How much does a website redesign cost? For a small or mid-sized business, the website redesign cost is set mostly by how many hours the work takes, and five things decide most of them: how many distinct layouts the site has, what features its pages need, who writes the content, which systems it connects to, and whether the URLs or the platform change. Two of the most expensive problems don't show up in the design at all, though: an outdated platform underneath, and search traffic lost at launch.
There's no price list in this post. The ranges published online disagree by a factor of ten or more, mostly because they're pricing different jobs, so a number from one of them tells you little about your own site. What helps more is knowing which parts of a redesign take the time, so you can tell whether a quote makes sense before you sign it.
Why redesign quotes range from a few thousand dollars to six figures
Because "redesign" covers quite different jobs. One agency quotes a new look on the same platform and the same pages. Another quotes a rebuild on a new platform. A third adds new copy, a client login area, a CRM integration and a URL change, which is really a migration. All three are called a redesign, and all three can be honest quotes.
The published ranges have the same problem. Most of them price by page count or by who does the work, a freelancer or an agency, and none we've seen shows where its figures come from. So two articles can both be right about their own example and still be useless for yours.
The quickest way to compare quotes is to make them describe the same job, starting from the same goal. Ask each one to say whether the platform changes, whether URLs change, who writes the content, how many layouts are being designed and built, and which features are included. If one quote is a third of the others, the answer is usually somewhere in those five lines. If they still don't line up after that, we can go through them with you as part of our consulting work.
What a website redesign cost is made of
Mostly people's time. Every stage is counted in hours, from discovery and design through the build and testing, and a project manager's hours sit alongside them from the kickoff to launch day. Hosting and software licenses are usually a small part of it by comparison.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a useful floor for the rate: in May 2025, the median wage in the occupation it calls web developers and digital designers was $47.85 an hour. A firm bills more than its people earn, since its rate also has to cover overhead and management, plus the time that goes into work no client is billed for. At that wage alone, every 100 hours of work is $4,785 before any of that overhead, which is why quotes well under it are worth a question about who is doing the work. We went through how to read a quote line by line in our post on what a web app costs to build; the same reading works for a redesign.
These are the lines the hours usually go into:
- Design and build per layout. Each distinct layout is designed and built on its own, then tested, so this is usually one of the biggest lines. More on it below.
- Features. A layout is the frame, and what a page does is priced separately. A quote calculator, a product catalog with search and filters, a members' area or booking with live availability is a small piece of software in its own right: someone has to estimate it and build it, test it before launch, and keep it working after. One complex feature can take more hours than several simple layouts, so ask for each to be priced on its own line.
- Content. New copy, new photos, or moving the old content across. Someone has to write it, so it needs a place in the schedule as well as the budget.
- Integrations. Every system the site talks to (a CRM, a booking tool, payments) adds build and testing time. Handling the cases where data doesn't match on both sides is usually where those hours go, and it's where most of the care goes in our API integration work.
- The move. If the platform or the URLs change, there's content to move and redirects to map, which we cover further down.
- Brand work, if any. A new logo or visual identity is a separate piece of brand design, and it should be settled before the site's design starts, otherwise the design gets done twice.
Count your layouts and features, not your pages
Once a layout exists, adding pages to it is quick. The money goes into the layouts themselves, since each one needs its own design work, and then its own build and testing. That's how a 10-page site with 10 layouts can come in above a 1,000-page site built from 5.
That's also why page-count price tables disagree so much. A 20-page site might be 4 layouts or 15.
Layouts aren't the whole picture, though. Two pages can share a layout and still be far apart in cost when one of them carries a feature, like a calculator or a search with filters, that needs its own logic and its own testing.
So before you ask anyone for a quote, go through your site and count the templates. On a typical business site that means things like the home page, a service page, a location page, a blog post, the blog listing, a contact page and a landing page for ads, and most small-business sites we redesign have 5 to 7 of them in all. Then mark which ones the redesign keeps, which ones are new, and which ones you could merge. Do the same for features: list everything on the site that does more than show content (forms with logic, calculators, search, logins, booking, a store), and mark which ones exist now and which are new. Merging two layouts that do nearly the same job is one of the simplest ways to bring a quote down without losing anything a visitor would notice.
Refresh or rebuild? Check what's under the hood first
Most advice answers this by taste: refresh if the site looks dated, rebuild if it works badly. We'd start with what the site is for, then look at the platform. If the site runs on software that no longer gets security fixes, a refresh puts new paint on top of the real problem, and the upgrade becomes part of the cost either way.
On WordPress sites, this is more common than it sounds. As of October 2026, about a third of WordPress sites run a PHP version (the language WordPress runs on) that no longer gets security fixes, according to WordPress.org's own statistics. Another 23% run PHP 8.2, which loses security support at the end of this year, per PHP's supported versions page.
| PHP version | Security fixes until | Share of WordPress sites (October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 8.1 or older | already ended (8.1 on December 31, 2025) | about 34% |
| 8.2 | December 31, 2026 | about 23% |
| 8.3 or newer | December 31, 2027 or later | the rest, about 43% |
So by January 2027, more than half of WordPress sites will be on an unsupported version. WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer, and says the older versions it still runs on have reached end of life and may expose a site to security vulnerabilities. Upgrading PHP isn't always a big job, though on an older site it can be, because plugins and themes written for an old version don't always work on a new one.
When a redesign request comes in, the first thing we ask is what business goal or problem the new site has to solve. It might be more visitors, or more leads from the visitors you already get by raising the conversion rate. It might be reaching people through new channels like email marketing or a chatbot, fixing security problems that come from outdated code or an old platform, or simply looking current so visitors can see the business is active. The answer decides how much has to change. A site that only needs a fresher look may be fine with a refresh, while one that has to capture leads in new ways usually needs new features, and sometimes a new platform to carry them.
Here are the four questions we'd want answered before anyone decides between a refresh and a rebuild:
- What should the new site do that the current one doesn't? The goal or the problem, in a sentence or two. It tells you which of the next three answers matter most.
- What versions is it running? The version of the language or runtime the site runs on (PHP for WordPress, Node.js or Python for many custom sites), and the version of the CMS or framework on top of it. Your host's control panel or your developer can tell you in a few minutes.
- When were the plugins last updated, by their authors? A plugin nobody has updated in a couple of years will likely need replacing, and if the site leans on several of those, we'd probably be looking at a rebuild. Note which features depend on them, too: a booking system or a member area built on an abandoned plugin has to be rebuilt or replaced either way.
- Who maintains the site now? If the honest answer is nobody, a refresh will likely fall behind just as fast, because nobody is keeping it up.
If the platform is healthy, a refresh can be a pretty good deal: new layouts and styles on a structure that already works, with the URLs left alone. If it isn't, we'd usually rather put the money into a rebuild than into a design that sits on top of the same risk. Just budget for the features as well as the layouts: a rebuild means building and testing every feature the old site has again on the new platform, on top of the ones you're adding.
The cost nobody quotes: keeping your search traffic
If the redesign changes URLs, it's a migration as well, and that needs its own line in the budget: a redirect from every old URL to its new home, permanent redirects kept for at least a year, and someone watching Search Console after launch. Only a couple of the redesign price guides we read mention redirects at all, and then in a sentence.
Google's guidance on site moves with URL changes is pretty clear on the parts that matter. Decide where each old URL should go. Use permanent redirects (301 or 308) where you can, and keep them for as long as possible, generally at least a year. And don't send lots of old pages to the home page or any other single page that doesn't match them. A permanent redirect also tells Google that the new URL is the one to index, according to its page on redirects and Google Search, so the new page takes the old one's place in search results.
We've spent years on the search side of websites as well as building them, and this is the line we'd least want to see cut from a quote, because traffic that drops after a launch is slow and expensive to get back. Our website migration checklist walks through the redirect map step by step. If your URLs stay exactly as they are, most of this cost goes away, which is worth knowing when you decide how much of the structure to change.
Build in speed and accessibility now, not later
Both cost less to build into the redesign than to retrofit afterward, because retrofitting means going back over layouts and features that were already built and paid for. So put them in the brief with numbers, the same way you'd list the pages.
For speed, Google's Core Web Vitals give you the targets: the main content should load within 2.5 seconds (Largest Contentful Paint), the page should respond to a tap or click in under 200 milliseconds (Interaction to Next Paint), and the layout shouldn't jump around while it loads (a Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1). Google recommends good Core Web Vitals for success in Search and says they line up with what its ranking systems reward. We wrote more on why speed matters for leads as well as rankings in how a faster website brings you more clients.
For accessibility, the target is WCAG 2.2 at level AA. It's the current version of the W3C's guidelines, and a site that meets it also meets the 2.1 and 2.0 versions that older contracts and policies often name. The Justice Department's position is that the ADA applies to what businesses open to the public offer on the web. There's no detailed federal technical standard for business websites, so the DOJ's guidance leaves the method to you and points to WCAG as helpful guidance. We've remediated websites for accessibility compliance after they were built, and fixing a finished site means reopening templates that everyone thought were done. A redesign is the one moment when all of them are being rebuilt anyway.
How long does a redesign take?
A typical custom business site with 5 to 7 layouts and standard features, like a contact form and a slideshow, takes about 4 to 8 weeks to design and build. More layouts or a complex feature add to that, and so do the integrations and, if URLs change, the move.
Where it lands in that range depends mostly on how many rounds of design revisions there are, which platform is chosen (a static site, for example, or a CMS your team edits), and how quickly approvals come back from your side.
Content needs its own deadline, too. If the copy isn't ready when the layouts are, the launch waits for it, so it's worth agreeing up front who writes what and by when.
A website redesign checklist before you ask for quotes
You'll get closer, more comparable quotes if every firm is pricing the same job. Have these ready:
- The goal: the business goal or problem the redesign should solve, in a sentence or two.
- Your layout count, with which layouts stay, which are new and which could merge.
- A list of features, page by page: anything beyond showing content, with which exist now and which are new.
- A content plan: which pages get new copy, who writes it, and when it'll be ready.
- A list of integrations: CRM, forms, booking, payments, email, anything the site sends data to or reads it from.
- The platform and versions: the CMS or framework, the language or runtime version it runs on, the main plugins, and who hosts it.
- Whether URLs will change, and a list of the current ones (your sitemap and Search Console have them).
- A baseline of current traffic and conversions, plus your Core Web Vitals, so you can tell after launch whether the redesign helped.
- Who looks after the site after launch, and how updates get done, including the features, which need upkeep of their own as the plugins and services under them change.
Your next step is that list. Write down the goal first, then count the layouts and features and check the versions. The goal and the versions tell you whether you're looking at a refresh or a rebuild, and the counts are most of what a firm needs to price it. We do redesigns as part of our web design work, so if you'd like an estimate for your site, get in touch and bring the list.
