You already have a site. It is a few years old, it is starting to embarrass you, and before you call anyone you want a rough idea of how much it costs to redesign a website like yours. The published ranges for website redesign cost won't narrow it down much. They run from under a thousand dollars to six figures, because they describe very different jobs sold under the same two words.
This article goes through what those bands include, the five things that move a quote most, the line items that rarely make the first page of a proposal, and how to write a brief that gets you three quotes you can compare. If you want the project itself (process, timeline and how to choose a supplier), start with our small business guide to a website redesign.
How much a website redesign costs, and why the ranges are so wide
Two published sources, both aimed at US buyers, size it differently. WebFX splits by who does the work; Clique Studios splits by how many pages the site has.
| What it covers | Published range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A website redesign, all types | $3,000 - $75,000 | WebFX |
| Web design agency, per site | $5,000 to $75,000 | WebFX |
| Freelancer, per site | $3,000 to $10,000 | WebFX |
| DIY or in-house, per site | $800 to $5,000 | WebFX |
| Small business site, 10–20 pages | $15,000-$40,000 | Clique Studios |
| Mid-market site, 30–75 pages | $40,000-$100,000 | Clique Studios |
The two sources overlap only loosely, because "redesign" covers everything from restyling an existing template to rebuilding a twenty-page site with a booking system behind it. A number quoted without a scope attached tells you very little about what your own site will cost.
What you are paying for
A redesign proposal bundles several separate pieces of work. Ask for it itemized and you can see where the money goes:
- Discovery and scope: goals, audience, page inventory, and what the site has to integrate with.
- Structure: the sitemap, the navigation, and which old pages are kept, merged or retired.
- Copywriting: priced per page, and in our experience one of the most under-budgeted items.
- Design: a layout for each unique page type, not one for every page.
- Build: templates, CMS fields so you can edit text yourself, responsive behavior, forms.
- Integrations: CRM, booking, payments, quoting tools, email marketing.
- Content migration: moving existing pages, posts and images across, often by hand.
- Testing: real devices, accessibility, forms end to end, performance.
- SEO carry-over: the redirect map, titles and metadata, sitemaps. This is cheap to do during the build and expensive to repair after launch.
- Launch and handover: going live, training, and the fixes in the first weeks.
The five factors that move a quote most
- Unique page types, not total pages: twelve service pages that share one template cost far less than four pages that each need their own layout.
- Custom functionality: a contact form is standard. A quoting calculator, a customer portal, a booking system tied to your crew's schedule, or payments are each a project inside the project.
- Who writes the copy: if you supply finished text, that line disappears. If the agency writes it, Clique Studios puts copywriting at "$100-300 per page" (Clique Studios), which adds up quickly across a service-heavy site.
- Photography and video: stock is free-ish and looks it. Clique Studios puts custom photography at "$3,000-15,000" and video production at "$5,000-25,000 per video" (Clique Studios).
- Migration volume: forty blog posts with images and internal links do not move themselves. Ask explicitly how many pages are included and what happens to the rest.
A sixth factor is the timeline. A compressed schedule usually costs more at every stage, because someone has to work evenings to meet it.
Template or custom design
A premium template is cheap to buy: Clique Studios prices them at "$50-200", with setup on a template running "$2,000-10,000" (Clique Studios). If your site mainly needs to be clear, current and easy to update, that can be a perfectly good answer.
The trade-off is fit. A template is built for a generic business, so your services, your service area and your proof get pushed into slots that were not designed for them. A common way this goes wrong is spending much of the saving on developer time, forcing the template to do something it resists.
Pick a template when your content is straightforward. Go custom when the structure of what you sell is what makes you different.
In-house, freelancer or agency: three price profiles
The WebFX bands above map onto three ways of buying. In-house or DIY ("$800 to $5,000 / site") costs the least in cash and the most in your own hours, and it tends to hit a ceiling on structure, speed and accessibility. A freelancer ("$3,000 to $10,000 / site") is good value for a contained project, but copy, photography and SEO are often outside the quote, and the whole job depends on one person.
An agency ("$5,000 to $75,000 / site") should be covering the parts most owners do not want to run themselves: content, structure, SEO carry-over and testing. If a proposal at agency prices leaves those out, you are paying agency rates for freelancer scope.
The costs proposals often leave out
- Ongoing maintenance: Clique Studios puts annual maintenance at "15-20% of build cost" (Clique Studios). Whatever your own figure turns out to be, budget for updates, backups and security from the start.
- Hosting, domains and certificates, plus any paid plugins, fonts or stock licenses the design depends on.
- Third-party tools the new site relies on: form handling, spam protection, booking, live chat, and analytics beyond the free tier.
- Your own time: someone on your side has to gather photos, approve layouts and answer questions, and in our experience that is one of the most common reasons a project stalls.
- The first month after launch: ask whether post-launch fixes are included or billed. On our own builds, the first 30 days after launch include the redirect-map check and Search Console monitoring as standard; ask any supplier the same.
How to brief a redesign so the quotes come back comparable
Send every supplier the same short document: your page inventory with keep/merge/retire marked against each URL, the two or three outcomes you want to measure, the integrations that are non-negotiable, who is supplying copy and photography, and your deadline with the reason behind it. Then ask each one to price the same line items.
When the replies come in, check two things. First, that the redirect map and SEO carry-over are named. A quote that leaves them out saves money now and costs you traffic later, which is what our article on redesigning without losing your SEO covers.
Second, that you will be able to edit every visible piece of text after launch without calling anyone. That one requirement changes what the site costs to own for the next five years. You can see how we plan, build and launch a site on our website development service page.
Website redesign cost FAQ
Why do two quotes for the same site differ so much?
Usually because the scopes are different. One includes copywriting, migration, redirects and testing; the other is a design applied to a template with your existing text pasted in. Put the two quotes side by side line by line before you look at the totals.
Is a redesign cheaper than building a new site?
Only if you keep something: the platform, the structure or the content. If all three change, a "redesign" is a new site and should be priced like one. The saving usually comes from reusing content you have already written and proven.
What is the cheapest sensible option?
A well-chosen template, your own photography and copy you write yourself, with a developer to set it up properly. For a small, simple site that is a real option. It stops making sense once you need custom functionality or a structure built around an unusual set of services.
Is a redesign worth it?
Judge it against the goals you set before you start, not by how it looks. If the site's job is to turn visits into quote requests, the test is whether that number moves. If your traffic is already healthy, conversion rate optimization on the pages you have may return more per dollar than a rebuild.
What to do next
Before you ask anyone for a number, spend an afternoon on the page inventory and write down the two outcomes the new site has to produce. With those in hand, you can check any website redesign cost you are quoted against a scope you defined yourself, instead of against a range on someone else's blog. For the rest of the project (phases, timeline and launch), see the website redesign guide.
If you would like your current site scoped properly, tell us what you have and what you need it to do and we will come back with a tailored quote.
