Evaporation-induced salt precipitation in the soil-groundwater system is widespread in arid regions. However, there is no consensus on whether the temporal stage division of evaporation for saline water is consistent with that for pure water, which limits a deeper understanding of evaporation-induced salt precipitation in soil-groundwater system. To clarify the stage division and the controlling factors of evaporation-induced salt precipitation under different NaCl concentrations, indoor soil-column experiments were conducted using quartz sand as the porous medium. Five concentrations were tested: 0, 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L NaCl. Two parallel replicates were performed for each concentration, giving a total of ten soil columns. The experiment lasted 43 days. Evaporation was recorded, air temperature, surface temperature and profile temperature were monitored, surface salt precipitation was documented, and the mass of the surface salt crust was measured. The results show that: ① The evaporation of pure water is consistent with previous studies and can be divided into three stages: Stage I, constant-rate or high-rate evaporation (days 1-18); Stage II, transitional or falling-rate evaporation (days 18-37); and Stage III, diffusion-limited or low-rate evaporation (days 37-43). ② Evaporation of saline water can also be divided into three stages, but the onset time and intensity of each stage vary with NaCl concentration. With increasing concentration, Stage I becomes shorter and Stage III starts earlier. For 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L, Stage I lasted 17, 13, 7 and 4 days, respectively, and Stage III started on days 36, 31, 23 and 17, respectively. For moderate to high saline water (≥10 g/L), earlier development of a surface salt crust led to an earlier transition to Stage III and reduced cumulative evaporation. Using the mean cumulative evaporation of the two replicates, the values for 0, 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L were 228.25, 131.92, 117.45, 109.53, and 29.16 cm, respectively. ③ The controlling factors vary with both concentration and evaporation stage: temperature potential dominated the early-stage evaporation for pure water, freshwater (1 g/L) and mildly saline water (3 g/L); during the transitional stage for moderately saline water (10 g/L), temperature potential and matric potential were both important, while solute potential became stronger and began to contribute to evaporation suppression; for highly saline water (50 g/L), solute potential dominated in the later stage.