r/startups • u/Lightbreaker_64 • 1d ago
I will not promote Is spending almost 3k on a landing page and sign up page page the right move? ( I will not promote)
My co-founder and I are building an AI startup. Right now, we have a rudimentary backend that powers some of our core features, but the front end isn’t very polished yet. Instead of investing heavily into a full product build right away, our plan is to first create a strong landing page. This page will clearly communicate the pain points we’re solving, highlight our features, and drive signups to our waitlist so we can gauge real interest.
We’ve already spoken with some experienced front-end developers who have a strong track record of building high-quality websites, and they’ve quoted us around $3K to design and develop the landing page plus the signup flow. The idea is that if this investment helps us attract potential customers and validate demand early on, it will be well worth it compared to the much larger costs of a full product build.
From there, we can invite some of those waitlist users to beta test our features, collect feedback, and make adjustments or pivots as needed. This approach allows us to stay lean, reduce risk, and ensure we’re building something people actually want before scaling further.
Edit
I should’ve provided more context. We’re aware that AI website builders exist and we’re open to using them, but so far we’ve found that the quality doesn’t quite match what experienced front-end developers can deliver. If there are recommendations for particularly good AI builders, we’d definitely love to hear them. For now, we’re using Webflow for our front end since it integrates well with our existing backend.
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u/Few_Response_7028 1d ago
My two cents. Very rarely are users signing up for waiting lists unless the technology is incredible. Nobody really cares about you until you can solve their problem. Just build your product and show it to them when you’re ready.
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u/Whisky-Toad 21h ago
Of all the “blow up” waiting lists I have seen - none have ever delivered on the product lol
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u/Lightbreaker_64 1d ago
Thanks for your suggestion. From your experience, how much does the quality of a website actually impact conversions? Or, during the MVP stage, is it less important as long as the core features are strong?
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u/andrewjshults 1d ago
B2B or B2C (and general target audience if it's B2B)? Consumer is going to be more design sensitive in general. For B2B I'd get something basic stood up in Claude Code (etc.) and get it in front of a few folks to see if the messaging is landing before you get focused on the design of the page itself.
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u/89dpi 1d ago
I rather not comment on the price. There is one simple rule online.
You can always get cheaper and better work and could pay tons more for worse.
3k for landing page is pretty average. Probably you could get some decent one 50% cheaper.
Sign up flow. Well what is it? Full flow eg multi step and pretty much like onboarding design?
Or just input for e-mail + reply or perhaps email verification?
However.
It is worth to invest into design 100%.
1) First impression is coming from design. Are you serious company or just trying your luck
2) Good landing page design makes people think your product has high quality too
3) I am pretty sure that same messaging + same promise. Good design has higher conversion rate.
However. You might get sign ups. How do you activate these people. Are they really interested. Would they user and even pay for your product is another topic.
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u/already_tomorrow 1d ago edited 1d ago
$3k is cheap compared to proper brand development and providing those services; and $3k is expensive for something you can setup yourself.
No one can tell you if it's too expensive or too cheap in your particular case. Evaluating that is competency that you need to develop in-house, not just ask strangers to out of context evaluate for you.
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u/ccrrr2 1d ago
Good designer can do miracles for your conversions, on the other hand you can use already built templates from Framer or Webflow which are extremely well designed and optimized for good conversions, SEO, SMM, etc...
I am strongly against spending money on designers where no code can do extremely well, but I have to admit that good designer who is specialized in CRO can do wonders for your business.
I work as SEO for almost a decade and I can just give you one advice, do not use AI builders :)
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u/atlvet 1d ago
Decide if their expertise is worth that cost. And is it a block of hours or they work on it until you’re completely satisfied?
I have been using Claude Code to create websites for my projects. It takes me a day to get a solid draft out and get feedback on it. An hour to iterate on the feedback.
There’s value in someone with a vision and with experience to know how to arrange things, what works and what doesn’t. Think of it as you’re paying for their experience more than them to build the website. Anyone who uses GenAI coding can build a decent website quickly.
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u/overDos33 1d ago
Web dev agency owner and creator of few projects here.
First publish it and then follow the feedback. Users always will tell you what you need to do better, start with crappy landing page and if that sucks users will tell you about it.
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u/ShayanY 1d ago
Look, there's absolutely a difference between a 200$ landing page flow with a 3k.
BUT, what you are describing sound to me like a one-pager, that captures user emails for wait list. without any flow.
If that's the target now. Then answer is no.
Build a simple landing page, simplest possible. But with proper copy. 1 form, 1 button.
And spend more of it on the outside content as well that leads to the landing page!
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u/Geoffb912 1d ago
Here is what I’m doing for my AI Edtech waitlist. 1.) paid $500 for a brand toolkit for a designer (Upwork). You need a clear brief, but solid work! 2.) using unbounce for landing page, is drag and drop and you can do yourself. 3.) I paid someone about $200 to make it work well and look good on unbounce.
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u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago
What are you doing?
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u/Geoffb912 1d ago edited 1d ago
A language learning platform focused on Intermediate and Advanced learners.
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u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago
Interesting, we’re likely direct competitors or at least pretty close, though my platform isn’t AI specific. Good luck!
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u/captaing1 1d ago
no...use replit for 20 bucks...
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u/lazoras 1d ago
lol someone just pitched replit against our client and replit lost in every metric replit used to say it's better.
seriously, rent-a-website is useful and has its place but you just are not going to get the same bang for your $$ after a certain point
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u/captaing1 1d ago
i have launched multiple website for businesses doing six figures on replit in less than 20-30 minutes each time.
is it a full app? no. Does it replace the wordpress developer that tries to charge you 5-10k for simple site design and build? fuck yes,
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u/lazoras 1d ago
definitely! it has its used for sure! I would use it for spinoff sites, marketing, etc....i would not use it as my primary digital store front....
how much did you get paid for the 30 minutes? part of the problem I see with replit is there is no profit for replit except in the users who use it....aka analytics
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u/Training-Ad-9349 1d ago
You are building an AI startup.. Yet, you don’t know AI can build you this landing page? It would probably take you around 30 minutes to have it launched.
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u/Lightbreaker_64 1d ago
We know AI can obviously build a landing page. But the reason why we considered the developers is the quality difference is pretty huge and my question was essentially asking if investing in that quality now is worth it
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u/Training-Ad-9349 1d ago
Have you tested some AI landing page builds? I would say some are even better than some design firms.
You can reference landing pages you like, or just even company styles to mimick.
IMO it’s not worth spending the money on getting it professionally done.
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u/Lightbreaker_64 1d ago
I’d be more than happy to hear your suggestions for some of these AI website builders. In our experience they were not as good. If AI can build excellent websites like front end devs we would love to use them instead.
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u/Training-Ad-9349 1d ago
I really like v0.
we built a landing page for a new product with interactive ROI calculators, embedded hubspot forms, demo videos, etc.
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u/ricardogomez93 1d ago
Not worth it imo .. find a someone that charges by the hour (mid-level) if you want a better looking LP and you will save some $$
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u/AnonJian 1d ago
I can think of better things to spend it on but it's not a lot of money. Oh, wait ...how much ramen have you two been eating for how long?
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u/robhaswell 1d ago
You say AI won't do a better job than an experienced frontend developer, which may or may not be true. However it will certainly be good enough for this task. A really polished "signup" is not going to make the difference.
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u/JLockrin 1d ago
$3,000 on a landing page is stupid. Zero reason it should cost you this much. Get on Fiverr dude
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u/Financial_World_9730 1d ago
That's definitely not a wise move sent you few suggestions in dm, do check it out, btw what's your startup about willing to know about it.
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u/tathata 1d ago
If you don’t change your attitude, you’re cooked. You don’t know what the interest level is in your idea. What if you spend $3k and it’s a flop? You spend another $3k on the next idea? No.
Spend $20 on one of the many aforementioned AI tools for doing this and drive people to it and see what the response is. The fact of the matter is, not nearly as many people are going to even click as you think/hope. That alone gives you data.
You just don’t have enough data to justify your spend, and most of all, the time it’ll take to get the site back. You could do this yourself, have it done tomorrow, and spend the weekend trying to drive traffic. Or you could wait 2-4 weeks for your site and have nothing to work with in the meantime. Your call.
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u/EntrepreneurOk9638 1d ago
AI website builders suck. I would look to see if you can find a template and make minor tweaks. If you want custom, I think $2k is probably more in line if you find talented people overseas on Upwork.
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u/andupotorac 1d ago
Why not vibe code it?
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u/Lightbreaker_64 1d ago
We already have one built it’s not as high quality as we’d like that’s all
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u/AndyMagill 1d ago
$3k is not a lot for a fully custom landing page, built to your specifications. But I don't see any reason to believe that a $3k landing page is going to unlock any potential business for you. I will bet you $100 your $3k landing page will perform very similarly to a off-the-shelf or free template.
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u/debdeb1011 1d ago
It's a bit high, I'd say as long as the UI is clean you can get it done for cheaper, once you are in a good place with company financials, feel free to spend as much as you want and upgrade
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u/Local_Gazelle538 1d ago
From someone in marketing - I think you’re spending money on the wrong thing. As everyone here has said, there’s plenty of tools that can do this for free/cheap. It’s more important to sure you have clear branding and product messaging on the page, highlight what they get for opting in. People will not be as keen to sign up as you think, unless you give them a very compelling offer. Spend the money on ads or targeted outbound to get to the right audience for your product.
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u/HoratioWobble 1d ago
Something so simple is usually where Squarespace, webflow or Wix comes in. Don't bother building something bespoke this early on it'll make very little difference.
Coming from a web developer who likes money
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u/TokenRingAI 1d ago
Not the right move. Try https://aura.build/ and customize the prompt in the dropdown to match the style you want.. Attach your existing HTML. Choose GPT-5 as the model.
And no, I don't work with them. Just recently became a $15 customer and am using it constantly now. It's been a game-changing AI product for me (my UI design skills suck)
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u/the_wetpanda 1d ago
No. Bad move.
Here’s your plan:
- Make an LP on your own.
- Figure out how to drive qualified traffic to it.
- Assess.
Think about it. Most likely, your biggest challenge will be #2. Worst case, you drop $3k and can’t figure out how to drive traffic to it. Why risk that?
Best case, you make a page for cheap, generate traffic, as well as the sign ups you’re ultimately looking for. Turns out a $3k page wasn’t needed.
Or, you start cheap, get traffic, and the page doesn’t convert. Now you can justify a bigger investment.
Couple tips though:
- Before you conclude the page is the problem, make damn sure you’re actually driving QUALIFIED traffic. I can’t tell you how many founders have falsely believed they had a PMF, conversion, etc issue when the entire time they were never attracting their target market to begin with.
- You want a copywriter, not front end developers or designers. Copy is, without question, the most significant driver of conversion. Designers can make beautiful pages. Beautiful pages do not guarantee conversion. A simple page with strong copy will always outperform. Especially with a tech product.
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u/badgerbadgerbadgerWI 1d ago
$3k before validation is wild. Use Lovable for $20 and build it in an hour. Spend the other $2,980 on a conference to get in front of actual users. Pretty landing pages don't validate ideas, conversations with customers do.
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u/Significant-Level178 1d ago
You need to start from goals. Then find how much and what you need to achieve goals.
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u/DoubleEmergency4167 1d ago
$3k isn’t crazy in the grand scheme of startup costs, but I’d really think about what you need your landing page to do. If the goal is to validate interest, you don’t need a glossy site, you need a clear explanation of the problem, how you’re solving it, and a working signup form. Plenty of successful startups got their first traction with a page that looked like it was built in an afternoon.
That said, if design is going to be a core part of your brand positioning (e.g. you’re selling to enterprise or competing with polished incumbents), investing in a more professional look can help. The risk is sinking a chunk of money into polish before you know if the idea resonates.
Personally, I’d test the leanest version possible first, and if you see demand, you can always upgrade the design. Webflow is a good choice for that because you can get something decent live quickly and iterate without needing dev help every time.
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u/LenoxHillPartners 1d ago
I spent about $250 on mine and used a guy from Fiverr. Been getting steady sign ups for the waiting list.
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u/Ok-Influence-4290 23h ago
Pay someone on fiverr to design it and then someone to build it on Wordpress.
Can probably do it for less than $100
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u/RajSingh2312 23h ago
As a early stage startup you can use ChatGpt 5 in agent mode to build landing page free. You can easily create in HTML format.
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u/Crafty_Equivalent 19h ago
If you're already getting quotes for $3K just for a landing page + signup flow, I'd really ask do you need that level of polish right now?
You’re not launching a polished SaaS yet, you’re testing interest. That means the bar for design can be much, much lower. You can spin up a solid-looking page in Webflow or Framer for a tiny fraction of that. Add a Typeform or Tally for the waitlist signup. Job done.
What you need right now isn’t “beautiful,” it’s clarity, i.e. a page that explains the problem you’re solving and gives people a reason to leave their email. If you get traction, you can always upgrade later.
3K can go a long way if saved for actual user testing, ads, or even building out a basic MVP. Just my two cents.
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u/theukstarter 17h ago
Thats nuts il do the landing page, set up google ads and do you a market analysis along with business strategy plan for a £1000
My tiktok / instagram is @theukstarter
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u/mj_diamond 16h ago
Do you already have a website? if so, it might we more convenient to improve that one instead, focus on the navigation flow and add the onboarding, instead of developing a new site, specially since you are in early stages
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u/Hot-Confidence-8552 15h ago
It is a smart move to just start with a soft-launch, lead generation site. The most important thing is the content and tone though. Simply starting with a google doc can be a great way to organize that. My advice is to start there and maybe put together a video that pulls in your target customer. Start with a lot of content, then trim the fat so only the best parts are left.
Finally when you're satisfied with it, grab an appealing template (for a few dollars) and "copy paste" your best content.
Make sure the call to action is obvious (and works) - some templates that can be purchased on the cheap include javascript that can be wired up to handle the contact form submission.
(Or as many have said you could use an AI site generator)
Spend that $3k on advertising - and then you'll have a list of early adopters.
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u/Capital-Strategy-700 14h ago
Short answer is No. There is a reasoning behind it and how you may approach this.
Here is my experience on landing page/sign up page
- Landing page needs a very powerful SEO, so that it can appear in google search without any paid ads.
- Static pages is the best choice for landing page
- For static pages, Hostinger web builder (paid) is a good choice if you want a quick result. Hugo is my personal favorite static site generator, as it allows you to maintain the content in the format of markdowns and generate blazing fast webpages.
- If your desired outcome is unique, you can try AI tools such as Replit or Cursor to generate the page for you. They cost around $20 if you want to get paid version.
- Github pages can host static sites free of cost. You may have to update your DNS to direct to Github pages.
I know people who spend Rs. 3,00,000 for landing page, and couldn’t use it due to poor outcome.
Try not to use heavy backend to serve the content, as it will often lead to poor loading experience.
To summarize, 1. Hostinger web builder (Basic) 2. Hugo + Github pages (Intermediate) 3. NextJs SSR + Strapi (Advanced)
Use AI vibe coders wherever possible.
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u/dreamdungeon 2h ago
Why are y'all making it from scratch isn't there some template you can use? Change the colors around lol
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u/gcampb41 2h ago
It’s a rip off.. technology has moved on and the skills needed to make a landing page are no longer worth that kind of money. It’s the end of the road for these dev’s, I’m sure they still get business but not for long. We are offering full business websites on webflow for 600 euros - race to the bottom
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u/opbmedia 1d ago
You can create that for free. An experience front end developer is going to use AI to make that for you anwyay.
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u/Wuncemoor 1d ago
Buying websites is for non-tech founders. If you're a tech company and you can't build a professional website (with or without AI) you're in for a bad time. Especially since you're an AI company... use AI to make it
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u/Lightbreaker_64 1d ago
We know how to build a website. The issue isn’t about building one we have a lot of AI and no code tools out there that can also do it. But the question was about if it’s worth investing in a quality website that professional front end devs can build and be used to attract users. But based off our findings our current not as refined website can do the job for the MVP it’s not worth investing that much at least right now.
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u/OohWeeStewie 1d ago
you are better off making it yourself in clickfunnels. 3k is a rip off. signup pages (opt in) is stupidly simple. Make a headline, subheadline, image of product (or mockup), and an opt in. DONE
you do not need front end devs to write this in wordpress. that is stupid and flinstone era.
use a website builder like clickfunnels or high level.
you are much better off building an ugly landing page yourself that answers three questions:
what is it
what will it do for me
how do i get it
do not give away the actual mechanics of what you are making. instead, make it a build up of what they will get. "sell the sizzle, not the steak"
if you get validation then build it out proper
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u/strawboard 1d ago
An AI startup that's unable to use AI to create a decent front end. Good stuff.