Custom Branding for Your Agency — White-Label the Portal

The reason most agencies pay for Captivar is the white-label portal. Your clients log in, see your logo, your colors, your subdomain — and never see Captivar’s branding anywhere. The agency looks like the tech partner. Captivar stays invisible. This article walks through every place branding shows up and how to take it over.

What custom branding actually changes

Branding affects the client-facing surfaces of the platform — what your clients see when they log into their portal, what their visitors see on booking pages, and what every automated email looks like. Branding does not change the agency dashboard you use day-to-day (that always says “Captivar” because it’s the platform’s primary surface).

Specifically, when custom branding is on:

• The client portal at portal.captivar.com (or your custom subdomain) shows your logo and your color palette
• The login page for client users shows your branding
• The booking page (app.captivar.com/book/CALENDAR_ID) shows your branding
• Public form pages (app.captivar.com/forms/FORM_ID) show your branding
• Every automated email (lead notifications, weekly reports, booking confirmations, password resets) is re-skinned with your logo and your color scheme
• The “from” name on emails changes from “Captivar” to your agency name
• The “Powered by Captivar” footer on the portal is hidden

For higher tiers, a custom subdomain can replace portal.captivar.com with your own (e.g., dashboard.youragency.com). Clients never see Captivar in the URL bar.

Plan requirements

Custom branding is available on Agency ($249/mo) and Enterprise ($499/mo). The lower plans (Free, Founder, Starter) display “Powered by Captivar” branding on the portal and use Captivar’s defaults for email templates.

If you’re on a lower plan and want to test branding before upgrading, contact [email protected] — we’ll typically grant a 14-day branding preview so you can see the difference on your actual sites before committing.

Where the settings live

In the top-right of the dashboard, click your name, then Settings, then Branding in the sidebar.

The Branding page is split into five sections:

1. Identity — agency name, logo, favicon
2. Colors — primary color, accent color, optional dark mode
3. Email branding — from-name, custom email signature
4. Custom subdomain — DNS configuration for your own portal URL (Enterprise)
5. Preview — a live render of what clients see

You can change anything in this page at any time. Changes propagate within a minute to every portal session and within five minutes to every email template.

Identity — name, logo, favicon

Agency name

The name displayed in the portal header, used in email from-names, and shown on the login page. Keep it short — under 40 characters works best for the layouts we use.

This name does not need to match your legal business name. Most agencies use their working brand. If your legal entity is “Smith Marketing Solutions LLC” but you operate as “Smith”, use “Smith.”

Logo

The logo image shown in the portal header and embedded at the top of every email. Upload a PNG, JPG, or SVG. Recommended:

• Aspect ratio: 3:1 or wider (horizontal logo)
• Resolution: at least 600×200 pixels
• Background: transparent or matching your portal background color
• File size: under 200 KB

A logo on a transparent background is the safest choice — it adapts to whatever background color the surface uses.

Favicon

The small icon shown in the browser tab. Upload a 32×32 or 64×64 PNG. If you skip this, Captivar’s favicon is used as the fallback.

Colors

Two colors define your portal palette: primary and accent.

Primary color

The dominant color in the portal interface. Used for buttons, active states, links, and accent UI. The portal styling uses this color liberally — pick something that contrasts well with both light backgrounds (text, dashboards) and dark backgrounds (notifications, navigation).

Enter the color as a hex code (e.g., #1F4FAD). The Branding page also has a color picker if you prefer.

Avoid pure black (#000000) and pure white (#FFFFFF) — they make UI elements blend into the page chrome. Pick something with chroma. If your brand palette is grayscale, use a deep navy or charcoal (#1A2332 is a good neutral).

Accent color

Secondary color used for highlights, badges, and conversion moments (lead captured, booking confirmed). Should contrast strongly with your primary color.

If your brand has a “signal green” or “highlight orange,” that’s your accent. If your brand is monochromatic, pick a complementary color from outside your palette — accent’s job is to signal, so it doesn’t need to match.

Dark mode (optional)

Enterprise plans can configure a separate dark-mode color set. The portal detects the visitor’s OS preference and switches automatically. If you don’t configure dark mode, the portal stays in light mode for everyone.

Email branding

From-name

The display name on every email sent from your portal. Defaults to your agency name. Change it if you want emails to come from a specific persona — “Sara at Smith Marketing” — instead of the agency name.

The from-address ([email protected] by default) stays the same. To customize the sending domain too, you need a DNS-verified custom domain — that’s Enterprise-tier and requires support to set up. For most agencies, the default address works fine; clients pay attention to the from-name, not the from-address.

Email signature

A free-text block that gets appended to the bottom of every system email. Use it for legal disclaimers, contact info, or unsubscribe instructions specific to your agency.

Plain text only. Markdown is rendered for basic formatting (bold, italics, links). Avoid HTML.

Custom subdomain (Enterprise)

By default, clients access their portal at portal.captivar.com/login. For agencies who want to remove every visible trace of Captivar, Enterprise plans support a custom subdomain — dashboard.youragency.com, clients.youragency.com, whatever you prefer.

The setup:

1. Pick the subdomain. On the Branding page, scroll to “Custom subdomain” and enter the subdomain you want to use. Captivar will display the DNS record you need to create.

2. Add a CNAME record at your DNS provider. Point your subdomain to portal.captivar.com using a CNAME record. The exact configuration depends on your provider (Cloudflare, Route53, Namecheap, etc.). Most propagate within 5 minutes; some take up to 24 hours.

3. Click “Verify” on the Branding page. Captivar checks the DNS, provisions an SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt, and configures routing. The whole process takes 5-10 minutes once DNS propagates.

4. Update your client communication. Once verified, your portal URL becomes https://dashboard.youragency.com (or whatever you chose). All future emails reference the new URL. Old links to portal.captivar.com continue to work — they just redirect.

Live preview

At the bottom of the Branding page, a live preview pane renders a portal mockup with your current settings applied. Hover any UI element to see the underlying color variable. Use the preview to validate contrast, hierarchy, and overall feel before committing.

Three things to check in the preview:

• Logo visibility — does it read clearly against the header background?
• Button readability — is the primary-color button text legible (white on the button, dark on the background)?
• Accent prominence — does the accent color signal without overpowering?

If anything looks off, adjust and the preview updates immediately.

What clients see — a walk-through

Once branding is applied, a client logs into their portal and experiences:

1. The login page at dashboard.youragency.com/login (or portal.captivar.com/login if no custom subdomain). Background tinted with your primary color, agency logo at the top, “Sign in to [Agency Name]” header.
2. A welcome email when they were invited, branded with your logo and from-name.
3. The portal dashboard scoped to their site, navigation in your primary color, accent on conversion moments.
4. Lead notification emails with your logo, your color palette, your from-name.
5. The weekly Catch Report branded throughout.
6. The booking page with your logo at the top, your primary color on the slot picker, your accent on confirmation.

Captivar’s brand does not appear anywhere a client touches. Captivar is the platform; your agency is the brand.

When to apply branding

Most agencies wait until their first or second client is onboarded to configure branding. Three reasons:

• You learn faster from a real client. What works in the abstract often looks wrong with a real logo and real color values. Iterate after seeing it live.
• Branding feels finished, so do the work first. A branded portal with no leads on it looks worse than an unbranded portal full of activity. Get the activity first; brand on top of it.
• Pricing alignment. Branding lives on the Agency tier ($249/mo). Most agencies upgrade to Agency once they’re confident in the platform, which is usually around their first paying client.

If you’re already on Agency or Enterprise from day one, brand whenever you want. There’s no operational reason to delay — it’s just rarely the first thing that needs doing.

What happens next

Team is set up, branding is applied. The remaining setup-tier doc covers billing — plans, payments, upgrades, and what to do if a payment fails. That’s next.