WhataWebsiteRedesignActuallyCosts

Most agencies won't give you a number until you've sat through a discovery call. Here are ours first, and the reasoning after.

The short answer

A simple marketing refresh, where the structure and content mostly stay and the visual layer changes, runs roughly $5,000 to $10,000.

A full redesign with everything included, meaning discovery, structure, content, design, build and launch, is around $25,000. That's where most of our website work lands.

Complex projects go up from there, typically $40,000 to $50,000. Complex usually means multiple languages, a lot of pages, API integrations, or a brand that has to be rebuilt before the website can be.

Below roughly $5,000 or so, you might as well buy a template with your logo on it, or do it yourself on Wix. That's fine for some businesses, but just know that's what it is, and that it's the most common starting point for the redesigns we get hired to do two years later.

Why does every agency give me a different price?

Because "redesign" describes an outcome, not a scope. It can include discovery, positioning, content, information architecture, visual design, build, migration, SEO preservation, training and post-launch support. Agencies include different subsets of that list and rarely say which.

So when you compare two proposals, the useful question isn't which is cheaper. It's which parts the cheaper one left out, and who does those parts instead. Usually the answer is you.

Content is the most common omission and the most common reason a redesign runs late. If a quote doesn't say who writes it, assume it's on you. Hey, at least these days with AI, it'll be faster.

Understanding what went wrong, before buying another design

A redesign is not throwing money at a different person. If you don't understand why the first site didn't work, the second one fails the same way, and now you've paid twice.

Part of that is being honest that some of the first spend is sunk. You're not getting it back. What you can do is make sure you understand why before you do the same thing again. A client came to us recently with a site that was already designed and already built, and told us it wasn't his vision and he wasn't proud to show it to anyone. Rebuilding it wasn't the hard part. Working out what the thing was actually supposed to do was, and that's where the project really started.

A website is a visual communication tool. It has to be found, and it has to get someone to do something.

I hate to say it, but design isn't art. Art can be whatever you decide it is. Design has to accomplish something, and a redesign that misses the point of what it's accomplishing is just a more expensive version of the site you already dislike.

What makes redesigns more expensive

• New positioning and messaging, rather than keeping existing ones
• New content
• Multiple languages, which can turn into a design and content problem. We're not fans of literal translation (people can do that on their own with their browser auto-translate - that's free).
• A brand that has to be fixed first, usually because it's either not distinct or too confusing for whatever reason
• A migration with hundreds of existing URLs to map and redirect
• Approval by committee. Every extra decision-maker adds review rounds, and review rounds often drive quite a bit of a project's cost (e.g. in hourly engagements)

What makes redesigns less expensive

• Existing content that's good enough to carry over with editing
• Pruning to fewer, better pages instead of rebuilding every page you currently have
• An existing brand with usable assets, and photography/videography you already own
• One empowered person on your side who can approve quickly (we know this is tough for larger companies, so we adjust timelines accordingly)
• Launching in phases: the pages that earn money first, the long tail after

How you can waste a lot of money on a redesign

The most expensive pattern we see is hourly work with no launch date. A client hires a freelancer by the hour, iterates, iterates again, and a year later has spent serious money on a site that never went live. Retainers are fine, and they're a good way to continue a relationship that's already working. Open-ended iteration before a first launch is not the same thing, and it is not cheap. We don't like doing hourly because it's not clear what's being delivered, and when. Even if it's a giant commitment upfront, at the end of the day, the clarity of having a single final price, timeline, and what's included, does everyone a favor.

The second is spending the budget on polish that doesn't sell anything. Motion on every subpage, background video on every section. First impressions absolutely matter, so I'm not saying you should have an ugly website. But if you're not a luxury brand, elaborate motion on your fifth-level page is unlikely to close deals, and heavy video will slow the site down enough that PageSpeed and your visitors both notice.

That money is almost always better spent on content and on being findable, by Google and increasingly by AI assistants that answer questions about your category before anyone reaches your homepage.

The costs that aren't on the quote

Your own team's time is the biggest, and nobody budgets it. Gathering content, chasing approvals, reviewing designs, writing feedback, testing staging. On a mid-size redesign that's easily a day a week for someone senior for the length of the project.

Then platform, hosting and subscriptions, which are ongoing and yours. And changes after launch, which are guaranteed, because real users will show you things no amount of internal review can catch. Budget something for the month after launch instead of spending the last dollar getting there.

There's one more cost that only appears when things go wrong: lost traffic. A redesign that breaks its URL structure or deletes the pages that were ranking can cost more in missed leads than the project fee. It's preventable, and we've written up exactly how in how to redesign a website without losing SEO.

How to get an accurate number faster

You'll get a quicker, better quote if you go in with six things:

• What's broken now in observable terms (e.g. low traffic since launch)
• What a good outcome looks like in numbers
• Roughly how many pages you actually need
• Whether the content exists already
• Whether the brand is good, or needs work
• The launch date... and why

Companies often hide the budget, thinking it gets them a better price. It mostly gets them a proposal aimed at the wrong scope. Saying a range lets a good agency tell you what's achievable inside it, including when the answer is "not this, but here's what is."

And before you price anything, be sure you need the full version. Plenty of sites need a refresh, not a rebuild. Here's how we tell the difference.

Get a straight number for your site

Tell us what's wrong with the site you have and we'll tell you what it would realistically take to fix. Sometimes, it's less than you think. See how we scope and run a website redesign.