How Many Options to Present to a Client and Still Get One Decision
I once sent a client four versions of the same ad and got three different answers back. This is how many options I send now, how I label them and how I lock one pick.
Sending four video options to one client in a single email was a mistake I made in my agency that I still think about every time an editor asks me how many options to present to a client, right, because it cost us a full week of editing time. We were cutting a launch ad for a brand client, and I wanted to look generous, so I had the editor export four versions with a founder open, a product open, a different track and a shorter ending, and I sent all four in one email.
What came back was basically a committee meeting in my inbox, right, because the marketing head liked the second open, the founder liked the third track and the brand manager wanted the fourth ending. Then somebody asked if we could combine the best bits, which meant a fifth version nobody had scoped, and one round turned into three. To be very honest, the client left that project thinking we didn't know what we wanted, and that was fair, because we didn't.
So this post is everything I changed after that, from how many options I send now to how I label them, how stakeholders compare them and how the pick folds back into the main cut. Some of it is plain agency discipline and some of it is how we set it up inside PlayPause, and I'll say which is which as we go.
Presenting multiple options to clients: when it helps and when it hurts
The first thing I had to accept, right, is that options feel like good service but are very often a way of pushing my decision back onto the client. When an editor sends three cuts, the client hears that the team couldn't decide, and now they have to do creative direction on top of their day job without anyone telling them what to look for.
Options genuinely help when the brief was ambiguous about something that matters, for instance a brief that says "energetic", which you can read as a fast music-led open or as a founder talking straight to camera with pace. They also help at the direction stage, when the client hasn't seen their footage cut together yet and honestly can't describe their taste until it's on screen.
Options hurt in almost every other case, right, and the one that burned me was the late stage, where the client should have been approving a cut and I handed them a menu instead. Often the real problem sits upstream in the creative brief, and a ten-minute call to settle one ambiguous word saves a whole round of alternates, which is also why I frame the first viewing carefully, as I wrote about in presenting a rough cut to clients.
Every option you send is a decision you hand back to the client, so only send the ones that are truly theirs to make.
How many options to show a client
My rule now is simple enough that every editor in the agency can repeat it, right, which is one recommended cut plus one alternate only when there's a genuine fork the client should own, so two options is the default. Three is the ceiling, and only at the direction stage when the tone is wide open, because at four the client stops comparing and starts assembling a hybrid that nobody would have chosen from scratch.
The number also shrinks as the project moves forward. At the direction stage I'll show up to three short treatments of the open because the client is still finding their taste, at the rough cut it's one cut with at most one alternate on the section that's still genuinely open, and at the fine cut it's one cut with no menu at all. At final delivery it's zero options, because a 9:16 cutdown or a 15-second version is a deliverable they ordered and not a choice they're making, so I label it that way.
The catch here is that the number matters less than what changes between the options. Each alternate should change one variable and only one, right, so if option two has a different open, it keeps the same music, middle and ending as option one. Change the open and the track together and the client can't tell which change they're reacting to, and you get "I like the second one but not the music" back.
For instance, on a 45-second product ad where I'm unsure between a founder open and a product macro open, I cut the whole ad once with my recommended open, then duplicate the sequence and swap only the first six seconds. The client watches those six seconds twice and decides, the rest of the ad gets approved in the same pass because it's identical in both, and you see what I mean here, right, one variable gives you one clean answer.
The note I put on top of that link does half the work, and it reads roughly like this: "Two options on one card. MV1 is my pick, founder on camera for the first six seconds, because your audience already trusts him. MV2 swaps only those six seconds for a product macro open, and everything after 0:06 is identical, so please judge the open and nothing else, with one final call by Thursday." Clients really really appreciate hearing what the expert would pick, and most of them go with the recommendation, but they still made the choice themselves, which helps when they defend that cut inside their own company.
Music alternates are the tricky one, right, because a new track moves the beat, and the moment the editor recuts to that beat the picture changes too and you're testing two things again. So for a music option I lay the alternate track under the identical picture first, the client picks the feel, and only then do we retime the cuts, because the track drags the whole sound design with it, the hits, the risers and so on.
Labelling alternates so nobody mixes them up
Half the confusion in an options round comes from labels like "Option A" and "Option B", because by the time the client writes feedback a day later, nobody remembers which letter had the founder open. So I label by the variable, right, one file reads "Open founder on camera" and the other reads "Open product macro". Trust me on any level, when the client writes back "go with the macro", there's no lookup table and no chance someone approves the wrong letter.
The other decision is structural, and it helps to think a bit like version control in software, where a new commit on the same line of work is different from a separate branch. In PlayPause, a new version of the same cut stacks on the same card as MV1, MV2, MV3 and so on, and that's what I use for iterations of one edit.
For alternates, it depends on how much timeline they share. If two options differ in one section, I stack the alternate on the same card so the client can compare directly, and the version note says which section changed. If they're really different edits, like a fast montage version against a slower founder story version, they go on separate cards in the same folder so it doesn't look like one replaced the other.
Either way the client gets one link, opens it in a browser with no account and no install, and sees both options in one place, which is very very different from four attachments in a thread. There's more on keeping this tidy across a project in handling multiple cut versions.
Letting stakeholders compare options side by side
Once options are labelled, the next problem is that clients compare from memory, right, they watch one, go to a meeting, come back and watch the other. On the Agency plan we have side-by-side version compare, which puts two versions next to each other on one screen, so the stakeholder reacts to the actual difference instead of a memory of it. We built a page on side-by-side version compare for ad producers, and there's a walkthrough in comparing two video versions.
I also tell people exactly where to look, so if the only difference is the first six seconds, I say that in the note and drop a range comment across those seconds on each option. Comments stick to the exact frame and clients can draw on it too, so if the brand manager wants the logo higher on the macro shot, she just circles the spot instead of describing it in an email.
four exports in one email thread, labels by letter and every stakeholder picking a different one
one link with options labelled by what changed, side by side compare on Agency and notes on the exact frame
Collecting the decision in one place
This is what went most wrong in my four-version disaster, right, because the decision happened in five places at once, across email threads, a WhatsApp message, a call and a comment on the wrong file. So now the choice gets made on the link and nowhere else, and stakeholders reply in threads on the frame and @mention each other, so a debate about the open sits on the six seconds it's about.
Before I send the link, I ask one question in writing, which is who makes the final call on this choice. When there are several decision makers, I use the approach in handling feedback from multiple decision makers, where one person owns the pick and everyone else advises. Our multi-stakeholder review page shows how that works with several reviewers on one link, and this stage is where the agency review process either earns its keep or quietly eats your margin.
Then I record the outcome with custom statuses, which every plan has. We use statuses like "Awaiting pick", "Option chosen" and "Not chosen", so anyone on the team, including an editor who wasn't on the call, can see which option won without messaging me. Who-watched analytics also shows who opened the link, when and from which city, so I know whether the decision maker has watched both options before I chase an answer.
- One named decision maker for the pick
- A deadline for the choice written on the link
- Threaded replies on the frame instead of email
- A custom status marking the chosen option
Folding the winning option back into the main cut
Once the pick is made, the job is to make the options disappear, right, because the client should now see one cut moving forward. If the alternate was stacked, the editor uploads the merged cut as the next MV on that same card so the history stays in one place. If it was a separate card, I move the losing option to an archive folder instead of deleting it, because I'm pretty sure someone will ask what the other open looked like three weeks later.
The editor then works from the notes on the chosen option, and if they cut in Premiere Pro, the Premiere Pro panel shows the comments inside Premiere, where clicking one jumps the playhead to that frame. On DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro there's no native panel, so the flow is export, upload, review and then work through the notes in the editor.
The step most agencies skip comes after delivery, right, and on the Agency plan I write the outcome into the client's Playbook, which is basically a per-client document of creative style and direction, so a line like "prefers founder on camera opens" lives where the next editor will read it. Over a few projects, that's how two options slowly become one confident cut, because you've learned the client's taste instead of asking them to perform it every time.
Frequently asked questions
Is it better to present one option or several?
For most finished video I present one recommended cut, right, and I only add a second option when there's a genuine fork the client should own, like the open or the offer. Beyond two, or three at the direction stage, you're asking them to do the creative director's job, and at the end of the day the client hired you to have a point of view.
Should I charge for an alternate cut for a client?
I build one alternate into the scope when the brief is ambiguous, because it saves a round later. Anything beyond that, and especially a hybrid of two options, counts as a revision in my agency, and I say so before the round starts. The wording lives in our agency revision policy, so clients know upfront what an extra option costs in time and money.
What if the client picks parts of every option?
That usually means the options changed too many things at once. I reply on the thread, confirm exactly which parts they want and say what the hybrid means for the schedule and the agreed rounds, which is the same move I use when pushing back on client feedback. Then it gets cut as the next version on the main card, and next time each alternate changes only one variable.
Can I show a client two versions of a video without them making an account?
Clients don't need an account for any of this, right, they open one link in a browser with nothing to install, watch both options, comment on the exact frame and reply in threads with their colleagues. Side-by-side version compare is on the Agency and Enterprise plans, and on Creator they flip between versions in the same stack on one card, which is enough for small differences like a six-second open.
If you want to try this on your next options round, the plans are on our pricing page, and every one of them starts with a 7-day free trial. Pricing is flat per workspace and counted in members, so adding an editor doesn't add a line to the bill as long as you're inside your plan's member count.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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