How long it takes to build a website depends on three decisions you've probably already made.

The short answer

A simple landing page takes 1–2 weeks. A startup marketing site (5–15 pages) takes 3–5 weeks. A full corporate site or ecommerce build takes 6–12 weeks. A web app takes 3–9 months. Those numbers assume a competent studio, decisions made on time, and copy ready or being written in parallel.

Outside those bands, something's wrong. Either the scope is bigger than you think, or the studio is over-promising, or someone on your side is going to delay it.

Timelines by project type

Project type	Realistic timeline	Total work hours
Single landing page	1–2 weeks	30–60 hrs
Startup / SaaS marketing site (5–15 pages)	3–5 weeks	80–180 hrs
Corporate / brand site (15–30 pages)	6–12 weeks	200–450 hrs
Ecommerce store (Shopify / custom)	6–14 weeks	220–600 hrs
Full rebrand + new site	8–16 weeks	350–700 hrs
Web application / SaaS product MVP	12–36 weeks	600–2,500 hrs
Enterprise multilingual site	16–24 weeks	800–1,800 hrs

For reference: Clutch's June 2026 data shows the average web development project at agencies takes 9 months end-to-end. That number is pulled up by enterprise builds. The median project, a typical startup site, clusters at 4–6 weeks.

The three decisions that set your timeline

Before any studio quotes a date, three decisions you've made already determine 80% of the timeline.

1. Is your copy ready?

This is the single biggest variable. A site with finished, approved copy ships 30–50% faster than one being written in parallel. If you're writing copy as design happens, you create a circular dependency where neither side can finalize.

Most agencies will tell you copy is "needed by week 2" and then quietly delay the project when it doesn't show up. Honest agencies build copy into the scope or quote it as a separate line item ($300–$800 per page).

2. Who has approval authority?

A site approved by one founder ships fast. A site approved by a founder, a head of marketing, two investors, and a brand committee takes three to four times longer. This isn't a guess, PMI's Pulse of the Profession found that 52% of projects experience scope creep, mostly from late-stage stakeholders adding requirements.

Decide before kickoff: one person owns the final yes. Everyone else gets advisory input by a fixed date. Without that, a 5-week project becomes 12.

3. How custom is the design?

Templated build = 1–2 weeks. Custom design with bespoke layouts, illustrations, motion, and a design system = 4–8 weeks just for the design phase. Both are valid. They're different products at different price points. What's not valid is paying templated prices and expecting custom timelines, or vice versa.

Week-by-week breakdown of a typical startup site

Here's what a real 5-week Plinth Accelerator project looks like, day by day, so you know what to expect.

Week 1: Discovery and direction

Kickoff call, brand audit, competitive review, content inventory. We pull the copy you've written, identify gaps, and align on the homepage hero direction before any pixels move. End of week 1: you've seen mood boards and approved the visual direction.

Week 2: Design

Homepage design first (the page that does the most work), then inner page templates. Two design rounds typical. End of week 2: homepage approved, inner page templates approved, full design system locked.

Week 3: Development

Build out in Next.js + Vercel (or Webflow if that's the right call). Component-based, design system means most pages share infrastructure, so page 8 is faster than page 2. End of week 3: staging site live, mobile responsive, all pages built.

Week 4: Polish and integration

CMS hooked up. CRM / form integrations wired. SEO meta, schema, sitemap, OG images. Animations layered in. QA across browsers and devices. End of week 4: staging site is production-ready, you're doing final review.

Week 5: Launch

Final revisions. DNS swap. Analytics installed. Monitoring set up. Loom walkthrough of the CMS so you can edit anything yourself. Site goes live.

If the project runs longer than 5 weeks, it's almost always because of one of two things: copy slipped or an approval got stuck. Both are fixable if caught early.

What slows projects down (the real list)

Industry research backs this up. MoldStud and ProductiveIO data shows that 62% of project overruns are caused by scope creep, and 70% of delays come from mismanaged requirements. Here's what that actually looks like on a website project.

Content delays (#1 cause, by far)

Studio asks for copy on day 7. Founder sends 60% of it on day 14. Final pages arrive on day 28. Project that should have shipped in 5 weeks ships in 8.

Fix: write the copy before the project starts, or pay the agency to write it. Don't try to do it in parallel.

Slow approvals

Studio sends design Friday. Founder reviews Tuesday. Studio sends revision Thursday. Founder reviews Monday. Each cycle eats 3–5 days of dead time. Six cycles = three weeks of nothing happening.

Fix: commit to 24-hour review turnaround. Block calendar time for reviews. Don't let weekends absorb cycles.

Mid-project scope additions

"Can we add a careers page?" "We just hired a designer who has thoughts on the hero." "Let's add a podcast section." Each one extends the project by 3–7 days and breaks the momentum.

Fix: write a strict change-order policy into the contract. New scope = new line item, new date. Most studios will do this if you ask.

Committee approvals

Three stakeholders with veto power means design rounds become political. Whoever talked last wins. Designs get pushed in different directions by different people, and you end up with a site nobody loves.

Fix: one decision-maker. Period. Others advise, one person decides.

Vague brief

"Make it modern and clean" gives a designer nothing to work with. They guess, you reject, repeat. A studio shouldn't have to guess at your brand direction, but if your brief is vague, it does.

Fix: spend two hours before kickoff documenting three sites you love and three you hate, with one sentence each on why.

Tooling decisions deferred

"Let's pick the CMS later." "We'll figure out the CRM after launch." These decisions affect architecture. Deferring them means rebuilding chunks of the site once they're made.

Fix: lock all tooling decisions in week 1. Webflow vs WordPress vs Next.js. HubSpot vs Pipedrive. Plausible vs Google Analytics. Decide upfront.

The single biggest unlock

If you can ship the copy and pick one decision-maker before kickoff, you cut 30–40% off the timeline. Every studio knows this. Few say it out loud because it sounds like the project is the client's responsibility (which it partly is).

Rush timelines, what's actually possible

Sometimes you need a site faster than the standard timeline. Here's the honest math.

A standard 5-week Accelerator project can compress to 3 weeks at +25% cost if copy is ready, design references are clear, and there's one decision-maker. The studio runs parallel design + dev tracks. You commit to 12-hour review windows.

Below 3 weeks for a real custom site, the math breaks. You're paying for senior people to work nights and weekends, and quality compromises start showing up. We'd rather decline the project than ship something that hurts our portfolio.

For a single landing page, 48-hour delivery is possible at a premium ($1,500–$3,000) but only for templated or near-templated work. Anything truly custom needs the full 5–10 day cycle.

The 4-week checkpoint every project should have

By the end of week 4 of any standard 5-week project, you should be able to answer yes to all of these:

• Staging site is live and you've reviewed every page
• Mobile is working across iPhone, Android, and tablets
• All copy is final (no more "we'll fix that later")
• CMS is connected and you can edit at least one page yourself
• Integrations (CRM, analytics, forms) are tested with real data
• SEO meta and OG images are in place
• Launch checklist exists with owner and date for each item

If three or more of those are no, the project is at risk. A good studio flags this proactively. A bad one waits until week 5 and then explains why launch is slipping to week 8.

Comparison: Plinth vs typical builds

How realistic timelines compare across the market.

Studio type	5-page marketing site	10-page SaaS site	Why the difference
Fiverr / Upwork freelancer	1–3 weeks	3–8 weeks (high variance)	Often templated; single point of failure
Independent freelancer	3–6 weeks	6–10 weeks	One person, sequential work, slower iteration
Plinth	2–3 weeks	4–5 weeks	Component-based, parallel tracks, named senior on every project
Mid-tier agency	6–10 weeks	10–16 weeks	Account management overhead, junior execution
Enterprise agency	12–20 weeks	16–28 weeks	Multi-team coordination, multiple approval layers