How long does a web development project usually take from start to finish?

Development timelines can mirror design timelines, but here we’ll focus on the development phase specifically. For a simple marketing website, development (after design is approved) might take 1 week maximum. For a custom site with moderate complexity, development could be around 1 month. Complex web applications might require 2–5+ months or more of active development time.

However, realistically, when you include the design and planning phases, many websites take the 2–3 month timeline we mentioned earlier under web design. Pure development time might be much shorter if the design is final and no unforeseen issues arise - using a tool like Webflow will save us development time as well. And of course, agile projects (where features are continuously added) can be essentially ongoing.

Key factors influencing timeline:

• Project Scope: More pages and features = more time. A one-page microsite is a week’s work, we’ll probably finish it in 24-48 hours but guarantee delivery & launch in 1 week max; a 50-page site with multiple templates is 1-2 months of straight development.
• Technical complexity: Building a custom user login system or integrating with multiple APIs takes extra engineering and testing time.
• Content readiness: If developers are waiting on content or data to integrate, that can cause pauses.
• Client feedback and QA: The client’s review cycles for staging builds can affect timing. Quick, consolidated feedback keeps things moving.
• Resources allocated: SVZ can speed up a project by putting a larger team on it (e.g., two developers working in parallel). This will increase cost but hit a faster deadline if needed. If budget isn’t an issue - we can work as fast as needed by scaling up our assigned team (within reason)

At SVZ, once we have finalized designs, our in-house directors of development lead our dev team (with world class on-shore talent across overlapping timezones) to accelerate development – sometimes working almost 24/7 in shifts to meet tight deadlines. We’ve delivered projects in record time this way, without sacrificing quality. For example, a site that might normally be 8 weeks of dev we’ve done in 1 week by leveraging Webflow, having multiple developers across timezones, and a rigorous QA process overlapping. Still, we set realistic timelines because rushing a launch without proper testing can backfire - we always underpromise and over deliver. We aim to hit that sweet spot: fast but without ever compromising quality. In summary, simple sites can launch in 2-4 weeks, typical custom projects (most common) including design take 2-3 months, and large-scale web apps typically take 3-6+ months. We’ll always outline the expected timeline in the proposal so you know what to anticipate.