Most first-time SaaS founders commissioning a video assume there’s basically one kind of “explainer video” — a narrated animation with some UI mockups, roughly 60-90 seconds, sitting on the homepage. In reality, there are several genuinely distinct explainer styles, each suited to different products, audiences, and stages of company maturity. Picking the wrong one isn’t fatal, but it usually means either overpaying for polish you didn’t need or underdelivering clarity your product actually required.
Having built explainers for SaaS clients across a range of company stages, here’s the cheat sheet I wish more founders had before their first video kickoff call.
Whiteboard / Hand-Drawn Style
A simplified, sketch-like animation style, often showing a hand actively drawing elements as the narration progresses, or a clean flat-illustration equivalent that mimics the same feel.
Best for: Early-stage products still explaining a genuinely new concept or category to a market that doesn’t have existing mental models for it. This style is forgiving of complexity because the drawing-as-you-go conceit naturally paces information delivery.
Watch out for: This style has become somewhat generic through overuse, particularly in the 2015-2020 SaaS explosion. If your category is crowded with whiteboard-style explainers already, this format may blend in rather than differentiate you.
Typical cost/time profile: Generally on the more affordable end of animated explainer styles, since the illustration style is intentionally simple.
Flat 2D Character Animation
Stylized characters and environments in a clean, modern illustration style — the most common explainer video style in SaaS marketing today.
Best for: Products that benefit from showing a relatable user experiencing a problem and then a resolution. Particularly effective when the product serves a specific persona (a busy manager, a frustrated marketer, an overwhelmed teacher) that a character can represent clearly.
Watch out for: Character design and rigging quality varies enormously between studios and freelancers. A poorly designed or stiffly animated character can undercut an otherwise strong script more than viewers consciously register — it just reads as slightly “off” without them knowing why.
Typical cost/time profile: Mid-range, with cost scaling significantly based on how many distinct characters and environments the script requires.
UI/Screen-Based Animation
Animation built primarily around a stylized or semi-realistic representation of the actual software interface, showing simulated clicks, transitions, and workflows.
Best for: Products where the interface itself is a genuine selling point — clean design, intuitive workflow, a “look how simple this is” argument. This style works especially well for tools where the visual experience of using the product is part of the value proposition.
Watch out for: This style ages faster than character-based animation, because it needs updating every time your actual UI changes meaningfully. Budgeting for periodic refreshes is worth planning for upfront rather than treating the first version as permanent.
Typical cost/time profile: Can range widely — a simplified, stylized UI representation is relatively affordable, while a highly detailed, pixel-accurate mockup animation gets expensive quickly and often isn’t worth the added cost over a simplified version.
Motion Graphics / Kinetic Typography
Text-driven animation using dynamic typography, icons, and abstract shapes rather than characters or literal product representations.
Best for: Data-heavy or process-heavy products where the core value is best communicated through numbers, statistics, and clear conceptual structure rather than a narrative story. Also effective for founders or brands that want a modern, sharp, slightly more “enterprise” feel than character animation typically conveys.
Watch out for: Without careful pacing, this style can start to feel like a slideshow with better transitions rather than a genuinely engaging video. The strongest kinetic typography pieces still follow a clear narrative arc, even without characters carrying the story.
Typical cost/time profile: Often faster to produce than character animation once a strong template system is established, making it a good fit for founders who anticipate needing several video variants over time.
Live-Action with Founder or Team on Camera
Real footage of a founder, team member, or customer speaking directly to camera, often combined with light animated overlays or screen recordings.
Best for: Early-stage startups without budget for full animation, or any company whose credibility benefits from showing a real, specific human being behind the product rather than a polished brand voice. Particularly effective for products in trust-sensitive categories or ones competing against larger, more corporate incumbents.
Watch out for: Quality bar matters more than people expect even for “casual” founder-led video — poor lighting or audio quality reads as unprofessional regardless of how authentic the content is. A modest investment in decent lighting and a good microphone goes a long way before hitting record.
Typical cost/time profile: Often the most affordable format overall, especially if a founder is comfortable being on camera, though editing quality still meaningfully affects how the final piece performs.
Screen Recording with Voiceover
A straightforward recording of the actual product being used, narrated by a real voice walking through the workflow, typically with light editing for pacing and captions.
Best for: Products at any stage where proving real functionality matters more than polish — particularly effective for bottom-of-funnel content aimed at prospects who are close to a decision and want to see the product work, not a stylized representation of it.
Watch out for: Raw screen recordings without careful editing can feel slow and meandering. The difference between a screen recording that performs well and one that doesn’t is almost entirely in the edit — tight pacing, clear captions, and cuts that remove dead time between actions.
Typical cost/time profile: Low production cost, but don’t underestimate the editing time required to make raw footage feel tight and intentional rather than like an unedited demo call recording.
Mixed/Hybrid Style
A deliberate combination of two or more of the above — commonly live-action framing with animated inserts, or screen recording with animated callouts layered on top.
Best for: Companies whose story genuinely benefits from more than one register — needing both the credibility of real people or real product footage and the clarity animation brings to explaining an abstract mechanism or process.
Watch out for: Hybrid approaches require more upfront planning to avoid feeling disjointed. A clear creative through-line — consistent color treatment, consistent pacing logic between the live and animated sections — is what keeps a hybrid piece feeling like one cohesive video rather than two different videos stitched together.
Typical cost/time profile: Generally falls between pure animation and pure live-action, though it requires more coordination during production planning.
Matching Style to Company Stage
Pre-seed / bootstrapped: Live-action founder-to-camera or screen recording with voiceover are almost always the right call. The credibility gained from authenticity outweighs whatever polish a bigger animated production would add, and the cost and timeline fit a lean budget far better.
Seed to Series A: This is typically when flat 2D character animation or UI-based animation starts to make sense, once there’s a validated message worth investing in and a product stable enough that a UI-based video won’t need constant re-editing.
Series B and beyond: Motion graphics and hybrid approaches tend to fit well here, especially for companies with more complex, data-rich value propositions and the budget to produce and maintain a more sophisticated video library across multiple funnel stages.
This isn’t a rigid rule — plenty of early-stage companies produce excellent animated explainers, and plenty of mature companies get real value from a simple, honest founder-to-camera video. But as a starting heuristic when a founder has no strong existing preference, matching style ambition to company stage tends to produce a better return on the investment than defaulting to whatever style looks most impressive in a portfolio reel.
Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Style
- Does my product’s interface itself help sell it, or is the real value more abstract? This points toward UI-based animation versus character or motion-graphics animation.
- Do I have real customers or a compelling founder story I can put on camera? If yes, live-action or hybrid approaches become more viable and often more persuasive than starting from animation.
- How fast is my product changing right now? Faster-changing products should lean away from styles that require frequent, expensive updates.
- What’s my realistic budget and timeline, not my aspirational one? Matching style to actual constraints prevents a project from stalling out halfway through because the chosen style turned out to be more expensive or slower than anticipated.
- What does my specific audience already expect to see in this category? Sometimes matching category convention builds trust through familiarity; sometimes breaking from it is exactly what makes you stand out. Knowing which applies to your specific market is worth a genuine, honest assessment before committing.
How I Approach a Style Recommendation With a New Client
When a founder comes to me undecided, I usually start by asking them to describe their product to someone outside their industry in one sentence, without using any internal jargon. How easily that sentence comes together tells me a lot. If the product describes itself naturally in terms of a person’s frustration and relief — “helps overwhelmed teachers grade papers faster” — that’s often a strong signal for character-based animation or live-action, since the story already centers on a relatable human experience. If the product only makes sense described in terms of a system, a workflow, or a technical process — “orchestrates data pipelines between disparate SaaS tools” — that usually points toward motion graphics or UI-based animation, since the value is structural rather than emotional.
I also ask what the founder is most worried prospects will misunderstand. That answer often reveals the real job the video needs to do, separate from whatever style preference the founder walked in with. A founder worried prospects will think the product is “just another tool that does the same thing as everyone else” needs a video built around genuine differentiation, which usually benefits from a distinct visual style that doesn’t look like every other explainer in the category. A founder worried prospects won’t understand the workflow at all needs a video built around clarity above all else, which sometimes means choosing the plainer, less flashy style even if it feels underwhelming in a portfolio sense.
A Note on Combining Multiple Videos Instead of One Perfect Video
One pattern I’d encourage more founders to consider: rather than trying to make a single explainer do every job — awareness, education, proof, and conversion all at once — it’s often more effective and not necessarily more expensive to produce two or three shorter, more targeted pieces in different styles, each aimed at a specific stage or channel. A quick, low-cost screen recording for retargeting ads. A slightly more polished character-animated piece for the homepage. A founder-to-camera clip for cold outreach and social. Each does one job well, rather than one video trying and failing to do all three simultaneously.
This approach also spreads production risk. If the flagship animated piece takes longer than expected or needs more revision rounds, the lighter-weight formats can often be produced and deployed in the meantime, so the whole video strategy isn’t blocked on a single, more complex deliverable.
The Bottom Line
There’s no universally “best” explainer style — only the style that fits your product’s actual selling point, your company’s current stage, and the resources you realistically have available. Founders who start by identifying what their video genuinely needs to prove, rather than which style looks most impressive, consistently end up with explainers that perform better and cost less to maintain over time.
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