How much does a website redesign cost?
Short answerFor an established small business, a redesign often costs roughly $1,500 to $15,000 with a freelancer or independent specialist, and roughly $10,000 to $50,000 or more with an agency. The price is driven by the number of distinct page types, who writes the content, brand work, special features such as booking or e-commerce, and how many old pages must be migrated safely.
Key points
- Quotes vary widely because they price different things; compare the scope line by line, not the total.
- The biggest cost drivers are distinct page designs, content writing, brand work, special features and migration size.
- Redirects and an SEO-safe launch belong inside the build price; a quote that leaves them out is cheaper only until launch.
- Budget for running costs too: hosting, domain, any paid apps, and someone to make changes after launch.
Ask five suppliers to quote for a new website and you can easily receive five prices that differ by a factor of ten. That is not because some are dishonest, but because the word "website" covers very different amounts of work. This page sets out broad market ranges, what moves a price up or down, and what any quote should include if you want to keep the Google rankings your current site has earned.
What does a website redesign cost in each price band?
The ranges below are deliberately broad. They are not survey figures; they reflect the bands commonly quoted to established small and mid-sized businesses in the UK, US, Europe and the Gulf, and you will find good and bad quotes on either side of them. Prices in pounds or euros tend to sit in similar bands to the dollar figures.
| Who builds it | Rough range | What you usually get |
|---|---|---|
| You, on a website builder | Often a few hundred dollars a year in subscriptions, plus your time | A template, your own words and photos, basic settings |
| Freelancer customising a template | Often roughly $1,000 to $5,000 | A tidy site on a known platform, limited design and strategy |
| Independent specialist, custom design | Often roughly $3,000 to $15,000 | A site designed around your business, often with copy, SEO and migration handled by one person |
| Small or mid-sized agency | Often roughly $10,000 to $50,000 | A team covering strategy, design, build and project management |
| Larger agency, or complex sites and stores | Often $50,000 upward | Large e-commerce, multilingual sites, custom integrations, formal processes |
Online stores usually cost more than service sites at the same level, because every product, collection and checkout step needs designing, migrating and testing. A Shopify store migration, for example, involves mapping and redirecting every product page, as Shopify migration SEO explains.
What moves the price up or down?
Most of the difference between quotes comes from seven things. When you ask for a quote, describe each one, and you will get prices you can actually compare.
- Distinct page designs, not page count. Twenty service pages built from one template cost far less than eight pages that each need their own layout.
- Who writes the words. Professional copywriting is often a large share of the cost, and the part that most affects both enquiries and rankings. Supplying your own text is cheaper; supplying it late is the most common reason projects overrun.
- Brand work. Tidying an existing logo and colours is a small job. A new name, logo and identity is a project of its own.
- Special features. Booking systems, quote calculators, client portals, multiple languages, e-commerce and connections to your other software each add design, build and testing time.
- Migration size. A ten-page site needs a short redirect map. A store with two thousand products and years of blog posts needs careful mapping, testing and checking after launch.
- Photography and video. Stock images are cheap; a shoot of your own work, team and premises is not, and usually looks far more credible.
- Overheads. An agency's price includes account managers, project managers and offices. A specialist working alone has fewer of those costs, and also less capacity.
What should the SEO side of a redesign cost?
For most small business sites, protecting rankings during a redesign is not a separate project. It means recording the old site's URLs and performance, building a redirect map, carrying titles and content across, testing before launch, and checking Google Search Console (Google's free reporting tool) afterwards. On a site of a few dozen pages, that is days of careful work, not weeks.
Redirects and an SEO-safe launch should be inside the build price, written into the scope. A quote that leaves them out is not cheaper; it moves the cost to the months after launch, when it arrives as lost enquiries.
For large sites and stores, a specialist migration plan can be a significant line item of its own, and is worth paying for. The steps it should cover are in the website migration SEO checklist.
What does a new website cost to run?
The build price is not the whole cost. Ask every supplier to state the ongoing costs in writing:
- Hosting: from a few dollars a month for a simple fast site, to considerably more for busy stores or complex applications.
- Platform subscriptions: website builders and Shopify charge monthly, with higher tiers for more features.
- Paid apps and plugins: these accumulate quietly, especially on Shopify and WordPress.
- Domain renewal and email: small, but someone must own them and keep them renewed.
- Maintenance and changes: security updates, fixes and new pages. Find out whether you can edit the site yourself, and what it costs when you cannot.
Compare suppliers on the total over three years, not just the build. If you are leaving a website builder, moving from Wix or Squarespace to a custom website covers how the running costs change.
How do you compare quotes fairly?
Ask each supplier to itemise against the same list, then compare line by line:
- Number of distinct page designs and total pages at launch.
- Who writes the content, and how many rounds of changes are included.
- Brand work included, if any.
- Platform, and whether you will own the site and its files.
- SEO basics: page titles and descriptions, structured data (code that labels your business facts for search engines and AI tools), Search Console setup and a sitemap.
- Migration: URL inventory, redirect map, and whether you receive both.
- Post-launch support: how many days or weeks, and what it covers.
- Running costs after launch, stated in writing.
- Timeline, and what happens if it slips.
Hartwell Joinery receives three quotes for an eight-page site. The lowest assumes Hartwell writes all the copy and does not mention redirects. The middle one includes copy, on-page SEO and a redirect map, with two weeks of support after launch. The highest adds a full new brand identity and a photography day. Laid side by side, they are three different projects, and the middle quote is the only one that protects the rankings the old site earned.
For how long each kind of project usually takes, see how long a website redesign takes.
When is cheap too cheap, and expensive too expensive?
A very low quote usually means a template with your logo on it, your own copy pasted in, and no migration plan. That can be fine for a new business with nothing to lose. For an established business with years of rankings, it is a false economy if the old pages vanish at launch.
A very high quote is worth paying when the site genuinely needs a team: complex integrations, many languages, large catalogues, formal compliance. It is not worth paying for layers of account management on a site that one experienced person could design, build and launch.
For reference, the M/AFZAL Rebuild is priced from $1,500 and typically takes 3 to 5 weeks. It covers a mobile-first website of up to 5 pages, a brand refresh, on-page SEO, Search Console setup, a question-led FAQ and structured data, redirects from your old pages, and 14 days of post-launch fixes. Larger sites and full brand identities are quoted separately, and the terms are published on the packages page. If you are not sure whether you need a redesign at all, website traffic but no enquiries covers the problems a new site does and does not solve. And for the process any good quote should follow, read how to redesign your website without losing Google rankings.
Straight answers.
The follow-up questions owners ask most.
- Is it cheaper to redesign my existing website than to build a new one?
- Sometimes. If the platform is sound and only the look and copy need work, a refresh on the existing site can cost much less. If the platform is slow, hard to edit or limiting, patching it often costs more over time than rebuilding.
- Should I pay the whole cost up front?
- It is common to pay a deposit, often around a third to a half, with the rest due at agreed milestones or at launch. Be cautious about paying everything up front to a supplier you have not worked with before.
- Why do two quotes for the same website differ so much?
- Usually because they are not for the same website. One may include content writing, brand work, migration and post-launch support, and the other may assume you supply the words and handle the rest. Ask both to itemise.
- Does a more expensive website rank better on Google?
- Not by itself. Rankings depend on content, structure, speed and links, not on what the site cost. An expensive site that drops your old pages can rank far worse than a modest one built carefully.