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·9 min·Methodology

Custom website delivery times: what agencies hide

Showcase, e-commerce, SaaS: honest breakdown of actual production weeks, phase by phase, jokers included. To understand where time really goes.

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"We'll deliver in 4 weeks." — That's what you hear at briefing. Six months later, the site still isn't live. Either because scope drifted, or the agency underestimated, or the client took three weeks to validate each mockup. The truth is no agency holds the timelines it announces in sales, and those who pretend they do are either lying or scoping so tightly they deliver an empty shell.

At SARO Agency, we publish our real timelines — showcase 4-8 weeks, e-commerce 6-12 weeks, SaaS 3-6 months — with a detailed explanation of what makes them vary. Here are the raw numbers, phase by phase, and the jokers to anticipate.

A delivery timeline announced without phase breakdown is a marketing promise, not an engineering estimate. The real number depends as much on your availability as on ours.

Showcase: 4 to 8 weeks, what actually happens

Week 1 — Scoping and collection (5-7 working days)

Everything starts with a scoping workshop. Concretely:

  • Kickoff meeting (2h): align scope, identify business stakes, refine tone and target
  • Content collection: texts per page, images, logos, videos. This is where 60% of projects get delayed. If you arrive with a well-structured Notion brief, we save 5-8 days. If you tell us "we'll send the texts as we go", count +2 weeks of slip
  • Sitemap validation: page tree, organizational principle. 1 day if you know what you want, 4-5 days if we co-build it

Phase output: signed brief, content delivered 80%, sitemap validated.

Weeks 2-3 — Design & mockups (10-15 working days)

  • Low-fidelity wireframes (2-3 days): structure of key pages, user journey, no visuals
  • High-fidelity Figma mockups (5-7 days): 2 validation rounds included. A homepage + an internal page template + 1-2 specific pages
  • Client validation (3-5 days): the other point where projects drift. Slow validation or scattered feedback can add 5-10 days of slip
  • Optional: if you provide already-validated Figma mockups, we skip this phase and save 2-3 weeks (and the price drops ~25%)

Phase output: mockups validated in full responsive (desktop + tablet + mobile).

Weeks 4-6 — Development (10-15 working days)

This is the phase where we work. The client can continue business calmly.

  • Technical setup (1-2 days): Next.js project initialized, Git repo, staging and production environments deployed on Vercel or equivalent
  • Mockup integration into React components (5-8 days): each section becomes a TypeScript-typed component, with Framer Motion animations if relevant, responsive breakpoints validated on 5+ screen sizes
  • Dynamic data (if applicable, +2-3 days): headless CMS connection if client wants to edit content, secured forms with server-side validation, API integrations (Calendly, Mailchimp, etc.)
  • Technical SEO (1-2 days): per-route metadata generation via Next.js Metadata API, JSON-LD structured data, dynamic sitemap, robots.txt, hreflang if multilingual

Phase output: functional staging, accessible via private link, ready for testing.

Week 7 — Testing & adjustments (3-5 working days)

  • Performance audit: Lighthouse score 95+ per page, Core Web Vitals in green
  • Cross-browser test: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge on desktop + iOS Safari + Chrome Android
  • Accessibility test: WCAG AA minimum contrast, keyboard navigation, screen readers
  • Client testing (3-5 days): you test in real conditions, you flag feedback, we adjust. This is the right time for feedback. Beyond that, every modification is billed.

Week 8 — Production deployment (1-2 working days)

  • DNS configuration, SSL certificates, 301 redirects if migrating from an old site
  • Production deployment, monitoring enabled, 1h training on usage
  • User documentation (5-10 page PDF depending on complexity)

Nominal total: 8 weeks. In ideal conditions (content delivered early, fast validation, stable scope), we drop to 4-5 weeks. In hard conditions, we go up to 10-12 weeks.

E-commerce: 6 to 12 weeks, the additional phases

An e-commerce site isn't a showcase with a cart — it's a transactional platform. Phases added compared to showcase:

Additional weeks: Business configuration (2-4 weeks)

  • Catalog modeling (5-10 days): product structure, variants (size, color), stock management, multi-currency pricing, taxes by geographic zone
  • Product import (3-5 days for 10-50 products, 1-2 weeks for 100-500): photos, descriptions, prices, initial stock
  • Checkout funnel (5-7 days): Stripe integration, 3D Secure handling, transactional emails, PDF invoice generation
  • Order admin (5-10 days): back-office dashboard, order statuses, Colissimo/Mondial Relay labels, invoice generation, accounting exports

Final phase: E-commerce production testing (5-7 days)

  • Transactional tests: 20-50 test orders (real cards in Stripe sandbox mode), edge case tests (refund, abandoned cart, payment failure)
  • Load tests: traffic peak simulation (Black Friday, product launch) with k6 or equivalent
  • GDPR audit: compliant cookie banner, e-commerce-specific legal mentions, T&Cs validated by lawyer if provided

Nominal total: 10-12 weeks. On simple projects (50 products, no edge case), we drop to 6-8 weeks. On complex projects (>500 product catalog, ERP integrations, multi-vendor), we go up to 14-16 weeks.

Custom / SaaS: 3 to 6 months, the sprint breakdown

For a SaaS project, we don't deliver in one shot — we slice into 2-week sprints with client demo at each sprint end. Typical phases:

Month 1: Specification & architecture (3-4 weeks)

  • Business workshops (10-15 days): user role modeling, journeys, access rights, workflows
  • Functional specs (5-10 days): 30-80 page document, validated by client. It's the reference contract for development
  • Technical architecture (3-5 days): data model, third-party service choices (auth, payment, mail, storage), deployment schema

Months 2-3: Development sprints (6-10 weeks)

  • Sprint 1: authentication + basic dashboard + first critical features
  • Sprint 2-3: main business features, third-party API integrations
  • Sprint 4-5: secondary features, UX polish, optimizations
  • At each sprint: 30-minute demo, client feedback, adjustments for next sprint

Month 4: Testing & beta users (3-4 weeks)

  • Internal tests (5-10 days): unit test coverage, integration tests, security audit (OWASP Top 10)
  • Private beta (10-15 days): 5-10 real users test in production conditions on a dedicated environment
  • Post-beta fixes (5-7 days): iteration on user feedback

Months 5-6: Production & onboarding (2-4 weeks depending on scope)

  • Production deployment, monitoring (Sentry, structured logs)
  • User + API + admin documentation
  • Client team training (2-4h depending on number of users)
  • Post-delivery follow-up for 30 days included

Nominal total: 4-5 months for a B2B SaaS MVP. 6 months for a more complex project (custom CRM, marketplace).

The jokers that derail projects

From experience, here are the 6 main reasons a project slips beyond nominal:

1. Late content delivery

By far the #1 factor. A "fast" showcase becomes "long" simply because texts arrive week 5 instead of week 1. Solution: block a week upstream to produce content with us, or entrust the writing to us (paid option, ~€150 per article).

2. Slow or fragmented client validation

Feedback arriving from 5 different people on 5 different channels (email + Slack + WhatsApp + meeting + Figma comment) takes 3 to 5× longer to integrate than a consolidated feedback sheet. Solution: designate a single client-side point of contact with decision authority.

3. Scope creep during project

"Since we're at it, can we add a newsletter?" — the newsletter only costs €500 but it shifts the whole calendar. Solution: scope freeze after mockup signing. Any new request becomes a separately quoted amendment with a new timeline.

4. Unanticipated third-party dependencies

Client wants to integrate their internal CRM but the API isn't documented. Or Stripe asks for additional verification for the merchant account. These external blockers can add 1 to 4 weeks. Solution: list all third-party services from scoping phase and verify their availability.

5. Migration from existing site

WordPress redesign that must keep its SEO? Count +1 to +2 weeks for clean 301 redirects, content export, and verification that nothing breaks SEO post-migration.

6. Commercial availability (signed quote / payment / kickoff)

The announced timeline starts at real kickoff, not quote signing. If quote is signed in November but kickoff happens in January, we start counting in January.

How to guarantee a held timeline

Three practices we apply on all SARO projects:

  1. Free initial scoping (45 min): we identify timeline risk zones upstream. If scope is fuzzy, we say so
  2. Shared weekly schedule: every Friday, a 15-minute check to align progress and anticipate blockers
  3. Contractual delay penalties: if we exceed announced timelines by our fault (not scope creep or client delay), we apply a 5% discount per week of delay, capped at 25% of the project

Delay penalties aren't common practice in the industry — many agencies refuse to commit. We accept them because it's the only honest way to align our interests with the client's: we have as much to lose as you if we slip.

How to verify the credibility of an announced timeline

Four questions to ask any agency that quotes you a timeline:

  1. What's the phase-by-phase detail of this timeline? If the agency can't give you the breakdown, the timeline is made up
  2. What are the jokers that can make it slip? A serious agency lists the 6 jokers above before signing
  3. Does this timeline start at signing or at kickoff? Make sure you're talking about the same number
  4. Are there contractual delay penalties? If not, the timeline is just indicative

To configure your project in real time with a phase-based delivery estimate, our configurator considers the complexity of each active module and proposes a delivery timeline coherent with the chosen scope.

For more, read our detailed 2026 pricing and our Next.js vs WordPress technical comparison.