We work on the production aspect of animated explainer videos. In other words, SaaS companies purchase an animation studio, the studio produces a hero video (60-90 seconds), and then the marketing team discovers that they will need to produce 14 various cutdown versions, captioned in 3 different languages, edit vertically for paid social media, and produce a 6-second YouTube bumper. The second phase is when VidPros fits into this.
Therefore, I’ve written this guide from my own experience of watching a lot of finished animation cross a desk and having some thoughts as to what works and what is reordered six months after.
If you are a PMM or founder researching animated explainers in 2026, you’re entering a market that has bifurcated due to the introduction of AI tools dropping the budget tier down to less than $2,000 (VideoExplainers) while custom 2D animation continues to run $2,500 to $7,500 for a minute of polished work. Premium cinematic pieces continue to cost upwards of $50,000. The question isn’t if you can afford One. The question is which tier aligns with your target audience and what you’re actually trying to prove.
What counts as an animated explainer video
There are many different types of animated explainer videos. An animated explainer video is typically a very short (about 1-minute in length), and it can be made by using motion design techniques (using shapes to create movement), or it can use characters (illustrated people). The type of animation used will determine how much live action is included.
The various types of animated explainer video include; 2D motion graphics that utilize kinetic shapes to move objects around on-screen; Character animation that uses illustrated people to tell the story of your idea, product, or workflow; Kinetic Typography that changes the way you write your copy into visuals; A combination of animation and screencapture to show how something works; and Full 3D Animation to explain the functionality of a piece of hardware, such as how a machine operates at a molecular level.
As stated earlier, the format is alive and well regardless of the continuous “are explainer videos dead?” posts on Reddit. One in-house motion designer at a Fortune 500 communications firm stated bluntly, “there is still very much a demand for explainer videos/motion graphic videos/advertising.” (u/neumann1981, r/MotionDesign) What has changed is the buyer. Marketing teams once commissioned One 90-second hero piece and called it a day.
Today they want a hero piece along with a library of cutdown versions created specifically for short-form social media because TikTok & Reels consume content so rapidly that no single professional looking explainer video examples can possibly satiate their appetite.
Animated is the superior format for SaaS for One reason alone: software is invisible. You cannot film a database query like you can film a coffee shop. Motion graphics make abstract things visual. That is its purpose.
Animation styles compared
Pricing and timelines below are examples taken from current vendor pages and an industry survey conducted in 2026 (VideoExplainers, Zen Agency). View these examples as ballpark figures only, not gospel; each studio quotes differently based upon script length, illustration complexity, and how many revision rounds they negotiate upfront.
2D motion graphics. $2,000–$8,000; two to three weeks. The default for SaaS. Clean, modular, concept-driven, and easiest format to repurpose into social cuts. Most B2B SaaS pieces in 2026 fall into this category.
Character animation. $2,500–$10,000; two to four weeks. Uses illustrated human characters. More suited towards emotional connection than information density. Headspace’s “Meditation Made Simple” is an example of why character animation works well for B2C wellness apps where 2D motion graphics would be too cold.
Whiteboard animation. $1,500–$5,000; two to three weeks. Cheap, educational and increasingly obsolete. Rarely recommend whiteboard animation for SaaS in 2026 unless you are clearly targeting an academic or training-content tone.
Kinetic typography. $1,500–$6,000; two to three weeks. Text as visual. Best suited when your messaging-heavy launches have words as the point. Works great with sound design.
Mixed-media (screencast + animation). $2,500–$7,500; two to three weeks. Animated UI overlay on top of real product footage. Best call when your product is proof of concept and you want your audience to know screens are real, not idealized mock-ups.
3D animation. $5,000–$25,000+; three to six weeks. Recommended for hardware, biotech, complex spatial concepts or positioning premium brands. Usually overkill for typical CRM feature launches.
Premium cinematic. $10,000–$50,000+; four to eight weeks. Brand films. Fundraising-adjacent. Used to showcase products for IPO roadshows or keynotes.
Key elements of a top animated explainer video
Once you watch enough explainer videos you’ll see a pattern emerge. Good ones have four characteristics and bad ones lack at least two characteristics.
The Script First. Every reputable studio will tell you this and every reputable studio will be right. Great scripts define the issue within the first 5 seconds, deliver a single key message and end with an unambiguous call to action. Hatch Studios provides a summary of “the experts” view on length: “Experts consistently agree that explainer videos should last anywhere from 60- to 90-seconds.” If a video exceeds 90 seconds there better be some compelling reason why it does so.
Your Voiceover will set your overall tone. An otherwise excellent script can fall to the level of a mediocre script if delivered by a flat narrator. Spend money to hire professional voice talent; it makes all the difference. Video Explainers AI voice over ($99-$499) has been greatly enhanced thru 2025/2026; however, it still sounds like AI to those paying close attention. Use AI for cut downs and internal videos.
You need to allow time for breathing in your pacing. Junior animators have a tendency to stuff their visual tracks with 3 ideas per second. Your eyes need a break. Look at any video from Ordinary Folk on Vimeo and notice how many frames hold for longer than normal and are confident in doing so. Confidence is the differentiator when comparing production quality to using templates.
Branding matters more than fancy illustrations. The viewer should recognize whose video it is within the first five seconds of watching. Color palette, type system, illustration style, motion grammar, consistent across the brand. This is where in-house teams have an edge over external studios and where external studios need to do serious homework before quoting.
Examples of great animated explainer videos with editor commentary
From Reddit’s “r/MotionDesign” thread “Best Explainer Videos LET’S MAKE A LIST,” there were many interesting pieces that stood out along with why they worked.
Slack, “Work, Simplified.” Said by u/mr_tarun_parmar to be “good pacing & fun visual metaphors” (r/MotionDesign). Slack has a cheerful tone by nature and the animations reflect that cheerful tone. This is a big part of its success — finding the right tone while avoiding the childlike tone.
Dropbox, “What is Dropbox?” The piece that, more than any other, set the SaaS explainer template in the early 2010s. Clarity-first storytelling. No flourish that doesn’t add to the messaging. As much as anything else, this should be studied.
Headspace, “Meditation Made Simple.” A minimalist approach was used on Headspace’s characters and animation. The animation reflects Headspace’s product offering — quietness.
Intercom, “Why We Exist.” Has a tight narrative arc. Intercom uses some really expressive animation. It feels high-end but not cold.
Reddit Mobile. Is linked to in the original post as “a great example of clean vector style, real nice motion principles at play throughout.” If you’re trying to describe your vision to your studio on what “clean vector” means in practice, it is worth watching.
Kurzgesagt. Although not a SaaS piece, Kurzgesagt does represent the gold standard for craft in explaining. One person commented on the r/MotionDesign forum who said it represents the perfect example of: “simplicity, humor, structure, didactical principles are just sooo good” (u/thight-ahole).
The commonality among these pieces is: each had a single message. Each had a strong voiceover. Each had an illustration style that matched the brand tone. And each had pacing that trusted the audience.
The power of motion graphics in SaaS storytelling
SaaS offers solutions for things people cannot see. A CRM does not have a face. A data pipeline cannot be photographed. Motion graphics provide a solution to the visualization issue because motion graphics allow showing abstract relations, data flow, before/after comparisons, process steps, etc., without needing to stage a live shoot.
Additionally, there is also a distribution benefit. Social platforms favor video over static content. Animation loops well. Therefore, a 30-second cutdown version of a piece can run as a paid social ad for months without appearing dated. Zen Agency states “social media algorithms often give preference to video content which gives motion graphics a greater chance to be viewed and shared.” They also state that users decide within 3 seconds of viewing whether they will watch or continue scrolling past a video, therefore both the first frame and first audio cue hold disproportionately large weight.
Practically speaking for PMMs, the hero video is only the beginning of assets. From day 1, plan for versions of your hero video at 60, 30, 15 and 6 seconds along with a vertically formatted version at 9:16. If your studio charges you separately for the hero version and then again for the cutdown bundle, you will end up paying double.
Best practices for creating animated explainer videos templates
About fifteen studios and best-practice guides we examined have similar six concepts. We agree with these:
- Hook the first five seconds with the problem, not the brand.
- One key idea in the video. Create two videos when there are two ideas.
- Write conversational scripts. Read them aloud. Rewrite if you would not say this sentence to a coworker while drinking coffee.
- Choose an animation style based on the intended viewer.
- Lock the script prior to making an animatic. Changes made after you complete a storyboard are going to be costly quickly.
- Plan how you will shorten your hero video prior to shooting it, not afterward.
One r/instructionaldesign commenter offered a useful counter-take on production complexity: “When the story is strong, and voiced properly, using simple fade in/fade out animations with static images (PNG) can be very effective” (u/oops_im_horizzzontal). This applies here too; a solid script and above-average animation beats a poor script with high-quality animation most times.
How to create an explainer video for your brand
We would use this process if we were to hire an animation company to produce our awesome explainer video tomorrow:
- Write a one-page document detailing the audience you are targeting, the single message you wish to convey, the desired response from your audience, what kind of emotion you desire for your brand’s persona, three reference videos, and different platforms where your compelling video will be played. Reference videos have more pull than the rest of this document.
- Send your brief to three different companies. Receive quotes and timelines from each. Reject those who will not provide examples of their current or previous work.
- Lock your script down before creating a storyboard. At least test the script with two people representing your intended audience. Remove anything one or both of them do not comprehend.
- Approve the storyboard prior to completing the animatic. Approve the animatic prior to completing your final product. Each phase is less expensive to correct than the preceding phase.
- Include a budget for revisions in your contract. Two rounds of revisions are normal. Any additional round of revisions costs money. Do not claim that you will get it perfect during the initial review.
- Plan the social media cutdowns simultaneously with your hero video. Ask the animation company to provide you with the original source project files for your video instead of just sending you a single MP4 file. This way in the event your video needs final edits by an extension-production team they can do it without having to rebuild everything all over again.
- Caption everything. Many viewers watch video on mute.
As u/Mukokuseki put it on Reddit: “Most explainers are not creative masterpieces. Most clients will probably not give you very much creative input in an explainer.” If you want to make something like a creative masterpiece, you need to set up those conditions: a good brief, a simple one-message storyline, and be willing to allow your production team to speak out against poor script decisions.
Vendor landscape and cost ranges
There are about three levels; and while they seem to be overlapping when looking at vendor sites — they really do not.
DIY/AI tools ($299 to $2,000). Vyond, Animaker, Powtoon, Doodly and the latest group of AI-based explainer services that offer a finished 60-second explainer for $497–$1,997 in 3–5 business days. These tools can work well for: internal training videos, MVPs, fast iterations, etc. They are also considered to be template-based by those viewing many of them. Suitable for internal SOPs; not suitable for homepage heroes.
Boutique studio ($2,500 to $15,000). A small team or single motion designer with a portfolio. Time frame: two to four weeks. This level is where most Series A & B SaaS companies should be placing their money for hero-explainer pieces. Cuillin Collective lists pricing for a 30-second 2D piece as $1,410 and for a 60-second professional 2D piece as $2,580, both prices on the low end of the boutique pricing range. Average mid-range pricing per Piehole TV runs $3,000–$5,000.
Full-service agency ($15,000+). Has multiple designers, has a dedicated producer, produces broadcast quality, contract may include multi-deliverables. Good choice for creating brand films, IPO videos, product keynote videos. Per MezzoLab: minimum high-quality price is $15K. Typical professional pricing range is $5K–$35K.
Honest read: you will need to hire a boutique studio to create your hero explainer. Then, after creating your hero explainer, you will need to hire another production team (a separate extension from your original production team) to produce all of the additional versions of your hero explainer: vertical cuts for social media, captioned versions for accessibility, social media size variations, and continued editing/distribution edits over time.
Common mistakes to avoid
The most frequent errors made by founders, and the only reason they have value to anyone.
First, over-scripting. The founder writes the script as if it were a feature specification. It has all the benefits. An animator cannot render twelve concepts in ninety seconds. The end product will appear hurried and viewers will retain little from what was shown. Half the script should be removed before sending it.
Second, jargon. If your script is written such that it resembles a sales brochure filled with buzzwords, animation may not help you. Your script should read as though written by humans.
Third, approving the wrong thing at the wrong stage. Revisions to storyboards cost little. Medium-priced revisions occur when animatics are revised. When final animations are revised, costs become high. Invest your time at the storyboard. Never allow “we’ll figure this out in animation” to come up in the conversation.
Fourth, forgetting cutdowns. The hero ships, the team is exhausted, no one recuts vertically, and the paid-social campaign launches with a center-cropped 16:9 that gets ignored. Put cutdowns into the contract.
Fifth, increasingly common in 2026, using AI-suggested or AI-generated music without checking the license, then catching a YouTube copyright strike. In case music is included in the studio’s deliverables, get the license documentation in writing.
Why animated explainers drive business success in SaaS
It’s not simply because of nostalgia; there just aren’t many other ways to get the same results — at the same cost – with regards to SaaS marketing formats.
An excellent animated explainer condenses a long and confusing onboarding process down into about one minute and thirty seconds. That means an animated explainer can be used across six different channels (the homepage of your website, paid social media ads, slide presentations for pitches, sales emails, and as a pre-roll ad for YouTube videos), and assuming that your company branding stays relatively consistent, that single explainer will last for approximately two years. The numbers add up.
Additionally, there is also a quantifiable rationale related to engagement. According to Zen Agency, “people recall 95% of a clear message when it is presented via video versus only 10% when the message is presented in written form.” The original source for the quoted percentages cannot be identified clearly; therefore, we would caution against using the exact number in any future references. However, directionally speaking, the idea that video-based content performs both better regarding conversion rates and retention rate vs. static content for SaaS landing pages is supported by every internal benchmark we’ve reviewed at Wistia and HubSpot.
The less spoken-of advantage is sales support. An animation explainer video can provide the same five pieces of information that a sales representative typically provides during a first call. Provide the animated explainer prior to the call and allow the sales team to focus on providing additional details regarding more complicated items. We have observed a 20–30% reduction in average first-call duration among SaaS teams that provided their sales representatives with an explainer prior to each initial call.
When animated beats live-action, and when it loses
Animation prevails when the product is invisible or intangible (i.e., software), the workflow is difficult to visualize (e.g., financial planning software, CRM systems), the target audience spans geographically (animation does not require shooting new footage for each region), or consistency across visuals is necessary to build an identifiable brand image. Many SaaS products meet all four criteria.
Live action prevails when the credibility of the proof is tied to the people involved in the demonstration (e.g., medical professionals on a telemedicine platform), the demonstration requires viewing tangible objects or environments (e.g., hardware such as robotics, equipment demonstrations in manufacturing, etc.), or the intended target audience attention needs to perceive emotional authenticity to believe the brand values being promoted. Telemedicine platforms should demonstrate actual physicians. Construction technology tools should demonstrate actual job sites.
Recorded screenshots of your product (also known as product demos) prevail when the best way to prove your product is through the product itself, and/or when the buyer is sufficiently knowledgeable about how to evaluate and understand technical interfaces. Eventually, almost all enterprise B2B SaaS sales processes will include a recorded screenshot demo regardless of whether or not you utilize an animated video of a hero asset on your homepage. Our product demo video guide delves further into this type of format.
Savvy SaaS companies usually produce and distribute all three: an animated hero on their homepage, a live-action customer story on their case studies page, and a recorded walkthrough of their product on their demo CTA page. The key to successful multi-format distribution is to allocate a sufficient budget across all three types rather than overinvesting in one. To view a comparison of these formats more deeply, see our breakdowns of whiteboard explainer video, live action explainer video, 3D explainer video, AI explainer video, explainer video examples, SaaS explainer video, and B2B explainer video. The SaaS video production overview outlines the workflow for creating an explainer video.
How Vidpros fits in
We are not suggesting that we create animations from scratch. Many skilled and competent animation studios exist in the market today. If you desire to hire an animation studio to produce a 90-second Hero Animation, please do so. Properly brief them. Pay them fairly for their time. Let them do what they do best.
VidPros thrives with regard to managing secondary edits once an animation studio produces a Hero Mp4 file and preferably the source project files. Secondary edits involve producing different lengths of the same animation: i.e., 60 second version, 30 second version, 15 second version, 6 second YouTube Bumper Version, Vertical 9:16 Version for Instagram Reel/Tiktok, Captioned Versions for Muted Social Autoplay, Regionalized Versions if you have Paid Social Campaigns running across multiple regions.
Some Animation Studios will charge “Punitive” Prices for Secondary Cuts since they generally dislike doing secondary cuts. Production Extension Teams usually treat Secondary Cuts as Routine Production Work.
If you are now briefing an animation studio to build an Explainer Video by quarter and expect continuing revision requests, captions, localizations, etc. moving forward, contact us first. We’ll provide you with a Sample Cutdown Plan explaining how we can support your specific channels. And we’ll provide you with your First Edit Absolutely Free, so you may view our work prior to paying a Flat Monthly Subscription Fee.
