A website redesign for a small business typically costs $1,500 to $6,000 with a freelancer, $3,000 to $9,000 with a solo studio, and $10,000 to $40,000 with an agency. The number is usually a little higher than an equivalent new build, because a redesign has to preserve what already works while replacing what doesn't.
Key takeaways
- Redesign quotes are higher than new-build quotes for the same page count, because migration, URL mapping and redirect work don't exist on a new site.
- Published agency prices skew high. The ranges you see quoted at $15,000 and up come from agencies that only sell at that level.
- Almost nobody prices the redirect map separately, and it's the line item that decides whether you keep your rankings. Ask for it explicitly.
- The traffic risk is real and measurable. A study of 892 migrations found an average of 523 days to recover pre-migration traffic, and 17% never recovered at all.
- If the site works and only looks dated, a refresh costs a fraction of a redesign. Most people asking for a redesign want a refresh.
This is about redesigning a site you already have. If you're starting from scratch, the numbers are different and my guide to what a small business website costs in 2026 is the one you want. What follows is the money you spend specifically because a website already exists, which is a category most pricing articles skip entirely.
Why a redesign isn't priced like a new build
People assume a redesign is cheaper because "the content's already written." It usually isn't, and here's why.
A new build has no history to protect. Nobody is ranking for anything, no URLs are linked from anywhere, no customer has bookmarked a page. You make it, you launch it, done.
A redesign inherits obligations. Every existing page has an address that Google has indexed and other sites may link to. Every one of those addresses has to either survive or point somewhere sensible. Your existing rankings are an asset you're now responsible for not breaking. And the old site is often built on something awkward, a theme nobody documented, a page builder with its own quirks, plugins that stopped being updated in 2021.
That inherited work is real hours. It's why the same twelve-page site costs a bit more to redesign than to build fresh.
What a website redesign costs in 2026
For a typical small business site, five to twenty pages, no ecommerce, no custom functionality:
| Who does it | Typical range | What you're actually buying |
|---|---|---|
| You, on a new template | $0 to $1,500 | A theme, maybe stock images. Your time is the real cost, and the redirect work is on you. |
| Freelancer | $1,500 to $6,000 | Execution. Usually strong on build, variable on strategy and SEO preservation. |
| Solo studio | $3,000 to $9,000 | Strategy, design and build from one person who owns the outcome. No account manager layer. |
| Small agency | $10,000 to $40,000 | A team, a process, and overhead. Worth it for larger sites and multi-stakeholder businesses. |
| Full-service agency | $40,000 and up | Research, brand work, content production, the lot. Rarely the right fit for a local business. |
A note on where these numbers come from, because it matters. Most redesign pricing you'll find online is published by agencies, on their own websites, describing their own tier. Those articles genuinely do quote $15,000 to $40,000 as the small-business range, and they're not lying, they're describing their client base. If you're a plumber with an eight-page site, that's not your market. Read vendor pricing pages as a ceiling, not an average.
The four line items only a redesign has
These are the costs that don't appear on a new build, and the ones most quotes bury inside a lump sum.
1. Content migration. Moving your existing pages, posts, images and any customer or order data onto the new site. On a simple WordPress-to-WordPress move this is small, a few hundred dollars of work. Change platform and it grows quickly, because content structured for one system rarely maps cleanly onto another. Industry figures for platform-to-platform migration start around $500 and run past $10,000 for anything complex.
2. URL mapping and redirects. This is the one to ask about by name. Every address on the old site gets mapped to its equivalent on the new one, and a redirect gets written so that anyone, or any search engine, arriving at the old address lands in the right place. Nobody prices this as a separate line, which is exactly why it gets skipped. For a small site it's a few hours of careful work. For a site with a few hundred pages it's a day or more. It is cheap relative to what it protects, and it is the single most common reason a redesign tanks a business's traffic.
3. The switchover. Your current site keeps running while the new one is built on a staging server, so visitors never see a broken site. The risk isn't downtime, it's the handover: the redirect map has to go live at the same moment the new site does. A few days where old addresses return errors is enough to do damage that takes months to undo.
4. Legacy platform debt. If your existing site is on an old CMS, an abandoned theme, or a page builder nobody can decipher, someone has to work out what it's doing before replacing it. This is the most unpredictable cost in a redesign and the one most likely to blow a fixed quote. Deciding to switch platforms mid-project is worse still, and commonly adds 20% to 40% to the timeline.
If you want a redesign quote that itemises the migration and redirect work instead of hiding it, that's how I scope them.
See website design and buildRefresh or rebuild? Most people want the cheaper one
These get used interchangeably and they're very different jobs.
A refresh keeps the structure and changes the surface. New colours, new typography, better photography, tidier layouts, a few usability fixes. Same pages, same addresses, same platform. Because nothing moves, there's no migration and no redirect work, which is why it costs a fraction of a redesign.
A redesign or rebuild changes the structure. Different pages, reorganised navigation, new functionality, often a new platform. All four line items above apply.
Choose a refresh if your site is fundamentally sound and just looks dated, loads acceptably, and you can still edit it. Choose a redesign if the navigation confuses people, it's genuinely slow at its core, it was never built for mobile, you can't edit it without help, or your business has changed enough that the structure no longer fits. The signs a website actually needs a redesign are worth reading through honestly before you commit to the bigger number.
In my experience most enquiries that arrive asking for a redesign describe a refresh, plus two or three specific things that are broken. Saying so costs me money and saves the client several thousand, which seems like the right trade.
The risk nobody puts in the quote
Here's the data point that should shape how you choose who does this.
Search Engine Journal published an analysis of 892 site migrations. The average time for organic traffic to return to pre-migration levels was 523 days. The fastest recoveries took 19 to 33 days. And 17% of the sites studied had still not recovered after 1,000 days.
Two honest caveats. That study covers domain migrations, which are more disruptive than a redesign on the same domain, so treat it as a worst case rather than your expected outcome. And the 17% failure rate was down sharply from 42% the previous year, which suggests the industry is getting better at this.
Even discounted, the point stands: this is the risk you're paying a professional to manage, and it's invisible in every quote you'll receive. When you compare two proposals, the cheaper one is often cheaper because it doesn't include the work that prevents this. Ask both of them how they'll handle the redirect map and what happens if traffic drops after launch. The answers will separate them faster than the price will.
What actually moves the price
- Page count. The biggest single driver, on every pricing model I've seen. Not because pages are hard, but because each one needs content decisions, layout and a redirect.
- Who writes the content. The largest lever you personally control. Copywriting is commonly billed at $100 to $300 a page. Supplying your own finished copy can cut a small-business redesign by a third. Supplying half-finished copy that needs three rounds of chasing is worse than supplying none.
- Custom functionality. Booking that syncs with your calendar, quote calculators, customer portals, integrations with field service software. Each of these is its own small project.
- Ecommerce. Changes the category entirely. Product data, payment, tax, shipping rules and order history all have to migrate intact.
- Platform change. Stacks a migration cost on top of the design cost. Sometimes necessary, often not. Be sure the reason is real before paying for it.
- Photography and video. Frequently the hidden half of a redesign budget. Real photos of your team and your work beat stock every time, and they cost money.
One ongoing cost worth planning for while you're budgeting: maintenance after launch, typically running 15% to 20% of build cost annually. My guide to website maintenance costs covers what that buys.
How long a redesign takes
Rough planning figures for 2026:
- Small business site, 10 to 20 pages: 8 to 12 weeks
- Mid-size site, 30 to 75 pages: 12 to 16 weeks
- Large site, 100+ pages: 16 to 24 weeks
Those assume your content is ready when the project starts and you return feedback within a few days. Neither is usually true, which is why projects commonly overrun by 30% to 50%. The delay is almost never the design or the build. It's waiting on copy, photos and approvals. If you want your redesign to land on time, have your content finished before the first design is drawn. More on that in how long it takes to build a website.
What about the return?
You'll find articles claiming a redesign lifts conversions 200% or 400%. I'd treat all of them with suspicion, and I say that as someone who sells redesigns.
There is no independent, methodologically transparent study of website redesign ROI. Every large number in circulation traces back to a vendor describing their own client work, with no control group and no failure cases published. The traffic-risk data in this article is real research with a stated sample. The ROI data isn't, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
What you can reason about is your own arithmetic. If your site produces four enquiries a month and a job is worth $2,000, then one extra enquiry a month pays for a $6,000 redesign inside a year. That's a calculation you can actually run, and it beats any borrowed statistic.
The bottom line
Budget $3,000 to $9,000 for a proper small business redesign done by one accountable person, more if you need custom functionality or you want the content written for you. Expect it to take eight to twelve weeks and expect content to be the bottleneck.
When you compare quotes, look past the number. Ask what happens to your existing URLs, who writes the redirect map, and what the plan is if traffic dips after launch. A quote that has no answer to those is cheaper for a reason.
And before any of it, be honest about whether you need a redesign or a refresh. Send me your current site and I'll tell you which one you're actually looking at, even when the answer is the smaller job.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to redesign a website in 2026?
For a typical small business site of five to twenty pages, expect roughly $1,500 to $6,000 with a freelancer, $3,000 to $9,000 with a solo studio, and $10,000 to $40,000 with an agency. Published agency figures often run higher because the agencies publishing them sell the top tier. The single biggest variable is whether you supply the content.
Is a redesign cheaper than building a new website?
Usually slightly more expensive for the same number of pages, which surprises people. A new build starts from nothing. A redesign starts from something that has to be preserved: existing URLs, existing rankings, existing content, and often a legacy platform that fights you. That preservation work is real hours that a new build simply doesn't have.
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It can, badly, if the URL mapping is skipped. The most rigorous study available looked at 892 migrations and found it took an average of 523 days for organic traffic to return to pre-migration levels, with 17% never recovering after nearly three years. That's domain migration, so it's a worst case, but it shows what's at stake if redirects aren't planned before launch.
What is the difference between a website refresh and a redesign?
A refresh changes the surface: colours, fonts, images, small usability fixes, on the same structure and platform. A redesign changes the structure: new page architecture, new functionality, often a new platform. A refresh typically costs a fraction of a redesign because none of the migration or redirect work applies. If your site works and just looks dated, you probably want a refresh.
How long does a website redesign take?
For a small business site of ten to twenty pages, budget eight to twelve weeks. Mid-size sites of thirty to seventy-five pages run twelve to sixteen. Those figures assume your content is ready at kickoff and you turn feedback around in a few days. Projects routinely run 30% to 50% over when content isn't ready, and content is almost never ready.
Do I need to keep my old website running during a redesign?
Your live site stays up while the new one is built on a staging server, so there's no downtime for visitors. What matters is the switchover: the redirect map has to be in place the moment the new site goes live, not the week after. A gap of even a few days where old URLs return errors is where redesigns lose rankings.