Almost everyone arriving at this page wants one number first, so here it is before anything else. A website redesign runs from a few hundred dollars to six figures, and the four tiers below explain which one you are actually in. The spread is not vagueness. It is four genuinely different products sold under one phrase.
A Squarespace, Wix or WordPress theme and your own time.
Someone else installs and customises a theme and migrates your content.
Original design, with structure decided from your actual users rather than a template.
Multiple integrations and a CMS your team can genuinely run.
On this page
- What a website redesign costs
- Template vs custom redesign
- What actually drives the price
- The website redesign process, step by step
- Redesign deliverables
- Can AI redesign my existing website?
- When a redesign is the wrong purchase
- What to ask any redesign vendor
- Website redesign questions, answered
- Related pages
- Talk to our engineers
What a website redesign costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | What you get, and what you do not |
|---|---|---|
| Template, done yourself | $0 to $500 | A Squarespace, Wix or WordPress theme and your own time. Genuinely fine for a brochure site. You are the designer, the copywriter and the person who fixes it at 11pm. |
| Template, done for you | $500 to $5,000 | Someone else installs and customises a theme, migrates your text and launches it. This is the tier behind most of the very low fixed-price offers you will see advertised. It is a real service and often a sensible buy, as long as you know you are getting a configured template rather than a design made for your business. |
| Custom redesign | $5,000 to $30,000 | Original design, structure decided from your actual users and goals, content restructured rather than poured across, proper redirect mapping, analytics and accessibility. This is where most business redesigns belong. |
| Complex or regulated | $30,000 to $100,000+ | Multiple integrations, a CMS your team can genuinely run, ecommerce or portal functionality, accessibility conformance you can evidence, or a migration off something fragile. |
Most quotes land far apart because vendors are answering different questions. Ask any of them which tier they are quoting before comparing two numbers.
Template vs custom redesign: two different products
The middle two rows of the table are both sold as a redesign, and they are different products: template configuration and custom design.
Template, done for you
A configured template
- Someone else installs and customises a theme
- Your text migrated and the site launched
- A real service, and often a sensible buy
- Right as long as you know you are getting a configured template
Custom redesign
A design made for your business
- Original design, not a configured template
- Structure decided from your actual users and goals
- Content restructured rather than poured across
- Proper redirect mapping, analytics and accessibility
What actually drives the price
- Page count matters less than page types. Forty pages using six layouts is a smaller job than twelve pages that each need their own. Count templates, not URLs.
- Who writes the content. This is the most common budget surprise and the most common cause of delay. If nobody has been assigned to write it, the project will wait, and waiting costs more than writing.
- Integrations. A CRM, a booking system, a payment gateway or a customer portal each add work that has nothing to do with how the site looks.
- Migration and redirects. If URLs change and nobody maps them, you lose rankings you already own. This is cheap to plan and expensive to repair.
- Accessibility. If you are a public body, a contractor, or serving one, conformance is a requirement rather than a nicety, and it needs to be designed in.
The website redesign process, step by step
Every step below is a check this page already recommends, put in the order a redesign needs it, so that a website revamp does not throw away whatever the old site was doing right.
- Decide what the site is forWhich services earn money, what customers are confused by today, and what has to happen when someone fills in the form.
- Map what must surviveA redirect map produced before build, so the rankings you already own and the analytics history carry over.
- Assign the contentWho writes it and when it is due, in the plan with dates, because a project waits when nobody has been assigned to write it.
- Design, build and hand overStructure from your actual users, accessibility designed in, and a site your team can edit afterwards without the vendor.
Redesign deliverables: what should land in your hands
Whichever website designers or website developers you hire, these are the things a finished redesign should leave with you. Each one is set out elsewhere on this page.
- A redirect map, produced before build. Not after launch, when the rankings you already owned are gone.
- Content restructured, not poured across. With who writes it and when it is due set in the plan.
- Analytics history that carries over. It should not restart at launch.
- Accessibility designed in. A requirement rather than a nicety for a public body, a contractor, or anyone serving one.
- A site your team can edit without the vendor. Otherwise you have bought a dependency as well as a website.
- The domain, the hosting and the CMS account in your name. All three, from the start.
Can AI redesign my existing website?
Partly, and it is worth being precise about which parts. AI tools are now genuinely good at producing layout options, first-draft copy, image treatments and code for individual components. That has taken real cost out of the middle of a project, and it is a large part of why the tiers above start lower than they did two years ago.
What AI does not decide is what the site is for: which of your services actually earn money, what your customers are confused by today, which pages carry rankings you cannot afford to lose, and what has to happen when someone fills in the form. A generated site that looks current and answers none of that is a more expensive mistake than the old site, because it also throws away whatever the old one was doing right.
The practical answer for most businesses: use AI to go faster inside a plan, not to replace having one.
When a redesign is the wrong purchase
Sometimes the site is not the problem. Before commissioning one, check whether the real issue is that nobody can find the site, that the content does not answer what buyers actually ask, or that a form has been quietly broken for months. Those are cheaper to fix than a rebuild, and a redesign that does not address them will disappoint at any price.
A redesign is the right call when the structure genuinely no longer fits the business, when the site cannot be edited without a developer, when it fails on mobile or accessibility, or when it is built on something unsupported.
Figure 1. Is the site the problem? Two sets of signs
Every box is a sentence from this section. The left column is cheaper to fix than a rebuild; the right column is when a redesign is the right purchase.
What to ask any redesign vendor
- Which tier are you quoting? Template configuration and custom design are different products.
- Who writes the content, and when is it due? Get this in the plan, with dates.
- How are existing URLs handled? There should be a redirect map produced before build, not after launch.
- Can our team edit the site afterwards without you? If not, you have bought a dependency as well as a website.
- Who owns the domain, the hosting and the CMS account? All three should be in your name from the start.
- What happens to the analytics history? It should carry over, not restart.
Website redesign questions, answered
How do I know if my company website needs a redesign?
A redesign is the right call when the structure genuinely no longer fits the business, when the site cannot be edited without a developer, when it fails on mobile or accessibility, or when it is built on something unsupported. If the real problem is that nobody can find the site or a form is broken, fix that first.
Will a website redesign lose our search rankings?
It can. If URLs change and nobody maps them, you lose rankings you already own, and that is cheap to plan and expensive to repair. That is why the redirect map should be produced before build, not after launch.
What should I ask before I hire a website designer?
Which tier they are quoting; who writes the content and when it is due; how existing URLs are handled; whether your team can edit the site afterwards without them; who owns the domain, the hosting and the CMS account; and what happens to your analytics history.
Who should own the website after a redesign?
You should. The domain, the hosting and the CMS account should all be in your name from the start, and your team should be able to edit the site without the vendor. If it cannot, you have bought a dependency as well as a website.
Related pages
Where to go next for a web redesign, a new build, or the cost of either.
Services
- Web development services
- UX and interface design
- CMS development
- Ecommerce development services
- Custom web application development
Costs
Before you buy
If you want a straight answer about which tier your situation calls for, including the case where the answer is not a redesign at all, talk to our engineers. Related reading: what custom software costs and our UX and interface design work.