK offers the flexibility and depth needed to build a fully customized creative experience.
From rapid deployment to complete customization—IMG.LY provides the tools, support, and scalability to help your business excel. Start with a free trial or contact our sales team for personalized guidance.
Over 3,000 creative professionals gain early access to new features and updates—don't miss out, and subscribe to our newsletter.
