As a founder, you know you need video. A sharp promo for your landing page, a product demo for a new feature, or an explainer to nail your value proposition are no longer optional.
The problem is, the path to getting that video often feels slow, expensive, and frustratingly opaque. You are a product owner or marketer, not a filmmaker. The traditional animation workflow can feel like a foreign language.
This guide breaks down the production pipeline into a clear, founder-friendly roadmap. Understanding this workflow helps you make smarter decisions, save money, and ensure the final video hits your business goals.
Key takeaways
- Animation is a growth asset when it improves clarity, trust, and conversion.
- Pick a production path based on speed, budget, and how much management time you can spare.
- Opportunity cost is the real budget killer for founders, not only the invoice.
- Hybrid workflows can deliver near-agency quality faster by locking the structure early.
- Fast production works best when paired with a distribution-first plan.
Table of contents
Why this type of video matters
For a SaaS business, a well-executed animated video does more than just look good. It is a strategic asset designed to build clarity, trust, and drive conversions.
Video is uniquely effective at simplifying complex software. It can show your user interface in action, explain an abstract benefit, and tell a compelling story in under 90 seconds. This clarity builds trust with potential customers, making them more likely to sign up for a trial or book a demo.
Common approaches (without judgment)
There are three common paths to getting an animated video made. Each has specific tradeoffs in cost, time, and the amount of management required from you.
Agencies
Hiring a full-service agency provides a dedicated team of experts, including strategists, writers, and animators, who manage the entire process. The upside is a high level of polish and strategic guidance.
The downside is cost and time. Agency projects often start in the high thousands and can take six weeks to several months to complete. This can be a sound investment for a well-funded campaign but often proves too slow for an early-stage startup.
Freelancers
A more flexible route is hiring individual freelancers for each stage of production. This a la carte approach gives you direct control and can significantly reduce costs compared to an agency.
The tradeoff is that you become the project manager. You are responsible for finding, vetting, and coordinating multiple individuals, which consumes significant time and focus. A delay with one freelancer can stall the entire project.
DIY / template tools
DIY tools are the fastest and cheapest option, allowing you to create a video in a few hours. They are useful for simple internal communications or quick social media clips.
However, most template-based tools lack strategic depth. They provide visual elements but leave the script, narrative, and call to action entirely up to you. This often results in a video that looks acceptable but fails to communicate your value proposition effectively.
Cost & time reality check
A professionally produced 60 to 90 second explainer video often costs between $5,000 and $20,000 and takes four to twelve weeks. That is a significant investment, but the bigger cost is often hidden.
The opportunity cost is the real challenge. Every hour you spend managing feedback, coordinating freelancers, or trying to explain your product's UI is an hour not spent talking to customers or refining your roadmap. For a startup, that lost momentum is the real budget killer.
This is why a traditional process built for long timelines does not align with the speed of SaaS. Waiting six weeks for a video to explain a new feature that your team built in two is a mismatch that slows down your ability to learn and grow.
How Forgeclips solves this
A more practical alternative is a hybrid model that blends the efficiency of proven templates with the critical oversight of human experts. This approach is built for the realities of a lean startup.
Platforms like Forgeclips use this method to streamline production. By automating repetitive early stages like scripting and asset collection, then applying human expertise for polishing and final edits, the process becomes faster and more cost-efficient.
This hybrid workflow delivers production-grade quality without the traditional bottlenecks. It gives you a predictable system for creating videos, freeing you to focus on building your business, not managing a film crew.
Example use case
Imagine you're launching a new integration for your project management tool. The feature is powerful but requires a clear explanation to drive adoption.
Using a traditional agency, you might wait six weeks and spend $12,000 to get a promo video. By the time it is delivered, the launch momentum has faded.
With a hybrid approach, you could get a polished, on-brand video explaining the new integration in a few days. The video could be used on your landing page, in an email announcement, and in social media ads, all while the launch is still top of mind for your users. This speed directly translates to faster feature adoption and better customer engagement.
Distribution-first mindset
A perfectly polished video is useless if no one sees it.
The biggest advantage of a faster, more cost-effective production process is the freedom it gives you to shift resources from production to distribution. When your marketing budget is not tied up in creating a single video, you can afford to get that asset in front of the right audience.
This unlocks budget for what moves the needle:
- YouTube: Run targeted ad campaigns to your ideal customer profile.
- LinkedIn: Share your video with a professional audience to build brand authority.
- Paid ads: Test different cuts of your video to see what resonates most.
- Website hero videos: Use your explainer to clarify your value proposition instantly.
Thinking like a distributor changes the question from “How can we make the perfect video?” to “How can we get a great video in front of the most relevant audience to drive a specific action?”
A founder's guide to the animation process: your questions answered
How long does this whole thing actually take?
For a standard 60 to 90 second explainer video, a traditional agency or freelancer often takes 4 to 12 weeks. That timeline covers everything from the initial script to final sound design. The biggest variable is usually the back and forth on feedback and revisions.
A hybrid approach can speed this up. By using proven frameworks and locking creative direction early, it is possible to get a polished, studio-quality video back in days, not months.
What is the number one mistake startups make with their first video?
Getting obsessed with flashy visuals while losing sight of the message. Too many teams fall in love with a clever concept and forget that the video has one primary job: explain what the product does and why it matters, fast.
A great SaaS video is a workhorse, not just a show horse. It puts clarity first.
Before you worry about anything else, your video must answer three questions for the viewer: “What is this?”, “How does it fix my problem?”, and “What do I do next?”. A script built for performance is the best way to make sure your video converts.
Is animation only for landing page explainers?
No. The landing page explainer is the classic starting point, but treating animation as a one-off asset is a missed opportunity. A modular animation process lets you build a library of video assets with a higher ROI.
Beyond the homepage, you can create:
- Punchy feature videos for social media ads and campaigns.
- In-depth product demos to give your sales team an edge.
- Onboarding tutorials to help new users find value faster and reduce churn.
- Quick update videos to announce new features and bring users back.
Once you establish a consistent visual style, you can build a suite of assets that supports customers from first impression to long-term retention.
Next steps
Ready to create high-quality videos that explain your product clearly and drive growth? Forgeclips uses a hybrid model that combines AI-assisted speed with human-led polish to deliver studio-grade SaaS videos in days, not months.
Explore our video frameworks and see how we can help you scale your marketing.