SaaS explainer videos made from your real product, not a drawing of it.
100+ videos produced for Jotform. 20+ for Knack.
The problem it solves
What this actually fixes.
A visitor who has never heard of your category arrives with one question: what is this, and why would I use it? Most explainer videos answer that with an animated metaphor — floating cards, abstract shapes, a smiling figure clicking a UI nobody built. It explains the idea and leaves the product a mystery. An explainer recorded in the real software answers the idea and the product in the same ninety seconds.
Who needs it
Who this is for.
- B2B SaaS companies whose homepage has to explain a new category before it sells anything.
- Founders who need one video that works for investors, prospects, and hiring at the same time.
- Product marketing teams replacing an animated explainer that no longer matches the interface.
- Developer-tool and API companies whose product is real but hard to picture from a screenshot.
- Teams whose product is genuinely good and genuinely unfamiliar, which is the hardest combination to write.
Where they get used
Every video is made for a placement, not a folder.
We ask where a video will be embedded before we script it, because the placement decides the length, the aspect ratio, and whether it has to work with the sound off.
Homepage hero, as the first thing a stranger sees.
Product and solution pages, above the feature grid.
Paid social, pre-roll, and retargeting, using the short cut.
Sales decks and first-call intros, so the pitch starts from the same story every time.
Investor and partner conversations, where the product has to be explained fast.
App-store and marketplace listings that allow a video.
Real examples
Work produced in this format.
Published examples in this format are being added. The client work in our portfolio was produced by the same team, to the same standard, and we can send relevant examples on request.
What’s included
Everything in the list below is standard.
Nothing here is an upsell. If a deliverable is quoted separately, it is named as an extra on the estimate before you agree to anything.
Length and delivery
How long, and how soon.
- Typical length
- 60–90 seconds for the main explainer; 20–30 seconds for the ad and social cutdown.
- Typical delivery time
- About 2–3 weeks from an approved script. Rush delivery is available at 30% extra.
The clock starts when the script is approved and a recording environment is available. Those two things are what usually move a schedule, so we agree both before quoting a date.
Every project, the same way
The parts that never change.
Four stages, and you are needed for two: your team scopes the list and approves the scripts, then recording, editing, voiceover and revisions happen without your calendar. Human-recorded English narration is the default, synthetic voice is available where re-cuts are frequent, and every video ships with captions, an SRT and a VTT. Two revision rounds are included and you own the finished files outright.
What affects the price
The variables that move a quote.
SaaS Explainer Videos is quoted per project, because the same runtime can mean very different amounts of work. These are the factors that change the number.
| Factor | How it moves the price |
|---|---|
| Script difficulty | a familiar category is quick to write. A new one takes several passes before the first sentence is right. |
| Motion graphics | explaining what happens off-screen is animation work, and more of it raises the price. |
| Staging effort | an explainer needs an account that looks lived-in. Building believable data takes time. |
| Number of cuts | the 16:9 master carries most of the cost; the vertical, square, and short versions are cheap once it exists. |
| Voiceover treatment | a text-and-music cut costs less than recorded narration. |
| Turnaround | a rush against a launch date is priced above the standard schedule because it takes the schedule apart. |
Ongoing work runs on monthly plans priced in production credits — see monthly SaaS video production plans. For a single video, send the product and the problem and you get back a video list, a recommended length for each, and a fixed price — not a discovery call. Request a fixed quote.
What is the difference between an explainer video and a product demo?
An explainer answers what the product is and why it matters. A demo answers whether it does the specific job a prospect came for. The explainer is shorter and more conceptual, and it usually runs first — on the homepage, in an ad, at the top of a deck — with the demo waiting for the visitor who is already interested.
Aren't explainer videos supposed to be animated?
That is the convention, not a rule, and it exists partly because most explainer studios only sell animation. An animated explainer shows an interface an animator drew: cleaner spacing, smoother transitions, states that never load slowly. A recording can only show what was on the screen, which is the point when the buyer is deciding whether to trust you.
When is animation actually the right answer?
When there is genuinely nothing to record. Pre-launch products with no working build, infrastructure that has no interface, and processes that happen on a server are real cases where animation wins. We say so, and we usually build a mix: recorded footage for what exists, motion for what never appears on screen. We wrote the long version of this argument on our comparison page.
How long should a SaaS explainer be?
Sixty to ninety seconds. That is enough to state the problem, show the product solving it once, and stop. Past two minutes an explainer has usually turned into a feature tour, which is a different video with a different job and a much smaller audience.
What do you need from us to start?
A demo, sandbox, or staging account we can record in, and someone who can answer questions about the product and approve the script. Nobody appears on camera and nothing is filmed. If the account needs realistic data, we can populate it or work with a set you prepare.
What happens to the video when the interface changes?
Scripts are written in segments and the project files are kept segmented to match, so a changed screen is a re-record of one segment rather than a rebuild. Two rounds of revisions are included on every video; changes after final delivery are quoted as new work.
Do we own the finished explainer?
Yes. Full commercial rights transfer on final delivery, with no licence period and no usage fee, and source project files come on request so another editor can pick the work up later.
Also produced here
The other formats.
Start with the SaaS Explainer Videos you need first.
Tell us the product and what your users get stuck on. You get back a video list, a recommended length for each, and what it costs.
Produced by the team behind SaaS Master, reviewing and demonstrating software publicly since 2019.