Duda vs Vendasta: which one suits your agency?

The short answer

Choose Duda if websites are your main product. It is one of the most mature builders made for agencies. It is priced per site with no long contract, and it gives you good client permissions, content collection and client billing. You bring your own CRM and marketing tools.

Choose Vendasta if you sell bundles of local marketing (listings, reviews, social posts, AI receptionists, hosting) to many small businesses. It gives you a catalogue, a CRM and a fulfilment team in one back office. In return you commit to a monthly spend minimum and, for full white-label, a one-year contract.

If you are a smaller studio that wants to sell websites, a CRM and an online store under your own brand at your own prices, and neither option quite fits, there is a fair third option near the end.

What each platform actually is

Duda is a website platform for web designers and agencies. You build client sites in a visual editor with AI help (every plan includes 150 AI credits a month), manage all your clients from one dashboard and decide exactly what each client can change. Clients can fill in a content intake form before you start and leave comments on the live preview. Stores and bookings are paid add-ons. Duda does not try to be your CRM: form leads usually go to another tool through Zapier or one of Duda's app connectors, such as the one for HighLevel.

Vendasta is built for companies that resell digital services to local businesses in volume. Your team works in Partner Center, and each client gets a branded portal (the Business App) that holds everything you sell them. Around that sit:

• a marketplace of more than 250 products at wholesale prices
• a built-in CRM with invoicing and payments
• AI receptionists for chat and voice
• a Snapshot Report that audits a prospect's online presence, useful for sales calls
• white-label services where Vendasta's own team delivers listings, social and SEO work under your name

Put simply, Duda gives you a very good tool for building and running websites. Vendasta gives you a catalogue, a back office and a sales system.

What you can resell with each

With Duda, you sell the website and the work around it:

• Websites, which Duda prices to you per site.
• Online stores, an add-on per store. Standard costs $7 a month on yearly billing (up to 100 products), Advanced $20 (up to 1,000) and Elite $45 (up to 20,000). Duda takes no transaction fee, and stores can use Stripe, PayPal, Square or Mollie.
• Care plans and retainers, charged to clients through Duda's Client Billing.
• Extras such as Duda's AI Visibility add-on, from $19 a month.

With Vendasta, the website is one item in a much longer list:

• Vendasta's own products: reputation management, social marketing, AI conversation tools and WordPress hosting.
• Third-party products from the marketplace. The website category alone lists Duda, GoDaddy and Unbounce among others, so you can in fact resell Duda through Vendasta.
• Done-for-you services such as listings, social posting and local SEO. Vendasta's team delivers them under your brand, and they are billed separately.
• AI Workforce packages, such as AI receptionists for clients' websites and phones.

There is one catch with reselling Duda inside Vendasta: third-party products do not count toward your Vendasta monthly minimum. More on that below.

Duda vs Vendasta at a glance

Cost: what you will really pay

Duda charges for your account plus each site. The Agency plan ($52 a month on yearly billing, $69 monthly) includes 4 sites and most of the client-management tools. Full white-label (your own domain, login screen, emails and a branded editor) needs the White Label plan. That costs $149 a month on yearly billing or $199 monthly, and also includes 4 sites. Each extra site costs $17 a month, or $168 a year.

Here is a worked example with 20 client sites on the White Label plan. On monthly billing you pay $199 plus 16 extra sites at $17, about $471 a month. On yearly billing it comes to roughly $373 a month. Add $7-45 a month for each client who needs a store. The cost goes up steadily with each client you add, so it is easy to build into a monthly fee.

Vendasta works differently. The subscription shows as $0, but each plan has a monthly minimum of qualifying spend: $99 on Starter, $499 on Professional and $999 on Premium. Only Vendasta's own products and services count. Third-party marketplace products do not, and unused spend does not roll over. Professional and Premium also come with a one-year contract. So full white-label means committing to at least $5,988 of Vendasta products over twelve months.

That is less painful than it sounds if your clients already buy that much. An agency selling review, social and listings packages to dozens of local businesses may reach $499 a month easily, and then the platform costs nothing extra. A studio that mostly sells websites will find it harder. The pricing page does not say how a month below the minimum is billed, so ask before you sign. Extra team seats cost $30, $35 or $65 a month, depending on the plan.

What your clients see

On Duda, a client logs in and sees only the sites you have assigned to them. On the White Label plan, they log in through your own domain and branded login screen. You choose how much they can edit, from nothing at all to full control. They can send content through an intake form and leave comments on the preview, which saves a lot of back-and-forth by email. When you bill them through Duda's Client Billing, the money goes to your own Stripe account and you are the merchant of record. For a client who bought a website, it is a tidy setup.

On Vendasta, the client gets one portal that holds everything you sell them: website, reviews, listings, social posts, reports and invoices. On Premium, the portal can handle businesses with several locations. On Starter, though, the portal is co-branded with Vendasta, so a curious client can see who your supplier is. Full white-label starts at Professional. The portal does much more than Duda's. That is useful for a client paying for six services, but it can feel busy for one who only wanted a website.

Lock-in and leaving

Duda has no long contract: you pay monthly or yearly and can stop when you like. Moving a site away is harder. Duda's export tool gives you the site's HTML, CSS and images, but dynamic parts such as forms and stores do not come with it, and Duda warns that extra development may be needed. In practice, agencies either transfer the site to another Duda account or rebuild it elsewhere. The content and domain are yours.

Vendasta Starter is month to month, and you must cancel at least 48 hours before renewal. Professional and Premium run for a year, so read the termination terms before you sign. In one public reply to a complaint, Vendasta pointed to the customer's 12-month contract, which required 90 days' notice to cancel. Several reviews also describe slow cancellations and refunds. Those are individual experiences, but they are reason enough to get the notice period in writing. The bigger lock-in is practical. Once a client's reviews, listings, social posts, billing and CRM records all sit in Vendasta, leaving means moving several services, not just one website.

Which kind of agency each one suits

Duda suits:

• Web design studios and freelancers whose main product is the website, whether they have a handful of clients or a few hundred.
• Agencies that already have a CRM and marketing tools and want the site builder to stay out of the way.
• Teams that care about design control, client permissions and predictable per-site costs.

Vendasta suits:

• Marketing agencies and other resellers selling packages of local marketing to many small businesses.
• Agencies that want a white-label team to handle listings, social posting or SEO for them.
• Businesses happy to commit $499 a month or more for a year in exchange for a full catalogue and back office.

Neither fits well if you run a small studio with 5 to 30 clients and want to sell websites plus a CRM and an online store under your own brand, without a spend minimum or a separate CRM bill. If GoHighLevel is also on your shortlist, our GoHighLevel vs Vendasta comparison covers that matchup. We also have fuller lists of Duda alternatives for agencies and Vendasta alternatives.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. How many client sites will you run in 12 months? Price both platforms for that number, not today's.
2. Must clients see only your brand? That means Duda's White Label plan or Vendasta Professional, not the cheaper tiers.
3. Where will leads go? With Duda you pay for a CRM separately. Vendasta includes one.
4. Can you hit a monthly minimum every month for a year? Be honest about slow months.
5. Who does the work? If you want someone else to deliver social posts or listings, Vendasta is built for that. Duda assumes you do the work.
6. Whose payment account receives the client's money, and what fee comes off each payment?
7. What happens when a client leaves? Ask what goes with them (content, domain, data) and what has to be rebuilt.

A third option: WebNewBiz

WebNewBiz sits between the two. As with Duda, the website comes first: you describe the client's business in plain language, the AI drafts a complete site (pages, layout, copy), and you change it by chatting with the AI Copilot. Like Vendasta, it gives the client more than a website. Depending on the plan you sell, that can include an online store with secure checkout, an AI CRM that scores leads and sends invoices that chase themselves, and an AI funnel builder.

For agencies, the white-label side works like this:

• Your name, logo, colours and favicon on the dashboard, on your own domain such as app.youragency.com. The login page, invites, emails and invoice PDFs all carry your brand.
• You create client accounts and put each one on a plan with limits you set. You can log in as the client and do the work for them, or let them run it themselves.
• You set your own prices. Packages can be recurring or one-off, billed weekly to yearly, with optional setup fees and several currencies, and you get your own storefront page listing them.
• Client payments go to your own Stripe or PayPal account.
• A REST partner API with single sign-on and webhooks, if you want to offer websites inside your own product.

Now the honest limits. WebNewBiz is younger and smaller than Duda, and its app ecosystem is much smaller. It has nothing like Vendasta's marketplace of third-party products, and it is software you and your team operate, not a fulfilment service. The AI first draft still needs your own edits, photos and facts. If a client leaves, their content and domain move with them, but the layout has to be rebuilt on the new platform. Agency pricing is not published, so you talk to us and get a quote. You can read more on our white-label website builder for agencies and white-label CRM for agencies pages. To see what the AI produces before you talk to anyone, try the free AI Website Preview, which designs a homepage from one sentence.

Quick answers

Is Duda cheaper than Vendasta?

For an agency that mainly sells websites, usually yes. Duda's White Label plan is $149 a month on yearly billing with 4 sites included, and each extra site adds $168 a year. Vendasta's white-label tier needs $499 a month of qualifying spend on a one-year contract.

Can I white-label Vendasta on the Starter plan?

No. Starter ($99 a month minimum, no contract) is co-branded with Vendasta. The white-label client portal starts on Professional, which has a $499 monthly minimum and a one-year contract.

Does Duda have a built-in CRM?

Not a full sales CRM. Duda focuses on websites and client management, and form leads usually go to a separate CRM through Zapier or Duda's app connectors.

Can I resell Duda through Vendasta?

Yes, Duda is listed in Vendasta's marketplace. However, buying third-party products like Duda does not count toward your Vendasta monthly minimum.

Which is better for a small web design agency?

Usually Duda, because it is priced per site, has no long contract and is built around websites. Vendasta makes more sense once you sell several marketing services to each client and want help delivering them.

Is there an option with websites, a CRM and a store sold at my own prices?

WebNewBiz offers white-label AI websites, an AI CRM, funnels and online stores that agencies sell at their own prices through their own Stripe or PayPal account. It is younger and smaller than Duda, and agency pricing is quoted on request rather than published.

Related guides

• Vendasta pricing for agencies: what you really pay at 10, 25 and 50 clients

If you want to look further

For agencies, the most useful next step is a short conversation. Talk to us about white-label and we will walk you through client accounts, branding and pricing for your numbers. If you would rather look around on your own first, see how the AI website builder works, or start for $1 for the first month and build a site for one of your own clients. There is no minimum contract, and you can cancel any time.