By Mehdi HassanWhat is the difference between a landing page, a microsite and a website?
A landing page is a single page with one goal. A microsite is a small set of pages, often on its own domain or subdomain, built around one campaign, product or event. A website is the company's main home, with pages for every audience, product and purpose. The difference is how much ground each one has to cover.
Landing page | Microsite | Website | |
|---|---|---|---|
Pages | One | Usually 2–6 | As many as the company needs |
Audience | One segment | One campaign audience | Everyone |
Goal | One action | One story, a few actions | Many goals by audience |
Navigation | Minimal or none | Its own small menu | Full menu and footer |
Lifespan | Weeks to months | Months, often time-bound | Years |
SEO role | Usually small | Can rank for its niche | Main organic asset |
For the definition and anatomy of the first format, see our guide to what a landing page is. If your question is narrower, about whether ads should hit your existing homepage, read landing page vs homepage.
When should you build a landing page instead of a microsite?
Build a landing page when one audience needs to take one action and the argument fits on a single scroll. That covers most startup needs before Series A: a waitlist, a free trial page for one use case, a demo page for one buyer, a paid campaign or a launch.
A landing page is faster to make, cheaper to change and easier to measure, because there's only one conversion to track. If the story feels too big for one page, the first fix is usually tighter copy, not more pages. Most long arguments still fit on one well-structured page; our guide on how long a landing page should be explains when long-form wins.
- You're pre-launch and need emails, not a company site.
- You're testing a new message or market and want to learn cheaply.
- You're running paid campaigns that each need a matched page.
- Your product has one buyer and one action, and the homepage already exists.
When does a campaign microsite make sense?
A campaign microsite makes sense when one story needs several pages, a distinct identity or a longer life than a single campaign page. Typical cases are annual reports and research studies, conferences and events, product sub-brands, partner programs and big launches that need separate pages for features, pricing and FAQs.
The trade-off is cost and maintenance. A microsite is a small website: it needs its own navigation, footer, analytics and upkeep, and if it lives on a separate domain, it builds search authority there instead of on your main site. That's a real cost if you want the campaign's attention to help your main domain rank.
Pros
- Room for a bigger story than one page allows
- Can carry its own visual identity for an event or sub-brand
- Keeps a campaign separate from the main site's navigation
- Can rank for its own niche topic if it has substance
Cons
- Costs more to design, build and maintain than one page
- A separate domain splits search authority from your main site
- Several goals per site make conversion harder to measure
- Often abandoned after the campaign, leaving outdated pages live
When do you need a full website instead of a landing page?
You need a full website when several audiences are visiting at once and each needs something different. That point usually arrives when you're hiring, raising, selling to more than one buyer type or relying on organic search for growth.
- Investors and candidates want the team, the story and the company, not a campaign offer.
- More than one product or buyer needs separate pages that a single landing page can't hold.
- Organic search needs many pages with real content, linked together on one domain.
- Enterprise buyers check security, customers, pricing and support before they talk to sales.
If you already have a site and wonder whether to rebuild it on a new platform, that's a separate decision; see should you migrate your website. And if only the homepage is the problem, a homepage-only redesign may be enough.
What does each one cost at a fixed-price studio?
Costs vary widely across the market. For a landing page, typical ranges we see quoted run from about $500 to $25,000, depending on who writes the copy, whether the design is custom and how the page is built. Microsites and websites scale with page count and the complexity of the CMS and integrations.
At Designify, the prices are fixed and published, so you can compare like for like:
- Landing page: one conversion page, copy, custom design, animated Next.js build
- $6,000
- Website up to 6 pages, with CMS, +$500 per extra page
- $8,000
- Brand and design sprint: redesign plus 10 explorations in Figma, design only
- $3,000
A microsite is usually scoped as our website package, since it's a small multi-page site with its own navigation and CMS. Delivery timelines for each are scoped on the intro call. If you're not yet sure what you need, the $3,000 design sprint lets you explore directions before committing to a build.
Hypothetical example: costing three options for one launch
For example, suppose a health-tech startup is launching a new clinician product next quarter. Option one is a single launch landing page with a demo request, at our $6,000 landing page price. Option two is a four-page microsite with overview, features, security and FAQ pages, which would usually be scoped as the $8,000 website package. Option three is rebuilding the main site to add the product, which might be eight pages, so $8,000 plus $1,000 for the two extra pages.
If the launch has one buyer and one action, option one is the sensible start. If buyers need security and compliance pages before booking, the microsite earns its extra cost.
Landing page vs microsite vs website: which should you choose at your stage?
Choose by stage and by the number of audiences you need to serve right now, not by what you might need in two years. Here's the decision table we use with founders.
Your stage | Budget | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
Pre-launch or pre-seed | Low | Landing page | One action: collect interest |
Seed, one product, first campaigns | Low to mid | Landing page per campaign | Cheap to test messages |
Seed to Series A, hiring and raising | Mid | Website | Several audiences visit at once |
Established, big time-bound campaign | Mid | Microsite in a subfolder | Story too big for one page |
Growing on organic search | Mid to high | Website with content | Rankings need many linked pages |
This isn't right for everyone. If your sales depend on buyers comparing several of your products, skip the landing page stage and invest in a proper site from the start.
