Ask five studios what a website redesign costs and you will get five numbers that are hard to compare. That is not because the work is mysterious. A redesign is a set of jobs, and every quote quietly includes some of them and leaves others out. Once you know the jobs, you can read any quote, including ours, and see where the money goes.
Refresh, redesign or rebuild
Three different projects travel under the same name, and they cost very different amounts:
- A refresh changes how the site looks: new type, colours, photos and a cleaner layout, on the same platform with the same pages and structure.
- A redesign rethinks what the pages say and in what order, usually with a new design system, while keeping the platform or moving to a better one.
- A rebuild replaces the technology underneath, for example moving from a heavy page builder to a lean custom theme, often together with a redesign.
If a quote looks cheap, check which of the three it describes. Most disappointment with redesigns comes from paying for a refresh while expecting a redesign.
The six things that set the price
1. Page templates, not page count
A site with forty location pages built from one template is less work than a site with twelve pages that all look different. Design is priced by unique layouts. Before you ask for quotes, group your pages into types: home, service, location, about, contact, article. That list is the real size of your project.
2. Who writes the words
Copy is the line item owners forget most often. If you supply final text, the studio places it. If the studio writes it, someone has to interview you, learn your services and draft every page. That is real work, and it should appear in the quote as its own line rather than disappear inside “design”.
3. What has to keep working
Booking forms, quote calculators, payments, a client area, a connection to your CRM or scheduling tool. Each one has to be rebuilt or reconnected, then tested. A brochure site and a site that takes bookings are different projects even when they look alike.
4. Protecting your search traffic
If your current site brings visitors from Google, the redesign must not throw that away. That means listing every existing URL, keeping it or redirecting it with a permanent 301 redirect, carrying over page titles and descriptions, and watching Search Console after launch. It is unglamorous work, and it is the part cheap redesigns skip. Skipping it is how a business loses a large share of its enquiries in the month after a beautiful new site goes live.
5. The platform
Staying on WordPress, Shopify or whatever you already use is usually cheaper than moving. Moving pays off when the platform itself is the problem: a page builder that makes every page slow, a theme nobody can update, or a system your team cannot edit. Ask the studio to justify a platform change in terms of your business, not their preference.
6. The quality bar
A site can be built to look right on the designer’s laptop, or built to load quickly on a mid-range phone with a weak signal, which is how many of your customers will meet it. The second takes more care: images sized for phones, fewer scripts, fonts that do not hold up the page, and testing on real devices. It costs more up front, and it is the difference between a site that looks good and a site that performs.
Costs that come after launch
A redesign quote covers the build. Plan separately for:
- Hosting, which varies a lot with the provider and the level of support you need.
- Domain renewal and, if you use them, paid email accounts.
- Licences for premium themes, plugins or fonts, many of which renew every year.
- Maintenance: updates, backups, security and small edits. We wrote a separate guide on what website maintenance costs and what each part pays for.
How to compare two quotes
Put the quotes side by side and check that each one answers the same questions:
| Question | What a good answer looks like |
|---|---|
| What exactly is included? | A list of page templates, features and integrations, not “a modern responsive website” |
| Who writes the copy? | A line item of its own, or clearly marked as yours |
| What happens to my current URLs? | Every URL kept or redirected with a 301, with a list you can check |
| How will we know it worked? | Numbers taken before and after: speed, enquiries, search traffic |
| How many revision rounds? | A stated number at each stage |
| Who owns the site once it is paid for? | You: the design, the code, the domain and the content |
| What happens after launch? | A stated support arrangement, even if it is “none included” |
A quote that cannot answer these is not cheaper. It is unfinished.
Red flags in a cheap redesign
- No mention of your existing URLs or search traffic.
- A fixed price before anyone has looked at your current site.
- The domain or hosting registered in the studio’s name.
- Design mockups full of placeholder text and no plan for the real content.
- No way to edit the site yourself after launch.
How to get an accurate number faster
The quickest way to a reliable quote is to arrive with facts: your list of page types, the features that must keep working, who will write the copy, and a baseline of how the current site performs. The last one takes a minute. Our free site check runs Google’s own PageSpeed test on the mobile version of your site, the same test we use to measure every project before and after.
We do not publish a price list, because two sites that look alike can be very different jobs. We look at your current site first, then send a written proposal with the scope, the price and the timeline. See how we approach a website redesign.