How to Launch an Estate Planning Service in Under a Week

The single biggest reason financial services professionals delay adding estate planning to their business isn't doubt about demand — it's the assumption that launching it will be a drawn-out project. New systems, compliance reviews, months of setup.

It isn't, and it shouldn't be. Here's a realistic, honest day-by-day plan to go from "considering it" to live with your first clients, in under a week.

Day 1: Start your free trial

Start with the account itself. Signing up takes minutes: create your account, verify your email, and you're straight onto the platform — one plan, everything included, so there's no model or tier to weigh up before you can get moving. The trial is genuinely free for 14 days, no card required to start exploring.

Use the rest of day one to read through the terms and get familiar with the dashboard — Customers, Leads, Campaigns, Will Suite, Estate Planning Website and Marketing Info. You don't need to touch all of it yet, just know where everything lives.

Day 2: Customise your branded website

This is the day to make the platform look and feel like yours. Spark Solutions launches a fully branded estate planning website for your business, which means:

Uploading your logo and setting your brand colours.
Connecting your domain or subdomain, if you want the platform to live at your own web address.
Reviewing the client-facing copy and email templates to make sure the tone matches your firm.
Deciding whether Online Wills — the self-service DIY option — will run alongside your branded site as a second, lower-friction front door (see our guide to choosing your launch strategy).

This is typically the most time-consuming single day of the week — but it's still measured in hours, not days, because the underlying platform, wizard and legal content are already built. You're configuring, not building.

Day 3: Review the client wizard yourself

Before you send this to a single client, go through the wizard as if you were one. Create a test will, a test LPA, walk through the trust options. This matters for two reasons.

First, you'll spot anything that doesn't sit right for your specific client base — a question sequence you want to introduce differently, or a point in the flow you want to prepare clients for in advance.

Second, and more importantly, you'll be able to speak to it confidently. When a client asks "what's actually involved," you want to be able to describe the wizard from direct experience, not from a sales page. This single day of hands-on testing is what turns you from someone who's offering estate planning into someone who understands it.

Day 4: Connect Stripe and get ready to get paid

With the platform configured and tested, set up payments. Connecting your own Stripe account is a one-time setup that Stripe's own onboarding handles cleanly, and it's what allows client payments to flow directly to you rather than through a third party.

If you don't already use Stripe, creating an account is straightforward and typically approved same-day for an established UK business. Once it's connected, take a moment to check your dashboard — Leads, Revenue and your Probate Bank will start populating automatically from here.

Day 5: Tell your first 10 clients

This is the day the revenue conversation actually starts. Don't try to announce this to your entire client base at once — pick 10 clients where the timing is obviously right:

Anyone mid-transaction (a mortgage completion, a protection review, a retirement planning meeting) where the estate planning conversation fits naturally, as covered in why every IFA should be having this conversation.
Anyone you already know doesn't have a will, or you suspect has an outdated one.
Anyone in a blended family, a recent house move, or a recent addition to the family — all classic prompts.

A short, direct message works better than a mass email: "I've started offering wills, LPAs and trust planning through my own platform — given [specific reason relevant to them], I thought it was worth flagging." Personalised outreach to 10 well-chosen clients will consistently outperform a generic announcement to 500.

Days 6–7: Go live and follow up

By day six, you should have real client activity — cases started, questions coming back, maybe a completed will already. Use the remaining time to:

Follow up with anyone who started but didn't finish (the wizard is designed to be simple, but a gentle nudge always helps completion rates).
Note anything from real client use that you want to refine — wording, timing, or which of your 10 clients responded best, so you can target similarly next time.
Plan how estate planning becomes a standard part of your process going forward, not a one-off campaign — see our note on the revenue potential of doing this consistently.

The honest version of "a week"

None of this requires new qualifications, new compliance permissions, or new staff — the plan above is deliberately realistic, not a marketing exaggeration. Most of the genuine time investment sits in days 2 and 3: branding and getting comfortable with the wizard. Everything else moves as fast as you decide to move it.

If you want to see exactly how much of this week-one plan is already built for you before you commit to anything, book a free demo and we'll walk through the platform, the wizard, and what a real branded launch looks like end to end.