A coming-soon page that holds your domain and sets expectations
A coming-soon page tells anyone who types your new address that they've found the right place and that more is on the way. It's not a waitlist, though it can carry a sign-up: its main job is to hold the domain, confirm who you are and say roughly when the full site arrives.
Holding page or waitlist?
The two get confused because they look similar: one screen, a name, a line of text. The difference is what you want the visitor to do.
| Coming-soon page | Waitlist page | |
|---|---|---|
| Main purpose | Confirm the address and set expectations | Collect as many sign-ups as possible |
| Sign-up form | Optional | The whole point |
| Who visits | People who already know your name | People you're trying to win over |
| Copy | Who you are, what's coming, when, how to reach you now | A specific promise and a reason to join |
| Typical life | Days to months, until the site is ready | Until launch, then becomes the launch page |
A shop opening on the high street next month, a firm that's rebranded, a restaurant with a new name: these need a holding page. A software product hunting for its first users needs a waitlist page.
What the page should say
- Your name, spelled as people will search for it. Put it in the page title as well as the heading.
- One sentence on what you are. "A neighbourhood bakery opening on Dale Street, Leeds" is enough.
- When. A month, a season, or "spring". If you don't know, say what you're waiting on rather than leaving it blank.
- How to reach you now. An email address, a phone number, or a short contact form. Press, suppliers and future staff will look for this.
- Where to follow progress. One or two profiles you actually post on.
- Optionally, a sign-up. "Tell me when you open" with an email field, if you'll really write on opening day.
Avoid the old "under construction" look with a progress bar or a countdown to a date you might miss. A clock that hits zero with nothing behind it is worse than no clock.
Search engines and a holding page
A thin holding page won't rank for much, and it doesn't need to. What helps is that the domain resolves, serves a real page with your name on it, and starts building a history. When the full site replaces it at the same address, you keep that. What hurts is a parked domain full of ads, or an error page, because anyone who looks you up decides you're not real. Each published Anticode site serves its own robots.txt and sitemap.xml, so the holding page is a normal, crawlable page from day one.
Publishing it with Anticode
As a coming-soon page builder, Anticode needs a sentence such as "a holding page for Crumb & Co, a bakery opening on Dale Street in Leeds this spring, with an email for suppliers and a 'tell me when you open' sign-up". The design engine lays out a single landing page, held to one of seven design systems, so even a one-screen page has considered type and spacing. Choose the direction you intend to keep for the full site, so the switch later doesn't feel like a different business.
- Build and preview the page; previews of design-engine pages need no account.
- Publish to a free
<name>.anticode.devaddress to check it on your phone. - On a paid plan, connect your own domain. Add the CNAME or TXT record Anticode shows; the certificate is issued automatically. The custom domain guide covers the DNS side.
- If you included a sign-up, connect it to Kit or Mailchimp so addresses go straight to your email tool.
Replacing it with the real site
When you're ready, you don't start a new project. Ask for the change in the same one: "turn this into the full bakery site with a menu, opening hours, About and Contact pages". The design engine rebuilds it with separate pages in the same design system, and you publish to the same domain. Version history keeps your recent saves, so while the holding page is still among them you can restore it if the opening slips and you'd rather not show a half-finished menu. Sign-ups collected on the holding page stay in your dashboard.
Limits
- No countdown timers. Published design-engine pages have no scripts, so there's no live clock. State the date in words.
- No password-protected preview of the full site behind it. To show the work in progress to a partner, use a client review link rather than a hidden page.
- Custom domains need a paid plan. Free sites stay on an anticode.dev address and show a small badge; see /pricing.
- Anticode won't email your sign-ups. It can email you each one; writing to the list is done from your email tool.
Questions people ask
Does an under-construction page hurt SEO?
Not if it's a real page with your name and a sentence about you. It won't rank much on its own, but the domain begins to be crawled and the full site inherits that address.
Can I show the real site to a few people before launch?
Yes. Send a client review link to the current preview. It needs no account, can carry comments on each section, and expires after 14 days unless you change that.
Do I need a sign-up form?
No. Add one only if you'll write to people when you launch; otherwise a contact address is enough.