BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page is a single-page website template sold on ThemeForest for $12, built to hold a placeholder page while a real site is under construction. It pairs a full-screen background — either a still image or a YouTube video — with a countdown timer, an animated headline rotator, and working PHP forms for email signups and enquiries. It suits freelancers, small agencies and business owners who need something live within an hour and do not want to install WordPress to get it. The template is authored by duststone and has been purchased around 290 times on the marketplace.
What BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates actually include
The feature set is narrow by design. There is no page builder, no CMS layer and no admin panel. Everything the visitor sees sits in a handful of files that are edited directly, which is the main reason the template is quick to deploy and the main reason it is not for everyone.
Full-screen backgrounds: still images and YouTube video
The background layer fills the viewport at any screen size, and it accepts either a static image or an embedded YouTube clip. A video background is the more distinctive option here — it gives a launch page movement and atmosphere without any custom footage, because the source is a YouTube URL. The vendor credits the demo photography to Pixabay, so the images shipped with the template are stock placeholders rather than licensed brand assets. Replacing them with project-specific imagery is expected.
Countdown timer and animated headline rotation
A jQuery countdown counts down to a date set in the template’s configuration, which is the standard way to build anticipation before a launch, a product drop or an event. Alongside it, a content changer cycles through several lines of text with a smooth transition, so a single page can rotate through value propositions or announcements instead of showing one static sentence. Both are presentation features, not marketing automation — nothing is tracked and nothing is sent to an external service.
Contact and subscription forms that send mail over SMTP
Two PHP forms ship with the template: one collects email addresses for a launch list, the other collects a name, address and message. The later update added SMTP support, which matters more than it sounds. PHP’s default mail function is unreliable on shared hosting and frequently lands in spam folders; routing submissions through an authenticated SMTP account — a mailbox on the site’s own domain, for example — gives the messages a far better chance of arriving. The forms write nothing to a database, so there is no subscriber list stored on the server and no export tool. Addresses arrive as email and have to be managed elsewhere.
Responsive layout and a no-JavaScript fallback
The layout adapts across desktop, tablet and phone widths, which is table stakes for a page whose whole job is a first impression. More unusual is the vendor’s claim that the page still looks correct with browser JavaScript switched off. In practice that means the countdown and the rotating text will not animate without JavaScript, but the page itself does not collapse into a blank screen. For a placeholder page that may sit untouched for months, that resilience is worth having.
Where BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates fit — and where they do not
The clearest fit is a project with a deadline and no site yet. A freelancer who has just registered a domain for a client, an agency holding a landing page for a campaign that starts in six weeks, or a small business waiting on photography before its real site goes live can all put this up the same day. Because the deliverable is plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP, it drops onto any standard shared host, including cheap cPanel accounts, without a database.
It also works as a pre-launch capture page for a product or event where the only goal is collecting email addresses before the main site exists. The countdown gives visitors a reason to return, and the SMTP-backed form gives the operator a usable list.
The wrong choice is any project that needs to grow. If the plan is to add pages, a blog, a shop or user accounts after launch, starting on a static template means rebuilding later. Anyone who wants to change headlines and dates from a browser without touching files should use a WordPress coming-soon plugin instead — the trade-off is a heavier stack and a plugin subscription, but no FTP access required. The template is also a poor fit for a brand with strict accessibility requirements, because the vendor does not state a conformance level and the animated, video-backed presentation is hard to make fully accessible without rework.
Setting up BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates
Setup assumes a hosting account with PHP available and either FTP access or a file manager in the control panel. The steps are short: upload the extracted folder to the web root, open the main configuration file in a text editor, and replace the placeholder values.
- Upload the template files to the domain’s public directory.
- Set the target date and time for the countdown.
- Swap the demo background image, or paste in a YouTube video ID.
- Rewrite the rotating headline lines and any body copy.
- Enter SMTP credentials — host, port, username and password — for the mail forms.
- Point the social icon links at real profiles and remove the ones that are not used.
- Send a test submission through each form and confirm it arrives.
For someone comfortable editing HTML and CSS, the whole job takes roughly thirty to sixty minutes, most of it spent on copy and image choice rather than code. The SMTP step is the one that trips people up, because a wrong port or an unauthenticated sender address produces silent failures. Testing both forms before announcing the page is not optional. No build tools, package managers or command line are required.
Strengths and limitations of BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates
Strengths
- Genuinely fast to deploy — no CMS, no database, no plugin dependencies.
- Video backgrounds via YouTube remove the need to host or compress footage.
- SMTP support for both forms makes submissions far more likely to reach an inbox than PHP’s default mail function.
- Degrades sensibly when JavaScript is unavailable, which matters for a page left running unattended.
- At $12 it is cheaper than most hosted coming-soon services charge for a single month.
- A 290-sale history on ThemeForest indicates the template has been used in production by others, not just downloaded once.
Limitations
- The last vendor update was December 2020. The template is not abandoned in any obvious way, but it has not been refreshed in several years, and buyers should not expect ongoing maintenance.
- No database means no subscriber management. Email addresses land in an inbox and must be moved into a mailing platform by hand.
- All editing happens in source files. There is no admin screen, so anyone without FTP access or basic HTML confidence will need help.
- Only one page is provided. There is no privacy policy, thank-you page or terms template to accompany the form, and those are usually needed for a compliant signup.
- Form submissions have no spam protection described by the vendor, so a public page may attract bot entries.
- The bundled imagery is stock from Pixabay and will look generic until replaced.
How BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates compare with the alternatives
The realistic alternatives fall into three groups. The first is a WordPress coming-soon plugin, which offers a browser-based editor, built-in email marketing integrations and spam filtering such as reCAPTCHA, at the cost of installing and maintaining WordPress plus a plugin licence. The second is a hosted placeholder service, which requires no hosting at all but charges monthly and keeps the page on someone else’s domain unless a custom domain is configured. The third is a hand-coded page, which is free and infinitely flexible but takes an afternoon rather than an hour.
BERSUA sits between them. It is more work than a plugin to edit, but it carries no recurring cost and no platform dependency, and it runs on hosting most buyers already pay for. It is less flexible than a custom build, but it removes the design decisions that slow those builds down. The deciding factor is usually whether the page will ever need to change after launch. If it will, a plugin is the better home. If it is a fixed placeholder with a date on it, the static approach is faster and cheaper.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need WordPress to use BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page?
No. It is a standalone HTML, CSS and JavaScript template with PHP form handlers, so it runs on any standard web host with PHP enabled. There is no WordPress installation, no theme activation and no database to configure. That also means it cannot be managed from a WordPress dashboard, and edits are made directly in the template files.
Can the countdown timer be set to a specific date and time?
Yes. The countdown is driven by a jQuery script with a target date configured in the template’s settings file. Changing the launch date means editing that value and re-uploading the file. The vendor does not state whether time zones are handled automatically, so the date should be tested in the target region before the page goes public.
Will the contact form emails actually be delivered?
Delivery is much better than with a default PHP mail setup, because the template supports SMTP, which sends mail through an authenticated account rather than the web server. Correct credentials and a sender address on the site’s own domain are still required. The vendor does not bundle a mail service, so an SMTP account must be supplied separately.
Is the template still maintained?
The most recent update recorded on ThemeForest is December 2020, and the vendor has not published a newer release since. The template works as described, but buyers should treat it as a finished product rather than one receiving regular patches. Anyone who needs guaranteed compatibility updates with future browser or PHP versions should weigh that against the low one-off price.
Verdict
BERSUA Responsive Coming Soon Page Site Templates are worth buying for anyone who needs a polished holding page live today and is comfortable editing a few files. The combination of a video background, a working countdown and SMTP-backed forms covers the essentials of a pre-launch page at a price lower than a single month of most hosted alternatives, and the 290 sales suggest it has done that job reliably for others.
Buyers should not choose it if the page needs to evolve into a full website, if subscriber addresses must be stored and managed in a dashboard, or if nobody on the team can access hosting files. The lack of an update since 2020 is a fair reason to pause for long-term projects. For a short, fixed-term placeholder, though, the trade-offs are reasonable and the setup cost is measured in minutes.



