Website Redesign Cost: What a Refresh, Rebuild or Platform Move Really Costs

A redesign quote can surprise you in both directions. Some owners expect a fresh coat of paint and learn they need a rebuild. Others brace for a big bill when a refresh would do. The difference comes down to what's actually wrong with the current site and what the new one has to keep.

This guide covers the three kinds of redesign, what each tends to cost, the hidden costs that show up late, and the steps that protect your Google traffic through the switch.

Three kinds of redesign

A refresh

Same platform, same pages, new look. New colors and fonts, a cleaner home page, better photos, tidier menus and fixes for anything that breaks on a phone. The page addresses stay the same, so the risk to your rankings is low.

A refresh makes sense when the structure works but the site looks dated. Typical cost: a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, depending on how many templates change.

A full redesign

New design, new page structure and usually new writing, on the same platform or a better one. This is the right call when the site no longer matches your services, has no pages for the towns you serve or is slow on phones. Costs land close to a new build, because that's largely what it is.

A platform move

Moving from Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy's builder or an old theme to WordPress or another platform. It includes everything in a full redesign, plus moving content and redirecting every old address. Wix doesn't let you export a site to another host, and Squarespace's export only carries some page types, so expect pages to be rebuilt rather than copied. Our Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress comparison explains what moves and what doesn't.

The hidden costs owners miss

1. Writing. New layouts often need new words. Rewriting 20 pages is real work, and it's the line most often missing from a cheap quote.
2. Photos. A modern design with old, grainy photos still looks old. Budget for a half-day shoot of your team and your work.
3. Redirects. Every page whose address changes needs a 301 redirect to its closest match. On a 60-page site, that's a spreadsheet of 60 decisions plus testing.
4. Forms, booking and tracking. Contact forms, booking widgets, call tracking and analytics all need to be reconnected and tested.
5. Overlapping subscriptions. During a platform move you often pay for the old plan and the new hosting for a month or two.
6. Email. If your email is tied to your old builder or host, moving it needs planning so nothing bounces.

Prices to plan around

Cost line	Typical price	Source
CouncilSoft redesign or platform move	From $1,500	Our pricing page
CouncilSoft maintenance after launch	From $149 a month	Our pricing page
Staying on Squarespace	$19 to $99 a month, billed yearly	Squarespace pricing page
Staying on Wix	About $17 to $159 a month, billed yearly	Wix plans page (US prices)
Freelance web designer	$21 an hour median, most between $15 and $30	Upwork
.com domain (wholesale)	$10.26 a year, rising to $10.97 on November 1, 2026	Verisign, via Domain Name Wire

Prices as of October 2026.

For a full picture of build and running costs, see what a small business website costs.

How to protect your rankings during a redesign

Google's own guidance on site moves is clear on the basics: use permanent redirects, keep them for at least a year, and don't send every old page to the home page. Here's the process we follow:

1. Inventory every address. Pull URLs from the current sitemap, Google Search Console and analytics, not just the menu. Old blog posts and forgotten landing pages often bring in traffic nobody knew about.
2. Decide each page's fate. Keep, merge, rewrite or retire. Pages that already bring in searches keep their topic and their best wording.
3. Map redirects one to one. Each old address points to its closest new match with a 301. Google specifically warns against redirecting lots of old pages to one unrelated page such as the home page.
4. Carry over the search basics. Page titles, descriptions, headings, image alt text and structured data move across or get improved, never dropped.
5. Test before launch. Build on a staging copy, click every redirect and test on a real phone. Aim for Google's Core Web Vitals targets: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, taps respond within 200 milliseconds and the layout doesn't jump around (a shift score of 0.1 or less).
6. Launch and resubmit. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and check that your Google Business Profile still links to the right page.
7. Watch for broken pages. Check Search Console for "not found" errors weekly for the first two months, and fix them as they appear.
8. Keep the redirects. Google recommends keeping them for at least a year. We suggest leaving them in place for good, because old links and bookmarks keep arriving for years.

Here's what step 3 looks like in practice, as a hypothetical. A dental practice in Newtown has an old page at /teeth-whitening-newtown-pa that brings in a few dozen visits a month. The new site moves it to /services/teeth-whitening. Without a redirect, every one of those visitors and the page's search history hit a dead end. With a 301, both carry over.

Google notes that rankings can move around for a while during a site move and settle down over time. A careful process keeps that dip small and short.

Refresh or full redesign? A quick check

• ✓ Pages take more than three seconds to appear on a phone.
• ✓ Your services or towns have changed and the site still says the old thing.
• ✓ Nobody on your team can edit it without calling someone.
• ✓ You've outgrown the builder you started on.
• ✓ There's no page for each service you want calls for.

One or two ticks usually means a refresh will do. Three or more points to a full redesign.

What our redesigns include

Our website redesign work starts at $1,500 and begins with a full URL inventory, so nothing that already brings in calls gets lost. Every changed address gets a tested 301 redirect, ranking pages keep their best content, and the new site is built mobile-first with a page for each service and town. You keep the domain and every login. If you're building from scratch instead, see our website design service.

If your redesign is part of a bigger push to show up locally, it's worth reading what local SEO costs at the same time, since a new site is the best moment to add town pages.

What to do next

Before you decide between a refresh and a rebuild, get an outside look. Our free visibility audit checks your site's speed, the pages that bring in searches and how you show up locally, and comes with a written quote.