vimerse

White Label Video Editing: What Agencies Actually Pay

An agency buying video editing is not buying videos. It is buying an hourly cost it can mark up, a partner that will stay invisible to the client, and capacity that survives three accounts delivering footage in the same week. Those are the three things to compare, and only the first one is usually on a pricing page.

We are Vimerse, we supply agencies at $18 an editing hour, and we have put ourselves first. Competitor figures are quoted from each vendor's own pricing or terms and linked. Where an hourly rate is our arithmetic rather than their published number, the table says so.

Prices checked on 1 September 2026.

Supplier cost per editing hour

Supplier	Published price	Hours it implies	Cost per editing hour	White label
Vimerse	$18 per editing hour, agency tier	As many or as few as the month needs	$18, published	Yes
Vidpros	About $1,000 a month part time, $4,000 full time	About 40, or about 160 full time	About $25, their own figure	Dedicated editor model
Design Pickle	About $1,918 a month	From 2 hours per business day, so roughly 44	About $44, our arithmetic	Design and video bundled
E2M white label	$799 a month, Starter tier	15 to 20 a month, published	About $46, our arithmetic	Yes, built for agencies
Superside	From about $1,918 a month, or $1,279 on annual commitment	Sold as creative capacity, not hours	Not published hourly	Enterprise creative
Vidchops	$495 for 4 credits, $995 for 8	Priced per video, not per hour	Not published hourly	Per video
In-house editor	VeedYou puts a US hire at $5,400 to $8,700 a month fully loaded, offshore at $1,800 to $3,000	About 160, whether billable or not	About $34 to $54 US, our arithmetic	Yours by definition

Only two of those rates are published as hourly, ours and Vidpros'. The others sell a monthly price with an hours allowance, so the per-hour column is our division of one by the other, shown to put every option on a single axis. Check them against the sources before you price a retainer on them.

The white label tier of the market sits noticeably higher per hour. E2M publishes a Starter tier at $799 a month for 15 to 20 hours, with a 2 to 3 business day turnaround and 2 revisions, which lands near $46 an hour with the revision count capped. Design Pickle sells creative capacity from two hours per business day including motion graphics and video editing, at around $1,918 a month.

If you want the short answer

Reselling editing to clients at a rate card: buy hours. At $18 you can price at $45 to $72 and hold a real margin. At $46 you need a market that pays $115.
Overflow around an in-house editor: buy hours, never a monthly plan, because the quiet months are the whole point.
Design and video from one partner on one invoice: Design Pickle or Superside.
An editor embedded in your team full time: Vidpros at $4,000 a month, or hire.
Steady volume, wildly variable complexity: a flat plan, because it absorbs the overruns you would otherwise eat.

Everything below is how to check that against your own rate card, your NDA requirements and the week when three accounts deliver at once.

The margin arithmetic, which is the whole decision

Agencies reselling services report a consistent multiplier. From r/PPC, a supplier describing what its agency clients charge: "Typically the agency charge 2.5-4x of what we charge them."

On the margin that implies, from r/elementor: "I typically tell agencies they should have a 30-50% margin on services they resell."

Supplier hour	At a 2.5x rate card	At 4x	Gross margin on a 20 hour month
$18	$45 an hour	$72 an hour	$540 to $1,080
$25	$62.50	$100	$750 to $1,500, on higher client prices
$46	$115	$184	$1,380 to $2,760, if the market pays $115 an hour

The third row is the one worth sitting with. A $46 supplier hour only works if your market pays $115 an hour for editing, and most regional agencies find that ceiling well before they find the client. The supplier rate does not just set your margin, it sets the rate card you are forced to defend.

Agencies reselling editing report roughly 50% margins in practice. From r/dropservicing: "Average profit margins for selling my services is around 50%. also provide video editing services. You are basically outsourcing work to be"

Why editing resells better than production

Production carries fixed cost you pay whether the client books or not: crews, travel, scheduling, insurance, kit. Editing carries none of it. The whole service is a file transfer, priced by the hour, and it scales up and down with demand instead of with payroll.

An agency in r/digital_marketing describes exactly that trajectory, having offered remote video services for years and "eventually had to give up on-location crews".

That is the structural case for adding editing rather than production to an agency: it is the part of video with no marginal fixed cost, which is why it is the part that resells.

The three arrangements, and what each costs you

Agencies ask suppliers for one of three shapes. A supplier in r/Entrepreneur describes the first two: "Wants to keep a commission while passing the editing work to us. Or wants to fully white-label the service under your own brand."

White label. Work ships under your brand, the client never learns the supplier exists, and your margin is the spread between your rate card and the supplier hour. You carry the quality risk and keep the relationship.
Referral or commission. Simpler and lower margin, but the client now has a relationship with somebody else, and renewal is no longer entirely yours.
Overflow only. Keep the in-house editor for work that needs them and push volume out. This is where an hourly supplier beats a monthly plan outright, because a quiet month costs nothing.

Most agencies that fail at this pick a monthly plan for overflow work. The plan bills in full during the two months a big client is between campaigns, and the line quietly stops looking profitable.

Staying invisible: what to require in writing

White label is a contractual arrangement, not a branding preference, and the mechanics are worth specifying before the first project rather than after an awkward email.

A mutual NDA covering client names, not just your own. Your client's brand appearing in a supplier's portfolio is the failure everyone remembers.
No direct contact with your end client, in writing, including no follow-up marketing to anyone the supplier meets through you.
Delivery in your naming convention and folder structure, so nothing arriving with the client carries a supplier filename.
Project files on request, in a named format. The day you change supplier is the day this clause earns its cost.
A named point of contact on both sides, since white label breaks fastest when a junior on either side improvises.

Ask for the NDA before the trial project rather than after it. A supplier that treats it as routine has done this before, and one that has to go and write one has not.

Capacity, which is what actually breaks

The failure that costs an agency a client is not a bad cut. It is three accounts delivering footage on the same Thursday and a supplier that works one video at a time.

That constraint is often published if you look. Video Husky's terms state it plainly: "Video Husky works on one video at a time. Turnaround times are not guaranteed, but a majority of our customers get a first draft within 1-3 business days." For a single creator that is fine. For an agency running six accounts it is a queue with your client at the back of it.

The questions that surface this before you sign:

How many of my projects can be in progress simultaneously, not how many per month.
What happens in a week when I send eight, and does the eighth wait or get a second editor.
Is turnaround a target or a commitment, and what happens when it is missed.
Do I get named editors, and can two of my accounts have different ones with different house styles.
What is the rush tier, what does it cost, and how much notice does it need.

We cut around 5,000 videos a year with 50 or more editors, and that headcount is the only reason a 48 hour standard turnaround survives several agencies delivering at once. Capacity is not a feature you can add during a busy week.

Where the margin actually goes

Not to supplier rates. To briefing and revision scope, and both are fixable before you sell the service.

A vague brief produces a first cut nobody can approve, and the rescue round eats the margin on the whole project.
Unlimited revisions sold to your client but bought by the hour is a loss on every unusual job.
Turnaround promised without a buffer for one revision round leaves nowhere to absorb a miss.
Reference videos not collected at onboarding, so the editor guesses at a house style for three projects.
Two people on the client side giving contradictory notes, which is an account management failure billed to you as editing hours.

Cutting around 5,000 videos a year, much of it for agencies, the projects that go wrong are almost never the technically hard ones. They are the ones where the brief was a sentence and the feedback arrived in three rounds from two people who disagreed.

What to standardise before you sell it

A one page brief template: references, length, conventions, deliverables, deadline. Non-negotiable before work starts.
One named approver per project on the client side, written into the statement of work.
A revision policy in the client contract that matches the one you buy. If you buy two and sell unlimited, you have bought a liability.
A flat internal cost per editing hour, so quoting is arithmetic instead of instinct.
A rush tier with a price, so the answer to "can we have it tomorrow" is a number rather than a favour.

Those five turn a video line from something you tolerate into something with a predictable margin. None of them are about editing quality, which is the point.

In-house versus outsourced, for an agency specifically

An agency hire has a different break-even from a creator hire, because agency work arrives in bursts. VeedYou puts a US fully loaded editor at $5,400 to $8,700 a month, and an offshore dedicated editor at $1,800 to $3,000.

From the editors' side, in r/editors: "Let's say a fairly average commercial/corporate editor with a decade of experience is something like $85K/yr on staff and $170K/yr freelance."

At roughly 160 hours a month, a US hire lands near $34 to $54 an hour fully loaded, and that assumes you fill the hours. The realistic model for most agencies is one in-house editor for work that needs institutional knowledge, plus an hourly supplier for volume, because the alternative is hiring for your busiest month and paying for it in your quietest.

How to put video on your rate card

Most agencies price video badly on the first attempt, either quoting per video and losing on the complex ones, or quoting hourly to a client who wanted a number. Three structures work, and each fails differently.

Per deliverable, with a defined scope. "One 8 minute edit, two rounds, from footage you supply" at a fixed price. Clients approve it fastest, and it only holds if the scope sentence is real.
A monthly block of hours. Sell 20 hours at your rate card and let the client spend them across formats. This matches an hourly supplier exactly, so your margin never depends on guessing the mix.
A retainer with a deliverable count and an overage rate. The count sets the expectation, the overage protects you, and nobody has an awkward conversation in week three.

Whichever you pick, quote from a known internal cost per editing hour. At $18 an hour, an 8 minute edit at seven hours costs you $126, and a $450 deliverable price is a 72% gross margin with room for a rescue round. That arithmetic is only available if your supplier publishes an hourly rate.

Two rules worth holding regardless of structure. Never sell unlimited revisions on top of a supplier who bills per round, because the one client who takes six rounds erases the margin on the other five projects. And price the first month of any new client higher, or scope it smaller, because style calibration genuinely takes longer and pretending otherwise makes month one look like a failure.

Red flags when choosing a partner

No published rate. If you cannot get a cost per hour or per deliverable in writing before a call, you cannot build a rate card on it.
Turnaround given as a range with no commitment, particularly when the terms say times are not guaranteed.
No named editor, or a refusal to say whether your accounts get consistent people.
Portfolio work you cannot attribute. Ask which pieces their current team cut, since agency portfolios outlive the staff who built them.
Reluctance about the NDA, or a template that protects them and not your client.
No answer on parallel capacity. "Unlimited requests" without a number of simultaneous projects is a queue.

Where a competitor is the better buy

You need design and video on one invoice from one partner. Design Pickle and Superside sell that bundle and we do not.
You want an embedded full-time editor inside your team rather than a supplier. Vidpros sells that at $4,000 a month.
You want one predictable monthly number regardless of what drove it, and your volume is genuinely steady.
Your projects are consistently graphics-heavy and unpredictable, where a flat plan absorbs the overrun that an hourly supplier would bill.
You need a partner covering SEO, web and paid alongside video. Full-service white label firms exist and we are not one.

What agencies say about working with us

From our reviews, named with their companies.

Jake Bhatt of ResultsGrow: "Vimerse has been a great partner in helping our agency produce high-quality video ads at scale. Their team consistently delivers professional, engaging creative that helps our clients stand out."

Hunter Krueger, who runs a marketing agency: "I've been working with Vimerse for over three years, and they've been the most reliable and communicative editors I've ever worked with. They regularly go above and beyond, are fast with turnarounds, and are priced fairly."

Vincent Aguirre of Distinct: "Vimerse has become our go-to for turning raw footage into polished, ready-to-publish video. The team's fast, takes direction well, and revisions come back exactly how we asked, which is rare."

Eric Turney of The Monterey Company: "I recommend them for fast turnaround, strong communication, and consistently high-quality editing. Their team understands our direction, handles revisions quickly, and makes the entire process easy."

Three of those four lead on reliability and revision behaviour rather than craft. For an agency that is the correct thing to care about, because a missed deadline is your client's problem and therefore yours.

What we offer agencies

$18 per editing hour, flat, with no per-client minimum and no retainer.
White labelled by default. We do not contact your clients and nothing ships carrying our name.
A 48 hour standard turnaround, with 50 or more editors behind it so several accounts can deliver at once.
Named editors per account, so two of your clients can hold two different house styles.
Unlimited revisions, so a rescue round costs time rather than margin.
A quiet month costs what you used, which is the part a subscription structurally cannot do.
A free first video up to four editing hours, so the trial runs on a real client project.

How to trial a white label partner

Trial with the project you are most worried about, not the easiest one, and use a brief written by the person who will actually write them.

Have an account manager write the brief, not you. Their briefs are the ones the supplier will live on.
Send a real client project under NDA rather than a sample, since sample work is done by different people at a different pace.
Include one deliberately ambiguous instruction and see whether they ask or guess. Asking is the behaviour you want.
Time the revision round, not the first delivery. Everyone is fast once.
Check the delivered file names and folder structure before you forward anything to a client.
Price the month at your real volume, including the weeks when three accounts land together.

Our first video is free, up to four editing hours, which is enough to run that test on a live client project and price a retainer from real numbers.

Common questions

Will my client find out who does the editing?

Only if you let it happen, and the leaks are mundane rather than dramatic. Delivered files carrying a supplier naming convention, a portfolio post naming your client, or a supplier emailing your client directly about a file. All three are closed by a mutual NDA covering client names, a written no-contact clause, and delivery in your folder structure. Ask for those before the trial project.

What margin should I hold on resold editing?

Agencies report charging 2.5x to 4x supplier cost, for a 30% to 50% margin. On an $18 supplier hour that is a $45 to $72 rate card. The number to watch is not the percentage but the ceiling your market will pay: a 50% margin on a $46 supplier hour requires clients who accept $92 an hour, and most regional agencies find that ceiling before they find the client.

What happens when three clients deliver footage the same week?

This is the question that decides whether a supplier works for an agency, and most pricing pages do not answer it. Ask how many of your projects run in parallel rather than how many per month. A supplier working one video at a time is a queue with your client at the back of it, and Video Husky states exactly that in its own terms.

Can different clients have different editors and house styles?

They should. One editor learning six brand guidelines is how style drift starts. Ask whether you get named editors per account, whether they stay assigned, and what happens when one is on holiday. A supplier with a real bench answers this immediately.

Is there a minimum commitment?

With us, no, and it is worth asking everyone else. Monthly plans bill whether you send work or not, which is fine for steady retainers and expensive for overflow. If your video volume is lumpy, a minimum commitment converts your quiet months into pure cost.

Who owns the project files?

Settle it in the agreement, not in the handover. Your client may contractually own their deliverables, which means you need the ability to hand over a timeline. A supplier that treats project files as theirs makes both switching and client offboarding expensive, and you find out at the worst moment.

How do I price this on a client proposal?

Three structures work, covered in full further up: per deliverable with a defined scope, a monthly block of hours, or a retainer with a deliverable count and an overage rate. Whichever you pick, quote from a known internal cost per editing hour. Our cost calculator will price a specific deliverable at our rate if you want a number to build a quote on.

The short version

Compare suppliers on cost per editing hour: $18 with us, about $25 at Vidpros, and around $44 to $46 at Design Pickle and E2M by our arithmetic from their published figures.
Agencies report reselling at 2.5x to 4x supplier cost, for a 30% to 50% margin. The supplier rate sets the rate card you have to defend.
Editing resells better than production because it carries no fixed cost.
Monthly plans are the wrong instrument for overflow work, since quiet months still bill.
Capacity, not craft, is what breaks. Ask how many projects run in parallel, not how many per month.
Get the NDA and the no-contact clause in writing before the trial project.
Margin is lost to weak briefs and mismatched revision policies, not to editor rates.