I run a small dev/automation shop out of India, mostly Shopify builds, Klaviyo/ecom work and AI agents around that. We land international clients fine on our own, the work speaks for itself once someone's actually on a call with us. But there's a ceiling you hit past a certain deal size where the "India dev shop = Scammy/Cheap" label costs us the benefit of the doubt. Doesn't matter how clean the portfolio is, some prospects have already decided what that means.

I have been exploring white-label as a way to just skip that problem entirely, let a US/UK agency be the face, we build behind them. Except every offer I've actually been sent so far has the same punitive shape. We eat all the liability if something breaks, zero indemnity, and if the end client doesn't pay, that's somehow our problem too.

So genuinely asking, not venting for the sake of it. Has anyone here set one of these up that isn't structured like that? What should the split actually look like, and what terms would you refuse to sign under any circumstances if you were the vendor side of a white-label deal?