Website Development for Startups

Two mistakes come up again and again. The first is overbuilding: months spent on a custom site before the company knows which customers it is really for. The second is neglect: a template site from launch week that no longer matches the product and still lists features that were cut.

Both leave the site out of step with the business. Investors, candidates and buyers all visit it, and each judges the company partly on whether it looks current and clear.

For most startups we suggest keeping the marketing site on a visual platform such as Webflow, so marketers and founders can ship pages themselves, while the product lives in its own codebase. If the product is web-based and still needs building, that is a separate web app development project with its own scope.

Some teams prefer a framework like Next.js for the marketing site because their engineers already work in it. That is reasonable when an engineer owns it, but it pushes every copy change back into the development queue. We talk through who will maintain the site before anything is decided.

Runway matters, so the terms are simple. A site build is a one-off project with a fixed quote in writing, and builds start at $1,000. The quote spells out pages, components, integrations and revisions, so no surprise invoice lands in the middle of a raise.

If you want a development partner on hand after launch for new pages, experiments and SEO, monthly plans start at $1,000 a month. They run month to month without a minimum term, and 7 days' written notice ends them. Platform subscriptions are billed by their providers, and the site, content, data and creative all belong to your company. For a fuller breakdown, see website development pricing, or read about outsourced website development if you would rather hand off the whole build.