We sat down with Edward Li, Tech Lead on the AI team at Sunrun, the largest residential solar company in America. Edward leads the machine learning and modeling efforts, and he shared how his team is using Brand.dev to give affiliates and partners a more personalized, on-brand experience inside Sunrun's portals.
About Sunrun
Sunrun has built its reputation as the nation's leader in residential solar. Their footprint stretches across multiple states, and they work with a wide network of affiliate installers and funding partners which means that portals play a big role in keeping all of these partners connected and supported.
But despite their scale and success, Edward and his team noticed a gap. The portals worked well, but they often felt too generic. Affiliates wanted something more familiar, something that reflected their own brand identity when they logged in.
The Challenge
That raised the key question: how could Sunrun make each portal experience feel unique to the partner using it? Affiliates weren't just looking for functionality. They wanted their logos, their colors, and their typography consistently applied across the platform.
Edward's team explored other solutions, but most were heavy, unreliable, or simply too much effort to maintain. They needed a way to deliver personalization that was simple, accurate, and scalable.
Where Brand.dev Stepped In
That is where Brand.dev made the difference. With a straightforward API integration, Sunrun was able to:
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Make affiliate portals feel personal from the start: As soon as a partner logs in, Brand.dev applies their logos, brand colors, and typography styles automatically.
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Get typography right with font extraction: Instead of default fonts that felt off-brand, Brand.dev detects and applies each partner's actual style so headers, buttons, and body text look familiar.
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Scale personalization without scaling effort: One integration powers affiliates across multiple states, reducing engineering overhead while making the experience better for every partner.
Edward told us this instantly raised the bar for affiliate experiences. Instead of showing up to a portal that looked like every other, partners now log in and see something that feels like their own.
The Integration Experience
When we asked Edward about what it was like to get up and running, his answer was simple:
"We've taken a look at some alternatives, but Brand.dev was easy to integrate and seamless to work with. It was pretty straightforward to connect to the API and start seeing results right away."
The Payoff
With Brand.dev in place, Sunrun has turned its affiliate portals into something more than just functional tools. They are now personalized experiences that build trust and reduce friction.
- Affiliates onboard faster
- Portals reflect each partner's branding from day one
- Engineering teams spend less time maintaining design infrastructure
For Sunrun, the integration was a subtle change but an important win. Edward summed it up best:
"Personalization no longer feels like a side project. It is simply built into the way affiliates experience Sunrun."