Website Redesign Cost: Prices, Cost Drivers, and the Cheapest Way to Do It
Every website ages. It looks wrong on a phone, loads slowly, or nobody on the team dares to change anything. Then the word redesign comes up, and with it the question of what it will cost.
Key takeaways
- A refresh, a redesign and a migration are three different jobs with very different costs.
- Small business redesigns start around $3,000; agency guides put 10 to 20 page sites at $15,000 to $40,000.
- Keeping content and structure that work is the single biggest saving.
- Without redirects from every old URL, you lose Google rankings that took years to build.
- A site that is improved every month rarely needs a big redesign.
Refresh, redesign or migration?
Before you compare quotes, be clear about what you need. The terms get mixed up, but they mean very different amounts of work:
| Project | What changes | What stays | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refresh | The look | Content, structure, technology | low to medium |
| Migration | The technology underneath | Content, structure, URLs | low to medium |
| Redesign | Look, structure, technology, often content | The domain | high |
Many businesses that ask for "a redesign" actually need a migration with a fresh look: the content is basically right, the technology is old, and the site looks dated. That is the cheapest of the three.
What a redesign costs
| Scope | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Small business site, simple redesign | from about $3,000 |
| Basic refresh by an agency | $10,000–25,000 |
| Small business site, 10 to 20 pages, agency | $15,000–40,000 |
| Mid-market site, 30 to 75 pages | $40,000–100,000 |
Fixed package prices are rare because every starting point is different. After launch, agencies commonly budget 15 to 20 percent of the build cost per year for maintenance.
The cost drivers
- Unique page templates. Every distinct layout has to be designed, built and tested.
- Custom features and integrations. Booking, CRM connections, calculators.
- Content migration. Moving and checking every page, image and document.
- Copywriting. Rewriting content turns a technical project into an editorial one, at roughly $100 to $300 per page.
- SEO migration planning. Every old URL needs a new home. On small sites that is quick, on large ones a work package of its own, and it is where people cut corners.
- Stakeholders and revision rounds. More decision-makers, more rounds, more hours.
The most expensive mistake: lost rankings
The redesign is live, it looks great, and three weeks later search traffic drops. The usual cause: old URLs lead nowhere because no redirects were set up. Google didn't find the new site, only a lot of error pages at the old addresses.
This is almost entirely avoidable. Google describes the process in its documentation on site moves and migrations. In short: redirect every old URL with a 301 to its matching new page, update the sitemap, and watch Search Console. Why it must be a 301 and not a 302: 301 vs 302 redirects. Step by step: Move off WordPress without losing rankings, and the usual pitfalls in WordPress migration mistakes to avoid.
We start with your homepage, for free
We rebuild your homepage before you pay anything, then tell you what moving the rest of your pages involves. We set up automatic redirects for every old URL along the way.
See website care ↗Keep what works instead of rebuilding
The biggest lever on your budget is simple: keep what works, and renew what doesn't. In practice that means moving your existing pages, with their text, images and URLs, onto fast new technology and giving them a fresh look along the way. Your rankings stay because your URLs stay or are cleanly redirected. How that works for a WordPress site: Migrate WordPress to a static site. What we protect along the way: Move without risk.
When a redesign pays off
- The site works poorly on phones, and most of your visitors are on phones.
- It loads noticeably slowly.
- Nobody on the team can change it without calling someone.
- The system is outdated, plugins are no longer maintained, and security updates worry you.
- Your business has changed, and the site still tells the old story.
If two or more of these apply, renewing is almost always cheaper than carrying on. What your site runs on, the WordPress check tells you in a minute. Whether the new site should be template-based or custom: Custom website vs template.
Make it the last redesign
In the project model, a redesign comes round every three to five years, because the site is barely developed in between. Every change costs an hourly rate, so changes wait until enough have piled up. The math: Web design agency cost.
The way out is to let changes flow in continuously instead of saving them up. A site that gets a little better every month doesn't need a big restart. What that costs per month: How much does a website cost per month.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website redesign cost?
What is the difference between a website redesign and a refresh?
Will a website redesign hurt my SEO?
Is a redesign cheaper than building a new website?
How often should you redesign a website?
The bottom line
A redesign costs anywhere from $3,000 to $100,000, and most of that range is a choice, not a necessity. Keep what works, redirect every old URL properly and look after the site afterwards, and you pay at the low end and won't have to repeat it in five years.