Website for SaaS startups: a site for a product that is still changing

en 2026-09-26 7 min read

For a SaaS product that is still changing, start with step 01, a single landing page at EUR 600 to 900 built in 1 to 2 weeks, or step 02, a mini-site of 2 to 3 pages with a basic CMS at EUR 900 to 1.500 over 2 to 3 weeks. Step 03, a business website at EUR 1.500 to 3.500, is worth buying once your positioning stops moving, and not before.

Why a small site now beats a big site later

Your homepage headline is a guess about how strangers describe their own problem. Until it is live, you only test it on people who already know you, and they are poor judges because they have heard you explain it. A page with one form gives strangers the chance to ignore you, which is information you cannot get any other way.

A live page is also a link: something a design partner can forward to a colleague, or someone you met at an event can check. "Coming soon" tells a stranger the company is unfinished.

Then there is the cost of being wrong. Pivot after step 01 and you rewrite one page. Pivot after a seven page site with use case pages and a comparison page, and you are paying to redesign pages about a product you no longer sell.

What a changing product does to a site

The expensive part of a SaaS marketing site is not the design. It is everything that describes the product as it is today, because that is what goes stale.

• A screenshot is a promise about what the interface looks like right now, and every release breaks it a little. Cropped details, simple drawings of the workflow, or images you can swap yourself in the CMS age better than a full capture of your dashboard.
• Describe the problem and the outcome rather than the features. Those change more slowly, and a grid of feature tiles is one more thing to correct after every release.
• If pricing is not settled, keep it in one place you can edit. A price repeated on three pages will eventually be wrong on one of them.
• The "Start free" button leaves the site and enters your app. Analytics has to follow the visitor across that gap, or you will know who clicked and not who signed up.

That is why step 02 earns its extra cost here. Step 01 has no CMS, so every headline change is a message to us. Step 02 lets you rewrite it yourself.

Which step fits which stage

Every range turns into a fixed quote after scoping. The full ladder, including care and SEO, is on packages.

Keep the marketing site and the app apart

Your product ships when engineering says so. Your homepage should change when marketing says so. Put both in one codebase and a headline edit waits for a release, while a bad release can take the homepage down with it.

The simple arrangement is the site on your main domain and the app on its own subdomain, with login and signup buttons linking across. That keeps the site a step 01, 02 or 03 job. Login, billing and the dashboard belong to the product, and folding them into the site brief is how a EUR 900 decision becomes a EUR 7.500 one.

If your app is built in React or Next.js, build the site the same way so your engineers can change it too. We build in Next.js; more on Next.js development.

How the build runs

Step 01 takes 1 to 2 weeks: a scoping call, a plain statement of who the product is for and what it replaces, then copy, design, build, review and launch. The form and analytics are connected before the page goes live.

Step 02 takes 2 to 3 weeks and adds what a buyer asks for next: pricing, and a way to request a demo. The CMS is set up so the fields you expect to rewrite are the ones you can edit.

Step 03 takes 3 to 6 weeks. The part that waits on you is decisions: which use cases get their own page, which screenshots are final, and who signs off on pricing. Settle those before design starts and 3 to 6 weeks holds. Change the product mid-build and you will feel the stretch. More on design and engineering.

When to spend less

• If you have not yet spoken to people who would pay for the product, do not hire us yet. A form builder and a plain page will collect the same email addresses, and those conversations will tell you what the real page should say.
• If your team has a starter template it can ship without help, use it until the wording stops changing. Pay for design when there is something stable to design around.
• Do not buy step 03 for use case pages you cannot yet write from real customers. An empty use case page does more harm than no page.
• Hold off on SEO growth at EUR 500 to 800 a month until your positioning holds, because ranking for words you may drop is spending on a guess. An SEO foundation at EUR 450 to 750, paid once, is the sensible early move.

There is one case for starting bigger. If your buyers check a vendor's security, terms and company details before agreeing to a call, a single landing page will not carry that. Step 02 is the minimum there.

Questions founders ask before they commit

What happens to the site when we pivot?

That depends on what it touches. New wording on the same structure is an edit: yours with the step 02 CMS, or a small fix under Care at EUR 100 to 300 a month without it. A new audience needing new pages is a redesign, which Care does not cover, priced as the step you are moving to.

Can you build the product as well as the site?

Yes. A smaller web app with logins, a dashboard, an API or payments is step 04 at EUR 3.500 to 7.500 over 6 to 12 weeks. A full platform with auth, billing, admin and deployment is step 05, from EUR 7.500, priced after discovery. Keep the marketing site a separate project so it can go live before the product does.

Who owns the code?

You do. The code, the repository and the database belong to your company, which matters the day your first engineer asks for access. Hosting is agreed per project, and we can host it for you.

Do we need a pricing page before pricing is final?

You need a clear answer to "what does it cost", even if it is "talk to us". A visible price filters out people who will never pay it. If the numbers are still moving, keep them in the CMS and change them as you learn. A changing price does little harm; an out of date one does.

If you can say in two sentences who the product is for and what it replaces, we can tell you which step fits and what it costs. Tell us where the product is today.