The four-week to six-month spectrum
If you've gotten timeline estimates from multiple studios, you've probably seen wildly different numbers. Some say four weeks. Some say twelve weeks. Some quote four to six months. The variance isn't random — it reflects different operating models on the supplier side, not different project complexity.
On the fast end: founder-led studios working with a clear scope, an operator who can decide things in one meeting, and an existing brand to build against. Four to six weeks is realistic. Our typical engagement runs in this band.
Middle of the spectrum: small agencies with a designer, a developer, and a project manager handling 4-6 projects simultaneously. Eight to twelve weeks. Their team scheduling and the coordination overhead between roles eats real calendar time.
Long end: traditional agencies with formal discovery, account management, brand strategy phase, multiple stakeholder reviews, multiple revision rounds. Four to six months. Most of that calendar is meetings and approvals, not building.
What actually drives the timeline
Three things move the timeline more than anything else: scope precision, decision speed, and content readiness.
Scope precision means you and the studio agree on exactly what's being built before week one ends. If the scope is still being discussed in week three, the project is sliding. Our engagement letters spell out every page, every integration, every deliverable before signature — this is what fixed-fee, fixed-timeline work requires.
Decision speed means the operator can review and respond to questions within 24 hours during the build sprint. A studio waiting four days for an approval that came in on Wednesday is parked Wednesday through Sunday. Multiply that across the four or five approval gates in a typical build and the project stretches by weeks even when no one's writing slow code.
Content readiness is the biggest unknown most operators don't anticipate. Photography, written copy, logos in vector format, brand assets, third-party API credentials (Toast, Hostaway, Stripe, etc.) — if these aren't ready when the build starts, the build stops every time the code needs to integrate with something that doesn't exist yet. We send a kickoff packet checklist on day one to surface what's needed.
What our timeline actually looks like
Week zero — signature and kickoff. You sign the engagement letter, we receive the deposit, we send the kickoff packet. The clock starts.
Week one — you deliver the kickoff content; we set up the project (repo, Vercel, integrations). By the end of week one, brand direction and site architecture are both committed.
Weeks two through five — build. Staging URL updates daily. You watch the site come together. Approval gates happen at design lock, content review, and final QA.
Week six — launch. DNS cutover, 301 redirects fire, sitemap submitted to Google Search Console, 30-day post-launch warranty begins. The site is yours and you own the code.
If any week slips for content or approval reasons on your side, the launch date moves correspondingly — but the engagement letter spells out which delays sit on which side, so the slippage isn't a surprise.
When the timeline can't be compressed
There are some projects we'd refuse to ship in four weeks. Custom booking platforms with real-time availability, Stripe deposit flows, Twilio SMS, and Dropbox Sign waivers genuinely require more calendar time — typically four to six weeks for the marketing site, plus another two to four weeks for the platform.
If a studio quotes you a four-week timeline for a project that includes a custom payment flow, a custom admin panel, and three or four third-party integrations, ask harder questions. Either they're going to ship something that breaks in production, or the timeline is going to slip and they didn't tell you.
What you can do to keep the timeline honest
Three things compound over the engagement. Be decisive — give us a clear answer within 24 hours when we ask, even if the answer is "give me a day to think." Get content ready early — photography especially. Don't add scope mid-build — every "can we also include" adds days, sometimes weeks; we'll honor reasonable adds but they're not free.
If you're set up for a clean four to six week run on your side, we can deliver on a four to six week run on ours.
Three things compound over the engagement: scope precision, decision speed, and content readiness. Get all three right and four weeks is realistic.