White-label development your client never sees.
Subcontracting is not really a resourcing decision. It is a trust decision, and you are the one who has to defend it if the build goes sideways. The engineer you hire is writing code your client believes came from your team, and their judgement becomes your reputation the moment it ships.
Zelvatech works as the engineering arm of agencies that would rather not carry a full-time Drupal or Shopify specialist. We work inside your repository, on your board, to your definition of done. Your client keeps dealing with you, and there is nothing in the code, the commits or the deployment logs that says otherwise.
- The client relationship
- The brand on the work
- The commercial terms
- The credit and the case study
- Ownership of all delivered code
- Architecture and build
- Code review and QA
- Migrations and upgrades
- Deployment and handover
- Documentation for your team
Three situations, and they need different things.
Most enquiries are one of these. Knowing which one you are in changes how we would staff it and what it should cost.
The roster is full
A project closed faster than expected, or one already running has swallowed more of the team than planned. The skills exist in-house, the hours do not.
- Usually needs someone productive inside a week
- Overflow capacity suits this better than a fixed-scope contract
- Works cleanly when your team writes the tickets and we clear them
Nobody in-house does this
A client wants Drupal 11, or a Shopify B2B catalogue, or an LLM search feature, and it is not something you would hire for on the strength of one project.
- Needs depth more than hours, so a smaller team goes further
- Usually fixed-scope with a written architecture up front
- Often turns into the platform you then support long term
Something has gone wrong
A developer left mid-build, an offshore team delivered something unmaintainable, or a migration stalled and the client has stopped being patient.
- Starts with an audit before anyone promises a date
- Sometimes the honest answer is to rebuild rather than repair
- We will tell you which one it is before you quote the client
We adopt your process. You should not have to adopt ours.
A subcontractor who insists on their own tooling creates a second process for your team to manage. We work the way you already work.
Inside your systems
Accounts on your Git organisation, your project board, your staging environments. We follow your branching model, your commit conventions and your review checklist.
- Jira, Asana, Linear, Trello, ClickUp or whatever you run
- GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket under your organisation
- Your coding standards and pull request template
- Your CI pipeline, or we will build one if there is not one yet
Communication that fits
Some agencies want us in Slack and on the daily call. Others want silence and a written summary on Friday. Both work, and we agree which before the first sprint.
- Embedded: your channels, your standups, treated as staff
- Arms length: written updates on an agreed cadence
- A single named engineer as your point of contact either way
- Escalation path agreed up front, not improvised at the deadline
Nobody talks to your client
Every question and update routes through you. If a call genuinely needs technical depth, we can join it under your brand, introduced as your team, but only when you ask for it.
- Non-solicitation written into the agreement
- No direct contact with your client at any point
- No approach to them during or after the engagement
- Nothing published about the work without your written permission
Confidentiality before code
Your NDA, your master services agreement and your white-label terms get signed before we are given repository access. If you do not have templates, we can supply a starting point.
- Copyright in delivered code assigns to you on payment
- No licence retained and no reuse of client-specific work
- Any generic internal tooling we bring is declared up front
- Access revoked on the date you choose at handover
Five ways to buy the same engineering.
The right one depends on how well defined the work is and how long you need it for. We will say which we think fits before quoting.
Dedicated capacity
A set number of engineer days reserved for you each month, invoiced monthly on a fixed date. You direct the work through your own board and it can move between your clients as your priorities change. Most agencies start at eight days a month and scale from there.
Fixed-scope project
A defined build with a written scope, a fixed price and an agreed date. Best when the requirement is clear enough to specify, which after a proper audit it usually is.
Overflow capacity
Short bursts when a project lands and the team is already committed. Nothing reserved, no monthly minimum, and we tell you honestly whether we can start in the window you need.
Rescue and recovery
Taking over a build that has stalled, overrun, or lost the developer who understood it. Always begins with an audit, because a date promised before reading the code is a guess.
Time and materials
Billed by the day against an agreed rate, for work too loosely defined to fix a price to. We use it for discovery, for small support tickets under a retainer, and for the first phase of a rescue project before anyone knows what is really in the codebase. Once the scope is clear we will usually recommend moving to a fixed price, because a number your client can rely on is worth more to you than an open meter.
From first email to merged pull request, usually inside two weeks.
You send the problem, we reply
A repository, a brief, or a few sentences about what has gone wrong. The reply comes from the engineer who would run the work, inside one working day, with the questions we would need answered to scope it.
Technical assessment, at no cost
We read the codebase and write up what is actually there: the real scope, where the risk sits, what we would build differently and why, and a price against it. Yours to keep whether or not you go ahead, and several agencies have used ours to check a quote from somebody else.
Paperwork and access
NDA, master services agreement and white-label terms signed. Then accounts on your Git organisation and board, a walkthrough of your standards and release process, and local environments running against your codebase.
First sprint, first merge
Sprint planning against your backlog, then work shipped in small reviewable branches. We deliberately pick something real but low risk for the first pull request, so your team can judge the code before anything important depends on it.
White-label by platform
Most agencies come to us for one platform in particular. These pages cover how the arrangement works for each, including what we deliver and how it is priced.
The things you would otherwise have to ask for
None of this is unusual, and you would negotiate all of it anyway. Stating it up front saves a round of email and tells you how we work before you have spent anything.
Start with a paid pilot
One sprint, one module, or the first phase of a migration, scoped and priced on its own. You judge the code and the communication before committing to anything larger. We would rather lose a large project than start one that should have been tested first.
IP assigns to you on payment
Written into the agreement rather than promised on a website. We retain no licence over delivered code and do not reuse client-specific work. Any generic internal tooling we bring is declared before we start.
Your repository from day one
The code lives in your Git organisation, not ours. You can revoke our access at any point and still have everything, which is the only arrangement worth agreeing to.
Milestone-based payment
Payment tied to delivered milestones rather than elapsed time. Cross-border contract enforcement is difficult in both directions, so the practical protection for both of us is that neither is far ahead of the other.
Escalation agreed before it is needed
Who is contacted, through which channel, and what we are authorised to do without waiting for approval. Agreed at onboarding rather than improvised at two in the morning.
References on request
Including from agencies who have used us white-label. Ask them about a project that went badly, not one that went well.
What agencies check before signing.
Will you ever contact our client directly?
Whose name appears on the commits and in the repository?
Who owns the code we pay for?
Can your engineers join our Slack and standups?
Can we resell your work at our own rates?
What if we need to scale up mid-project?
Do you sign our NDA or use your own?
Can you work to our QA process and definition of done?
What happens when the project ends?
How do you bill white-label work?
How big is the team?
When was Zelvatech founded?
Who writes the code if the founder is unavailable for two weeks?
Can we start with something small before committing?
Can you provide references?
How is white-label work billed?
Send us the one you would rather not staff.
A repository, a brief, or three sentences about what has gone wrong. Within one working day you get a reply from the engineer who would run it.
Before anything is signed, you get a written technical assessment: the real scope, where the risk sits, what we would build differently and why, and a fixed price against it. It costs nothing and it is yours to keep either way.