How to Choose the Right UI/UX Agency for Your SaaS Startup

You are ready to launch your SaaS product in the market, and just need a great design to support that vision. But with so many agencies claiming to be the best agency for UI UX SaaS startups, how do you pick the right one? 

Well choosing the right UI UX agency depends on some factors like the type of work you need, the product requirements, your budget, and the stage of your SaaS startup. When you pick the right agency with experience and the right approach, your SaaS product can deliver a clean, and easy to use experience for your users. 

We’ve gathered the most common factors that founders miss. You'll also have a clear idea of what to look for in an ideal UI UX design agency for your SaaS product. 

Why Hiring the Right UI UX Partner Matters for SaaS

Think of a SaaS startup founder named Greg. Greg has launched his product after hiring a random UI UX designer to handle the design of his startup SaaS product. At first, the design looked okay, but problems started to come after the launch. Users started to complain about common functionalities like confusing navigation, unclear onboarding, and inconsistent layout.

Now, don’t be like Greg. We understand how important your SaaS project is to you. So, that’s why it’s crucial to pick a SaaS focused UI UX agency that treats your product the same level as you do. 

To understand why picking the right UI UX agency matters so much, here are some important stats to give you an idea: 

• 70% of users abandon a product after a poor first experience
• Good UX can increase conversion rates by up to 200%
• Fixing UX problems post-launch can cost 5–10× more
• UX-driven products see up to 32% higher revenue growth
• 94% of first impressions are design-related

Things You Should Know Before Hiring The Right UI UX Partner

The best UI UX designer partner for you is the one that fits your product requirements best. So, before choosing an agency, it’s important to understand your product types and the type of UI UX work it needs.

Here are the common things that you need to define before trying to partner a UI UX agency for your startup: 

The stage of your product: before finding the right UI UX designers, you need to understand what stage your product is really in. If your product is at the MVP stage, you need foundational UX works such as wireframing, user flow validation, and basic usability testing. In comparison, a growth-stage SaaS product needs refining design systems, improving usability and optimizing existing user flows.

Type of design work you need: Different types of UI UX demand different types of expertise. Some agencies specialize in interaction design, and complex workflows, while others focus more on visual polish, branding, or motion design. So, the ideal agency depends on the types of design work your product needs. 

Your Target Audience: A UI UX agency should clearly understand the audience your SaaS product is built for. This can be anything from B2B customers, B2C customers, or a niche professional audience. The design agency needs to understand the ideal customer your SaaS product is serving, and design based on that. 

Understand the Business Goals of your Design: the primary purpose of UI UX design is not to look or feel aesthetic, but to support business outcomes. This means, the design decisions should align with the ideal customers and help navigate through the product easily. When UI UX aligns with the business goals, it provides a better usability, and higher product success rates.

What to Look for When Choosing a UI UX Partner for Your SaaS

When choosing a UI UX partner, you have to look through a set of key factors that help pick the right partner for your product. Here are the most important things that you have to look for, when selecting a UI/UX partner.

Previous SaaS Product Design Experience

Not all UI UX design agencies have the experience working with SaaS products. Different types of UI UX agencies often specialize on different types of designs. For example, some agencies focus primarily on mobile design, some focus on marketing websites or branding projects.

Here are the difference between SaaS design agency vs general design agency:

You should look for design agencies with experience in designing SaaS websites. SaaS products contain dashboards, complex workflows, and different role-based systems for handling onboarding. Designing these systems require specific knowledge of understanding of SaaS usability patterns and user behavior. 

So, take a look at the agency sample to find out whether they have handled similar challenges before. It’s really important for deciding on whether the agency can support your product design needs or not. 

A Clear and Thoughtful UX Process

The design agency you hire should have a clear and thoughtful UX process that they follow. This is extremely important, because without following proper user experience guidelines, they will not be able to research and plan or design experience based on real user needs.

That’s why you should look for agencies with a strong user experience foundation team that can work from ground up. Because great SaaS UI UX design agencies don’t design the screen first, they design the product solutions, and from there they start designing the screens. Here’s the ideal design process a SaaS UI UX design follows: 

The design process begins with research on the SaaS product that you have. After some proper research, they define how users move from one page to another, on user flows.

From there, the agency creates moodboards to find out about finding out the visual direction directly. From the mood board, the agencies create a design system which they use to create the final UI.

And when talking about transparency, good SaaS agencies are clear about their workflow, and how they are organized. They will also provide regular updates on progress, so you always know what’s happening and never have to chase for status updates. 

Strong Product Thinking, Not Just Visuals

Some agencies mainly focus on creating fancy visuals, and attractive layouts, while others focus on the usability, and user-centered design. You should look for the second type of the design agencies - that focus on user centered design. 

A good design agency thinks beyond how the users go through the functions then design and update the designs based on that. The goal here is to improve the user experience by reducing friction. So, that users can easily navigate through the SaaS product, instead of finding fancy visuals that come to work. 

That’s why you should always choose an agency that has strong product thinking. An agency that asks common questions to evaluate the design decisions like: 

• Will this help users understand the product faster?
• Will this reduce confusion?
• Will this help users take the right action?

Agencies think in this way to design products that work. Not just to make the products look good. 

Open and Consistent Collaboration

A Good design agency provides transparent communication between you and the designer. And when you can speak directly to the designers it usually reduces the confusion that is obvious later.

Whereas, when an agency builds a wall between you and the designers, it usually creates more confusion from the design side. This usually ends up in an endless feedback and revisions loop. 

That’s why you should look for agencies with good and open communication systems, while also giving you updates based on what's going on and what’s to happen later.

Realistic Budget and Scope Alignment

Budget conversations are one of the most uncomfortable things that you have to talk about. As a SaaS startup, you might get intimidated by cheap UI UX offers and vague promises. But, these offers can bring down your product along with the designs.

Here is a comparison between cheap design agency and premium design agency to show the differences: 

The cheaper agencies usually skip the important steps like product research, user validation, and proper UX planning. So, in the long run, that causes more cost when trying to solve onboarding issues, reduce user drop-off, and redesign features that didn’t work as expected.

A strong UI UX agency is clear about its deliverables, revisions and the boundaries of the content. That’s usually a great part that helps you understand exactly what you’re paying for, what to expect and how the design will support your product goals later. 

Ability to Design for Growth and Scale

Imagine your SaaS product is finally gaining traction. Users are signing up and features are working great for a while. Then you decide to add some new functionalities or expand the product. Then suddenly, the buttons look misaligned, layouts break and small design updates turn into big obstacles.

This is what happens when agencies design interfaces without scalability in mind. Low-cost agencies usually focus on the current screens they’re working on, without thinking about scaling. As a result, when you try to add new features in the interface, the design starts to fall apart. 

On the other hand, if you develop the product with a strong UI UX agency, it will provide better UI UX functions. Because good agencies don’t just design screens, they design process, and workflow for the users. That's why it’s easier when you need to scale, as it’s easier to grow on that in the long term. 

Practical Handoff and Development Awareness

The design work is not just finished by completing design related work. It also has to be developer friendly. What do we mean by developer friendly? Developer friendly means including the necessary technical information, clear naming and reusable patterns that prevent the developers from asking questions like: 

• What happens when this fails?
• Is this animation required or optional?
• How does this work on smaller screens?

The right UI UX agency understands development constraints and collaborates closely with the engineering team. So, they design with implementation in mind that reduces friction during the development stage, without any misunderstandings or delays. 

Red Flags to Avoid When Choosing a UI UX Agency

When choosing a design agency, you have to also look for some red flags to avoid. As having these red flags can make a waste of your money, time and energy overall. 

Here are some warning signs you should pay close attention to before partnering with the right design agency: 

No SaaS case studies: if the design agency claims to work with SaaS before, but actually does not have any SaaS case studies based on that, that is actually a serious red flag. Case studies prove hands-on experience on what niches they have worked with, and what problems they have solved. SaaS projects have complexities of their own like onboarding flows, dashboards, permissions, and recurring user journeys. So, without proven SaaS experience, the agency may struggle to design. 

Talks only about the visual side: some agencies focus entirely on the visual aspect of the design. They talk about the colors, fonts, and animations of the design, but have no mentions of common user experience basics like product flows, and onboarding. These types of designs are pretty harmful for SaaS based companies. This is because, in SaaS products, it’s way more important that whether it solves the user problem than if it looks pretty or not. 

One size, fit all process design: some agencies present the same design process that they follow for all the types of designs. But, designs are not one size, fit all products. Different types of products demand different ways to handle the product design. If an agency does not follow that, there is a good chance that it will go with the generic process and ignore the main features of your product. So, keep an eye on that. 

Poor communication in early conversations: communication is a simple yet very essential part of the design process. When communicating with agencies feels confusing, slow and hard to follow, it usually does not improve later. Good agencies can communicate clearly on what they want to say, what they mean from day one. So, keep an eye on the way agencies communicate with you while discussing the project.

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Step By Step Process for Hiring a UI UX Partner

Most SaaS startups don't fail because of wrong ideas, but because of choosing the wrong partners for building their product. You don’t need the best UI UX agency to design your SaaS project. You just need the right agency that has the work experience and can work with your goals and constraints. 

1. Define Your Goals & Constraints First

Before hiring any agency, you need to understand what your SaaS product actually needs first. So, take time to find out what is the goal for your SaaS product. This helps you decide whether you want to invest in the goals or not.

Along with goals, also be aware about the constraints as well. You need to decide the ideal budget range, timeline, and technical limitations for your project. When you are clear about these things before, it becomes easy to identify agencies that can help support your product. 

2. Shortlist Agencies Based on Fit

As we’ve said before, you have to pick the right agency for your SaaS project based on fit, not popularity. For that, start by creating a short list of agencies that have experience with similar products like yours.

Look for agencies that have worked with the SaaS specific design challenges like scalability, and user flows in a system. The agencies that have previous working experience on similar products are more likely to deliver practical design for your SaaS product. 

3. Review Case Studies Deeply

You should also review their case studies properly. Find out if they only focus on the color, and aesthetics? Or do they clearly explain the problems and outcomes they achieved. 

If an agency case study only focuses on beautiful screens without any context, on how it solved the problems, it’s probably an indication that they prefer visual appearance over problem -solving. It’s really important for SaaS products because, in SaaS, solving problems are more important than surface level visuals. 

4. Talk to the Actual Designers

To get the best results, you should talk directly to the agencies designers who will be handling the product design. This isn’t just about sharing ideas, it’s about understanding how they approach the design problems. 

For example, can you notice whether they could clearly explain your product in their own words? Ask thoughtful follow up questions, and can they challenge assumptions when needed? Direct access to designers helps make the design process smooth. 

5. Start Small for Discovery Sprint or Pilot Engagement

You can start small with a UI UX agency at the starting, instead of committing for a long-term engagement right away. And it’s often a smarter choice to start small. Then after you evaluate the way the agency works, you can invest fully in a long term partnership. It helps you to get an idea of how the collaboration can feel in the long term. And give you an understanding beyond just delivery screens. 

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right UI UX agency for your SaaS startup depends on how clearly you understand your product and its goals . It will shape what design agency you choose, how they design your product, and how easily users can navigate it. 

There's no single best agency for every SaaS product. You just need the right agency that understands your product, its goals and the challenges that comes with designing a SaaS product UI UX. 

When you take time to define your product requirements, choose an agency that you can work with, and maintain clear communication and feedback, you can expect a UI UX design that’s simple, scalable and built for long term success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a UI/UX agency usually cost for a SaaS product?

Most SaaS UI UX projects usually range from $5,000 to $10,000 for focused works like audit, onboarding and key product flows. The pricing also depends on the product complexity, number

Is it better to hire an in-house UI/UX designer or outsource to an agency?

It depends on your SaaS stage. Early-stage and growing SaaS startups usually benefit more from outsourcing. The mature products with ongoing design needs often move toward in-house teams of user roles, and level of research required. 

How long does a typical SaaS UI/UX project take?

A typical UI/UX project usually takes about 2-4 weeks to complete. While, a full SaaS product design can typically take 6-12 weeks. Agencies work in phases, so design can move alongside development, instead of blocking it. 

Do UI/UX agencies also help with product strategy?

Yes, strong UI/UX agencies help with product strategies, not just visuals. This includes helping define the user flows, onboarding logic, and feature priorities based on user behavior. 

What if we already have a design or product in place?

Most SaaS founders look for designs with already existing products. So, that’s normal. The agencies start their process with UX audit, then improving what works, and fixing what does not work. This approach saves time, budget, and development effort. 

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