VeloCMS Setup Guide for Agencies
Multi-client blogs, white-label setups, and project-based publishing — how agencies use VeloCMS to manage content across client accounts.
This guide is for digital agencies, content agencies, and freelancers managing blogs for multiple clients. VeloCMS's multi-tenant architecture means each client gets their own isolated blog instance — separate content, separate domain, separate branding — all managed from one Agency account. Here's how to set it up efficiently.
Understanding the multi-tenant model
When you're on the Agency plan, you can provision new tenant blogs from your main admin panel. Each tenant is a fully isolated VeloCMS instance: its own PocketBase database, its own theme, its own custom domain, its own media library. Your clients never see each other's data — not because of permissions, but because their data lives in separate databases. This isolation also means you can give clients admin access to their own instance without worrying about them accidentally touching another client's content.
Pick the right theme per client
Each tenant can have a different theme. The theme selection is part of your onboarding flow for each new client. Agency Solid is the white-label-ready theme — it ships with no VeloCMS branding by default and a neutral design system that's easy to customize with a client's brand colors via the theme preset JSON. For clients who want something more opinionated, Firefly is a warm, editorial-magazine aesthetic that works well for lifestyle and brand blogs. For SaaS clients who want their blog to look like a product marketing site, SaaS Hub with the full-page-builder toolkit is the right starting point.
Page builder essentials for agency clients
For client blogs, the page builder is your handoff tool — you set up the initial page structure, the client maintains it. The key is to use a minimal, maintainable layout. A Hero block, a Featured Posts grid, and a footer Newsletter Signup block covers 90% of what a blog homepage needs. Avoid building complex multi-column layouts that the client will break during content updates. The simpler the layout, the less support overhead. Document which blocks are on which pages in a handoff note — clients forget this faster than you'd expect.
Content strategy for agency-managed blogs
Agency-managed blogs usually have one of two publishing models: the agency writes everything (ghostwriting arrangement), or the client writes and the agency edits and publishes. VeloCMS supports both. For ghostwriting, you can create posts as drafts and hand them off to the client for review before publishing. For a client-writes model, give the client an admin account on their tenant and keep your own admin account for QA and publishing. Scheduled publishing is useful in both cases — it lets you maintain a consistent cadence without being online at the moment a post needs to go live.
Billing arrangements vary. Some agencies charge a monthly retainer that includes content production plus the VeloCMS hosting cost. Others pass the VeloCMS subscription cost to the client directly. The Agency plan supports both models: you can add clients to your account (and absorb their cost into your retainer) or provision them their own separate accounts (and they pay VeloCMS directly). The second model has less overhead for you but requires the client to manage their own billing.
Plugins to enable across client accounts
Plausible or Fathom Analytics are the sensible choices for client blogs — both give you clean monthly reports to put in client-facing decks without the complexity of GA4. The SEO Schema Extender plugin is worth enabling on every client blog regardless of niche — it adds structured data that improves search visibility with zero ongoing maintenance. If any client is in e-commerce, enable the Pricing Calculator plugin to give their product pages a quote-generation flow. For clients running local businesses, the Contact Form Pro plugin integrates with their existing CRM or email — important for converting blog readers to leads.
Migration path
Most agency clients arrive from WordPress. VeloCMS's WordPress importer at Admin > Migrate handles WXR files — the standard WordPress export format. For large WordPress sites (500+ posts), recommend exporting in chunks by year rather than one monolithic export; the importer handles large files but the browser may time out on extremely large WXR files. Plan 2–4 hours for migration, redirect setup, and QA on a medium-sized WordPress blog. Document the old URL structure before migration so you can set up redirects correctly — SEO equity follows the redirects, not the content.
Next steps
- Connecting a custom domain — per-client domain setup and SSL provisioning
- Migrating from WordPress — the WXR import playbook for agency migrations
- Setting up reader memberships — if any client wants paid content tiers
- API tokens and webhooks — integrating VeloCMS with client CRMs and marketing stacks