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White label vs franchising: Which model is right for your mobility business?

🛵 Thinking about launching a mobility business? One key decision can shape your entire growth path: go with a franchise or build your own brand with a white label solution. 🔍 This guide breaks down the pros and cons of each model – and shows how you can even grow your own partner network under your brand with ATOM Mobility’s white label platform.

April 25, 2025

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White label vs franchising: Which model is right for your mobility business?

Starting a new mobility business comes with many decisions, but one of the most important is choosing the right model for growth. Whether you're thinking about launching an electric scooter fleet, a ride-hailing app, or car sharing in your city, there are two main paths to consider: joining a franchise or building your own brand using a white label solution.

Both models offer clear benefits – and both have downsides. What works best depends on your goals, experience, and long-term vision.

What is franchising in mobility?

Franchising means joining an existing brand and operating under their name, systems, and technology. For example, a local taxi fleet might become a Bolt ride-hailing partner, gaining access to Bolt's technology, user base, and reputation. Similarly, in the micromobility space, some brands allow local entrepreneurs to launch electric scooter or bike-sharing services as franchisees.

This model is popular because it can significantly reduce the time and effort needed to launch. Instead of developing your own technology, brand, marketing strategy, and operational systems, you get a package, a “ready to use” business, from a brand that already knows the ropes.

Franchising: Pros and cons

The main advantage of franchising is speed and simplicity. You don’t need to build everything from scratch. You operate under a recognized name, which can make marketing easier. Often, you also get operational support and a clear playbook to follow.

But there are also downsides. As a franchisee, you don’t fully control the brand, customers and the technology. You may have limited flexibility to experiment or adapt the service to your local needs. Franchise fees or revenue sharing models can also reduce your profit margin. And if the brand suffers reputational issues elsewhere, it can impact your local business – even if you’re doing everything right.

Real-world examples of successful micromobility franchises:

LEVY, an US-based electric scooter-sharing company, has successfully expanded through a franchise model by partnering with local operators across USA. Entrepreneurs can launch and operate Levy-branded services in their cities, leveraging LEVY’s tested software, hardware, and operational know-how. This model has helped LEVY scale quickly while maintaining a consistent brand and service quality.

Nextbike, based in Germany, is one of the world’s leading public bike-sharing providers. It works with cities and franchise-like partners to operate local services under the Nextbike brand. These partners handle operations on the ground, such as maintenance and customer service, while benefiting from Nextbike’s established platform, brand, and international experience. With a presence in over 300 cities, it’s a clear example of how a micromobility business can scale through distributed partnerships.

What is white label in mobility?

A white label solution allows you to launch your own mobility platform – under your own brand – using someone else's ready-made technology. This means you can create a ride-hailing app, car-sharing service, or scooter fleet that looks and feels 100% yours, but without needing to build the software from scratch.

If you’re not familiar with how white label works, here’s a good explanation.

With white label, you take ownership of your brand and operations, while leveraging reliable, tested software that’s been used in dozens of markets. You’re not just a local operator – you’re the brand owner.

White label: Pros and cons

The biggest benefit of a white label approach is independence. You control the brand, the marketing, pricing, partnerships, everything. You can build a unique business that reflects your vision and local market needs. There’s no revenue sharing or ongoing franchise fees.

However, white label also means more responsibility. You have to manage marketing, customer support, local partnerships, and operations yourself. While the software is provided, the business is yours to run. It requires more involvement but also brings more potential reward.

3 reasons to choose your own white label platform

Complete control over everything: Unlike a franchise, where key decisions are made by its owner, you’re in charge of everything - from choosing the name, branding to allocating budgets and setting up a supply chain.
Flexible operations: There’s no universal solution that works equally well for all entrepreneurs. By starting your own project, you can better adapt to the local market needs, customer requests, and even changes in legislation. To launch a new app feature or adjust pricing, you won’t have to go through layers of approvals - you are the only decision-maker.
Faster growth opportunities: For example, by attracting investments, launching crowdfunding, increasing your fleet, making additional investments in advertising, or even launching your own franchise.

Choosing the right model for your mobility business

If you want a fast, low-risk way to enter the market with support and clear systems, franchising may be a good fit – especially if you’re new to mobility or want to test the waters.

If you want to build a long-term business under your own brand, with full control and higher potential margins, white label is likely the better option. It gives you room to grow and adapt without being tied to someone else’s rules.

Many successful businesses start with white label software to speed up their launch, then focus on building a strong local brand and user base. Over time, this approach can offer more strategic freedom and better returns.

You can even build your own franchise using ATOM white label

One advantage of choosing a white label provider like ATOM Mobility is that you’re not just building for yourself. With ATOM’s platform, you can also expand by inviting partners to operate under your brand in other cities or regions.

This means that you can launch as an independent operator and, over time, create your own franchise-style network. ATOM’s software allows you to add partners to your platform, assign them specific territories, limit access to data, and manage operations from one central system. Your partners operate under your brand – and you stay in control of the bigger picture.

This is exactly how several of our clients have grown. They started locally, proved the model, then expanded by partnering with others – all without giving up their brand or independence.

Both franchising and white label are valid ways to launch a mobility business, and both come with clear advantages. But if your goal is long-term brand ownership, flexibility, and the ability to scale on your own terms, white label is often the smarter path.

With ATOM Mobility’s platform, you can launch fast, operate efficiently, and even build your own network of partners under your brand – creating a franchise model that works for you.

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New product, new business opportunities - flexible subscriptions

Following the global trend of subscription based businesses and popularity of subscriptions in the micro-mobility space, ATOM Mobility introduces a new product - Subscriptions. Last summer Lime expanded its scooter subscription service LimePass to include daily and monthly passes. A monthly pass with five rides a day would cost around $16.99 and 10 rides a day for $29.99. It was only the beginning of a trend as other operators like Voi and Helbiz also launched their subscription offering and in some countries this type of offer is getting good traction.

March 3, 2021

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Following the global trend of subscription based businesses and popularity of subscriptions in the micro-mobility space, ATOM Mobility introduces a new product - Subscriptions. Last summer Lime expanded its scooter subscription service LimePass to include daily and monthly passes. A monthly pass with five rides a day would cost around $16.99 and 10 rides a day for $29.99. It was only the beginning of a trend as other operators like Voi and Helbiz also launched their subscription offering and in some countries this type of offer is getting good traction.

Subscription offering is not stopping there with subscription based car rentals getting more popularity. Companies like Audi (Audi Select), Lexus (Lexus Complete Subscription), Porsche (Drive) and Sixt (Sixt+) are offering access to vehicles on a monthly subscription basis. This trend opens a completely new market for startups such as Borrow and Revolve. These companies are offering flexibility in choosing the car for a flat monthly fee with no long-term commitments.

Following this technological change in the market, ATOM Mobility is happy to support different types of businesses - does not matter if a subscription is just a nice-to-have feature in your vehicle sharing business or the whole business model relies on subscriptions only.

Now you can offer unlimited access to vehicles that users can rent using subscriptions. Popular subscription types include daily, weekly, and monthly passes. Set daily limits such as unlocks, ride minutes, pause minutes, and ride distance that are included in the subscriptions. Set an appealing price and watch your users benefit from this offer! You can create various types of subscriptions, launch them at any time and see statistics regarding the purchases and usage of the subscriptions, all from one place - ATOM dashboard.

First, ATOM Mobility launched the subscriptions feature in December 2020 adding significant improvements in January and February and planning to add even more features to this product in the future.

Interested to learn more about our subscription offering? Reach out to our sales team.

About ATOM Mobility

ATOM Mobility provides reliable and proven white label technology helping companies to launch and scale shared mobility platforms. Now serving customers in over 20 countries worldwide.

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New partnership: Instant ID and driver licence verification powered by Veriff

With the growing number of shared scooters, bikes, mopeds and cars on our street, fraud-prevention and ID verification problems become highly important. Recently, several European cities required local operators to verify user identity even for shared kick-scooters. This may be a hard and time-consuming process, but not with Veriff.

Handbook: How to launch your scooter and bike sharing operations before summer 2021

Summer season in Europe is approaching - it is exactly the best time for most companies and entrepreneurs to enter the shared micromobility market. We have put together a useful handbook for everyone who still plans to start operations before Summer 2021. Yes, you still have time and using our guidelines you can be ready to launch in 1-3 months even if at the moment you have just the idea.

👉 How to launch a vehicle sharing business in 6 steps

Millennials and younger generations tend to be reluctant to buy items. Instead, they prefer to have access to products via different sharing models. “25 years from now, car sharing will be the norm, and car ownership an anomaly,” says author and economist Jeremy Rifkin in the latest Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research.

December 10, 2020

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Millennials and younger generations tend to be reluctant to buy items. Instead, they prefer to have access to products via different sharing models. “25 years from now, car sharing will be the norm, and car ownership an anomaly,” says author and economist Jeremy Rifkin in the latest Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research.

What we experience in Atom Mobility - a vehacle sharing software platform that can be adjusted to any sharing model and type of vehicle - is that people of any age are willing to share vehicles they own. From cars to e-scooters and even forklifts. Moreover, people are willing to start their own businesses based on sharing.

This will be a practical guide for those who are seriously considering starting a sharing business. As this business niche isn’t new, a lot of people have suffered bumps during the launch process and have learned their lessons. Atom Mobility has collected them and created a practical guide highlighting what you should consider when you are considering entering the vehicle sharing business.

🛴 Choose the vehicle type and operation model

This seems like a simple decision, but it’s not. Currently, the most popular vehicles for sharing are bikes and e-bikes, scooters, e-mopeds and cars. If you already own a fleet, then the offering will be obvious. If not, you’ll have to start by calculating which vehicle type you can afford. Here is some meaningful insight into the difference between launching a vehicle sharing business with scooters, e-bikes, and mopeds. By the way, the brand is not important. The most important parameter that can later reduce maintenance costs is the quality of the IoT system fitted into the vehicle and, of course, the quality of the vehicle itself.

You will need a minimum of 50-100 vehicles to start your business. Accordingly, you can calculate the amount of the initial investment you require. Obviously, car sharing requires way more money than creating a bike fleet of 100 vehicles. However, leasing is also an option. In addition, you have to do the market research, because your success depends on demand - if there are already two or three companies in town offering e-scooters, you will have to invest a lot of money on marketing to persuade people to use your services instead those of your competitors. So you should probably consider choosing another type of vehicle to establish a point of difference and thus secure competitive advantage.

When you start to do your calculations, start with the vehicle price. From one perspective, this is the easiest part, but it is very important to calculate:

● How many rides should be taken with one vehicle during the day for it to be profitable? For example, take a look at this Shared Mobility Report from France. It might help you to get an impression of the demand and fragmentation of the market.

● What is the value of one ride? Bear in mind that the price per ride in a car is approximately three times higher than on a bike, but so are the expenditures.

● What is the structure of your costs? You have to insure every vehicle. Taxes have to be paid and vehicles have got to be inspected from time to time. Are all these positions included in your cost estimate? By the way, this is a great resource with an Excel table showing how market leaders estimate their income and expenses.

The next decision to make regards the sharing model. Currently, there are several on the market that have demonstrated proven value:

● Charging stations - there are charging stations all over the city. When the ride ends, the vehicle is left at a charging station and it is charged in readiness for the next time it is going to be used. Although this approach can create significant additional costs, it lowers everyday servicing costs.

● Free-floating vehicles - shared vehicles can be left wherever it is convenient for the customer. The city council may not be happy with it as this model sometimes clutters up the streets. So you should definitely check out whether there are any existing regulations in this regard before you launch this model.

● B2B or corporate vehicle sharing - the company owns the fleet that can be used by their employees. This is quite a secure way to run your business, but you will need to sell it to other SMEs which is not an easy task and requires significant sales resources and expertise.

● P2P sharing - anyone can register a vehicle on the platform, which can be rented by any other user. This may seem easy, but it is actually quite complicated, because the owner is putting his property on the platform which he wants to get back in the same condition as it was before. As a sharing service provider, how can you guarantee that the vehicle won’t be broken? You should run background check on users, as well as have insurance in case anything happens.

You can also read more about different operational models here.

🏢 Check the city regulations

In recent years both the demand and offering for ridesharing have grown to such an extent that cities have been forced to regulate this business sector. If you are planning to operate within city limits, you’ll definitely have to check out the relevant legislation.

Regulations may be in place that have been set by the City Council. So the first thing to find out is - is vehicle sharing allowed at all? In cities with high vehicle ridesharing service and density, the city council might organize tenders to identify which companies can provide the most appropriate ridesharing service. Other requirements for companies might also apply, so you should monitor this situation carefully.

As far as density is concerned, there’s no point in creating a new ridesharing business if the vehicle density is already more than 700 shared vehicles per 100,000 people. If the ratio is one shared vehicle per 100 - 140 people, very careful calculations should be done as it could signal that the market is overcrowded so demand might be low.

💰 Consider all costs

Every business plan starts with an Excel sheet. As always, it is not possible to predict all costs but you can sneak peek into existing companies and take a look at their cost structure. You should take the following items into account:

● Maintenance costs - every vehicle now and then will have to be repaired.

● Vehicle purchase and depreciation costs - you need to know after how many kilometres you are going to have to replace your existing vehicle with a new one.

● Charging costs – you will need a team to take care of vehicle charging. Of course, costs will differ depending on the ridesharing model, but there are going to be charging costs in some shape or form.

● Bank commissions and payment transaction costs - even if you haven’t used credit to buy vehicles, your bank will still charge you commission for its services. If you use Stripe, Adyen, or a similar payment operator, you should take into account additional costs for every transaction.

● Marketing - it is vital to go loud upon launch so that everyone notices the new company in town. This requires a sizable marketing budget. If you decide to use promo codes, free rides, and other bonuses to attract new customers, this will reduce your profit margin on a certain amount of rides.

● Customer support - customers always have questions, which they will ask via Messenger, phone or any other platform. You have to have a team in place that can provide answers right away.

● IT system support - it is crucial that the service is up and running all the time. And there are a lot of different parts involved starting from software to IoT systems and data.

● Additional costs - always leave space for unplanned costs. The industry average is approximately 3 - 5% per ride.

At this point, you are ready to start to talk to manufacturers, haggle about prices, and ask them to send you a vehicle for a test. You should not forget to discuss the prices and delivery policy of spare parts, in order to avoid unplanned downtime.

🤑 Financing options

If you already own a company and see ridesharing as an additional direction in the development of your business, then most likely you will be ready to invest in its launch. If not, and you are planning to start a new company, the first thing to consider is how can you launch a test? The idea of a vehicle sharing business alone will not be enough to attract investors or convince banks to give you a loan. You will always have to prove that this business can really take you somewhere in this particular place. And a successful test with a small number of vehicles could be good proof.

You could consider crowdfunding as an option if you want to get some seed capital. Consider choosing the most popular platforms like Spark Crowdfunding, Seedrs, Fuderbeam, or Crowdcube. They are so interested in your success that they will also put their effort into marketing your campaign on their channels. This is your opportunity to make some savings on your marketing expenditures, which will definitely benefit you later on.

🛵 Plan fleet management

So far so good. You have a plan and a budget, so what’s next? Now you have to put your fleet management system on paper:

● Maintenance and charging - at the end of each day you are going to have to check the condition of every vehicle. Does it need to be charged? Is everything working smoothly or do some details need to be changed? This everyday care usually “eats” 30 - 40% of overall costs.

● Spare parts - you should be ready to spend about 10% of the total value of the vehicle on spare parts. In addition, you should have a proper warehouse. Losing 30% of the fleet for three months due to a spare parts’ shortage is a nightmare for any business.

● People on the streets - your company will require two employees per 100 vehicles to inspect and collect them. So estimate their salaries. Remember that these people won’t have regular working hours. They might charge you overtime for work at night. And another thing to consider is how they are going to get about the city. If the vehicle is broken, how are they going to be able to take it to be serviced?

● Customer support - no matter how mature the market is - your customers will always have questions. Who’s going to answer them? Remember that customer reviews create a rating that builds the further success of the company.

As the ridesharing business is becoming more popular, you should probably consider outsourcing the vehicle service. There are new companies on the market that focus on servicing vehicle sharing platforms.

📈 Build your marketing strategy

Marketing starts with the brand. You have to decide whether you’re going to hire a marketing agency or work with the designers and marketers yourself. Either way, you will need a brand name, logo, web page, and corporate colours.

Our experience shows that the success of the launch event is a bridge to the future success of the vehicle sharing company. So it is really worth focusing your attention on the big bang at the beginning. It is crucial to get as many downloads during the first days of the operation as possible. Even if not everyone uses your service straight away, you will have a database of potential customers with whom you can work, for example, by sending push notifications - consider using Intercom or Mailchimp for this.

Oftentimes collaboration with influencers is a good channel to use. And local media are interested in vehicle sharing businesses entering the city. But never forget social media - it is the most appropriate channel for marketing, as well as quick responses to customer requests.

Now sit back, relax and enjoy your amazing results… 😆 No, the vehicle sharing business doesn’t work that way. During the first month you will have to put a lot of your effort and the effort of the whole team into adapting your initial plan to real life. The first season is usually full of experiments and failures, but the most rewarding part of this business is the opportunity to scale.

👍 ATOM Mobility is here to help you with all the challenges you will face. ATOM Mobility provides reliable and proven white label technology helping entrepreneurs to focus on marketing and operations. Now serving customers in over 15 countries worldwide. Check what our customers are saying: Story of Ride, Story of Qick, Story of GOON