Website redesign cost: what it takes — and when you don't need one

A redesign is priced like a new website: with me, most start from €5,000, fixed, agreed in writing before any work starts. But price is the second question. The first is whether you need a redesign at all — and roughly half the people who ask me for one don't.

This article covers both: how redesign pricing actually works, and how to tell the difference between "we need a redesign" and "we need to fix two specific things."

The direct answer

• A redesign of a typical business website (5–15 unique page layouts, existing content, one language) starts from €5,000, the same as a new build.
• Moving to a new CMS, migrating a lot of content, or adding languages pushes it toward the top of that range or into a phased plan.
• A speed pass or conversion fix on your existing site is often a fraction of that — and often it's what the business actually needs.

You should never pay for a redesign without a written scope, a fixed price and an explanation of how your current search rankings will be protected. More on that below, because it's where cheap redesigns quietly destroy value.

Signs you actually need a redesign

• The design breaks trust. Your work is good, but the site looks like 2016 — and visitors judge the business by the weakest thing they see.
• The structure buries the offer. Visitors can't tell within seconds what you do, for whom, and what to click next.
• You can't edit your own site. Every text change goes through a developer invoice, or the old page builder fights you at every step.
• Mobile is an afterthought. Most of your traffic is on phones and the experience visibly isn't.
• The stack is a dead end. An abandoned theme, an unsupported plugin pile, a builder nobody maintains — every future change costs more than it should.

If two or more of these describe your site, a redesign usually pays for itself.

Signs you DON'T need one

This is the section most agencies won't write, because they sell redesigns. I sell outcomes, so here it is:

• The site is slow, but the structure is fine. That's a speed optimization job, not a redesign — usually much cheaper.
• Traffic is fine, enquiries are not. That's a conversion problem: messaging, page structure, forms, trust signals. Redesigning the visuals around a broken message changes nothing.
• The design is fine, the content is stale. Rewriting key pages costs a fraction of a redesign.
• You're bored of it. You see your site every day; your customers see it once. "I'm tired of how it looks" is the weakest reason to spend money on it.

An honest contractor should check these before quoting. If the first answer you get is a redesign quote with no questions asked, that tells you something.

What drives redesign cost

The price moves with scope, and scope is driven by a few concrete things (the same cost levers that decide every web project — mapped across the full budget range in web development cost by budget):

• Number of unique page layouts. Ten pages using three templates is a small project; ten bespoke layouts is not.
• Content migration. Moving 15 pages by hand is trivial. Moving 300 posts, with images, URLs and metadata intact, is real work — often the biggest single line item.
• CMS change. Staying on your CMS is cheaper. Moving (for example off an old WordPress setup) adds migration work but can cut your running costs for years — see website & CMS migration.
• Integrations. Forms into a CRM, booking, payments, analytics events — each is small, together they add up.
• Languages. Every extra language multiplies content work and adds technical SEO scope (hreflang, localized metadata).

When you get quotes that differ by 3×, they're almost never pricing the same scope. Ask each bidder what's in the number, and the mystery usually disappears.

The hidden risk: losing the SEO you already earned

A dated site that ranks is worth more than a beautiful site that doesn't. The most expensive redesign failures I've seen weren't over budget — they launched, and organic traffic fell off a cliff, because nobody handled:

• Redirects. Every URL that changes needs a 301 to its successor. No redirect map = years of accumulated authority pointed at 404 pages.
• Metadata and structure parity. Titles, descriptions, headings and internal links that rank today need equivalents on the new site — not a blank slate.
• Performance. If the new design is heavier than the old one, you traded rankings for aesthetics.

This is a solvable, boring, checklist-driven problem — I keep the redirect map, metadata parity and Core Web Vitals as explicit deliverables in every redesign project. But it has to be in the scope before work starts. If a quote doesn't mention rankings at all, the cheap price includes an invisible cost you'll pay later in lost traffic.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. What exactly is included — how many layouts, which pages, who migrates content?
2. How will my current rankings be protected? Ask to see what a redirect map is.
3. What will the site score on Core Web Vitals, and will you measure before and after?
4. Can I edit everything myself afterwards, and do I own the code and all accounts?
5. What's the fixed price and timeline in writing — and what happens if scope changes?

Anyone doing this work seriously answers these in minutes, not days.

How I run redesigns

• Free 20-minute call and a free review of your current site — sometimes the honest outcome is "don't redesign, fix these two things."
• Fixed scope, price and timeline in writing before any work starts.
• Weekly demos so you see real progress and can adjust early.
• SEO-safe launch: redirect map, metadata parity, measured Core Web Vitals.
• You own everything — code, CMS, analytics, all accounts. I reply within 24 hours.

If you're weighing a redesign against fixing what you have, send me your site — you'll get a straight answer about which one your business actually needs, and a fixed number for it in writing.