The short answer
A cosmetic refresh runs a few hundred to about $2,000. A full rebuild for a small business generally lands between roughly $2,000 and $10,000. The variable that actually decides your number isn't page count or visual ambition — it's how much of your existing content, URLs, and integrations have to survive the move. Get an itemized number →
01 · The ranges
Four different things all called "a redesign"
Half the confusion in redesign quotes is that the word covers four genuinely different projects. Find yours before you compare numbers.
What you're actually buying
Typical cost
Cosmetic refreshNew colors, type, images, and copy on the site you already have. Same platform, same pages, same URLs.
$300 – $2,000
Rebuild, same platformNew design and structure, built fresh, staying on the system you're on. Content migrates; URLs may change.
$2,000 – $8,000
ReplatformMoving off what you're on — a builder subscription, an aging WordPress install — onto something else entirely.
$3,000 – $15,000
Large or transactional siteHundreds of pages, e-commerce, member logins, CRM or booking integrations. Priced like software, because it is.
$15,000 – $100,000+
Typical U.S. ranges for small-to-midsize businesses, not quotes. For what a first-time build costs, see how much a website costs.
02 · The counterintuitive part
Why a redesign often costs more than a new build
Clients are routinely surprised that redoing an existing site prices higher than building one from scratch. It's not a markup. It's that a new site has no past to carry, and a redesign does:
- Auditing what's there. Somebody has to inventory every page, form, redirect, tracking tag, and plugin — including the ones nobody remembers adding.
- Migrating content. Moving two hundred blog posts with their images and formatting intact is hours of work that produces nothing visibly new.
- Mapping URLs. Every old address needs a 301 redirect to its new equivalent, or the rankings attached to it evaporate. On a large site this alone is days.
- Preserving what works. The booking widget, the contact form that routes to three people, the tracking your ads depend on — all of it has to work identically on day one.
- Matching habits. Existing customers know where things are. Moving them costs you support calls unless someone thinks it through.
That migration work is commonly 20–40% of a redesign project. It's also the first thing trimmed from a cheap quote — which is exactly why cheap redesigns are where traffic goes to die.
When you compare two redesign quotes and one is half the other, don't assume the expensive one is padded. Check whether the cheap one includes the redirect map and content migration at all.
03 · The one that matters
The redirect map is the whole ballgame
If you take one thing from this page: Google's rankings are attached to URLs, not to designs. You can change every pixel on a page and keep its position. Change its address without telling anyone, and you start over.
A redesign that moves /services/roof-repair to /what-we-do/roofing without a 301 redirect doesn't demote that page — it deletes it and creates a stranger. Multiply that by every page you've ranked for over eight years, and that's the horror story behind every "we redesigned and our leads dropped 60%" post you've read.
So ask one question of every prospective builder, before price comes up: how are you handling redirects from the old URLs? A good answer is specific — they'll crawl the current site, export the URL list, map each one, and verify after launch. A vague answer is the answer.
Before and after, run your site through the free grader so you have a real baseline for speed and SEO fundamentals instead of an argument about whether it feels faster.
04 · The drivers
What actually moves the number
How much content comes across
Ten pages of copy you're rewriting anyway is cheap. Four hundred blog posts, a staff directory, and a PDF library are not. Decide early what genuinely earns a place on the new site — most redesigns are also a chance to retire pages nobody has visited in three years.
What platform you're leaving
Exporting from a modern system is routine. Extracting from a proprietary builder, an abandoned custom CMS, or a WordPress install with fifty plugins is archaeology, and it's billed like it. If you're weighing where to land, Squarespace vs. a custom site lays out the honest tradeoff.
Whether the site does jobs beyond informing
Checkout, logins, bookings, quoting tools, portals. Each one has to be rebuilt and re-tested, and each one has an edge case that only shows up in production.
Who writes the new words
The most common reason a redesign runs late isn't the build — it's waiting on copy and photos. If the builder writes it, it's a line item. If you write it, it's still a cost; it just lands on your calendar instead of your invoice.
What happens after launch
A redesign that nobody maintains is a redesign you'll be buying again. Ongoing care with us starts at $75/mo when the year is prepaid — see hosting & care for what that actually covers.
05 · The honest test
When you shouldn't redesign yet
We'd rather tell you not to spend the money than sell you a project you don't need. A redesign is justified when something is measurably broken:
- It's slow, or unusable on a phone — most traffic is mobile, and a bad phone experience is a real revenue leak.
- You can't update it yourself, or the person who could is gone.
- It's insecure, unsupported, or running software with known holes.
- It describes a business you no longer are — wrong services, wrong market, wrong prices.
- It doesn't convert: people arrive and nothing happens, and you can see that in the analytics.
What is not a business case: you're bored of it, a competitor launched something shiny, or someone said three years is the shelf life. If the current site works and the problem is that nobody visits it, the money belongs in content and local search, not in a new coat of paint. That's the cheaper answer, and it's the honest one.
06 · Our numbers
What we charge, since we're asking you to trust the rest
We price a redesign the same way we price a new build — three published tiers, same for everyone: $1,295 Presence, $2,595 Growth, $4,295 Flagship. Content migration and the redirect map are quoted separately when there's real volume to move, because pretending otherwise is how a quote becomes a change order.
Every build ships with SSL, analytics, and the redirect work verified after launch. Run the cost calculator for an itemized estimate, or see what's in each tier. Redoing a nonprofit site? The math is a little different — nonprofit website costs covers it.
Common questions
The things people ask us
How much does a website redesign cost?
A cosmetic refresh runs a few hundred to about $2,000. A full small-business rebuild generally lands between roughly $2,000 and $10,000. Large or transactional sites go well beyond that.
Why does a redesign cost more than a new website?
Because a new site has no past. Auditing, content migration, redirect mapping, and preserving existing integrations are commonly 20–40% of the project — and the first things missing from a cheap quote.
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It can, and the usual cause is preventable: changing URLs without 301 redirects. Rankings live on URLs, not designs. Ask how the redirect map is handled before you sign.
How often should a website be redesigned?
There's no fixed schedule, and the three-year rule mostly serves the people selling redesigns. Redesign when something is measurably failing — not when you're bored of your homepage.
How long does a redesign take?
Two to six weeks of build time for a small business site, once content is settled. The schedule slips on words and photos far more often than on code.