Website redesign cost: what one quote includes and another leaves out

Quotes differ because they price different jobs

A website redesign costs what its scope costs, and two quotes for the same site usually differ because they assume different scopes. One prices new designs for the main templates. The other also prices the content migration, the redirect map, the CRM integration, an accessibility audit and three rounds of review with your legal team. Both are called a redesign.

This article is for the marketing lead or head of digital holding two or more quotes, or setting a budget before asking for them. It explains where the spread comes from and gives a list of scope lines to put in front of every agency, so the numbers can be compared line by line.

We read the pages that rank for this question in October 2026. All of them were written by agencies or design services, and most lead with a price range. None of those ranges cites a source, and they disagree with each other by about ten times: one page’s full range sits below another’s starting point for a B2B site. A number that varies that much with the author is not telling you about your project.

So this article gives no price and no range. That is also our own rule: we do not publish prices. One disclosure, too. We design and redesign B2B websites, so we have an interest in how redesigns are bought. The technical points below are quoted from Google, the W3C, the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, and the sources are listed at the end.

Count templates, not pages

Most quotes start from a page count, and page count is a weak guide to effort. A site with 300 product pages built on one template takes less design work than a site with 40 pages built on 25 different layouts. What sets the design and build effort is the number of distinct templates and components, and how much each one has to do.

• Templates: the distinct page types, such as home, service, industry, article, case study, careers and contact. Each one is designed, built and tested once.
• Components: the blocks those templates are built from. A design system of reusable components costs more at the start and less on every page added later.
• Variants: the same template behaving differently by region, language or product line. Each variant is close to a template of its own.

Ask every agency to state how many templates its number assumes, and to list them. Two quotes that assume eight templates and twenty templates are not quotes for the same site.

The work that sits outside the design

The design is the part of a redesign that every quote prices, because it is the part everyone can see. The spread between quotes comes mostly from four pieces of work that sit around it.

Content migration

Someone has to decide what moves, rewrite what no longer fits, move it into the new system and check it arrived intact. On a large site this is often the longest part of the project. A quote that says content is supplied by the client has moved that cost to your team, which is a legitimate choice only if your team has the hours.

The URL map and redirects

If any URL changes, every old URL needs a decided destination. Google’s guidance on site moves is plain about it: it is important to map the old site’s URLs to the new site’s, and to use server-side permanent redirects where technically possible. The same guidance says to keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year. This is the work that protects rankings, and the redesign checklist sets it out step by step. A quote that does not mention it has not priced it.

Integrations

The forms that feed your CRM, the marketing automation, the analytics and consent tools, single sign-on for a customer area, and any product or pricing data that comes from another system. Each one is a small project with its own testing. Integrations are often listed in a quote as one line, which makes them easy to under-price and hard to compare.

Approvals

At a large company a page is not finished when the design team likes it. Brand, legal, product owners and sometimes regional teams review it, and procurement and security review the agency. Each round of comments is time. A quote that assumes two rounds of revision will be cheaper than one that assumes the five your organisation actually runs, and the difference arrives later as change requests.

Scope that moves after signing is common in projects of every kind. In PMI’s 2018 Pulse of the Profession survey, 52 percent of projects completed in the previous twelve months experienced scope creep or uncontrolled changes to scope, up from 43 percent five years earlier. That survey covers projects in general rather than websites, but it is the reason to settle these four lines before signing rather than after.

Name the accessibility level and the speed targets, or you cannot compare

Two quotes can both say the site will be accessible and fast and mean very different amounts of work. Both promises can be made measurable, and until they are, the quotes are not comparable.

For accessibility the standard is the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Version 2.2 is the current one, and it defines three levels of conformance: A, AA and AAA. Most organisations work to AA. The W3C itself does not recommend requiring AAA as a general policy for entire sites, so a quote that promises AAA everywhere deserves a question. Conformance also applies to whole pages, which means one inaccessible component, such as a cookie banner or an embedded form, affects every page it appears on.

Whether either rule applies to you depends on your sector and your markets, which is a question for your own advisers. For the quote, what matters is that the level is written down, along with whether an audit and fixes after the audit are included.

Speed works the same way. Google’s Core Web Vitals give three thresholds for a good experience: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, the page responds to input in 200 milliseconds or less, and the layout shifts by 0.1 or less. Google measures them at the 75th percentile of page loads, on mobile and desktop. Written into a contract as acceptance criteria for the main templates, they turn fast into something an agency has priced and can be held to.

The scope lines to compare across quotes

Send the same list to every agency and ask them to price each line or mark it excluded. The total matters less than which lines each quote leaves out, because every excluded line is a cost that comes back to you as a change request or as work your own team does.

1. 01

   Discovery

   Interviews, analytics review and a content audit before design. Usually the first line cut from a low quote.

2. 02

   Templates and components

   The number of distinct templates, listed by name, and whether they are built as a reusable design system.

3. 03

   Content

   Who audits, rewrites, migrates and checks the content, and how many pages each of those covers.

4. 04

   URL map and redirects

   Every old URL mapped to a new one, permanent server-side redirects, and checks after launch.

5. 05

   Integrations

   Each one named: CRM, marketing automation, analytics, consent, single sign-on, product or pricing data.

6. 06

   Tracking

   Analytics and conversion events carried across, and the form field that records where each enquiry came from.

7. 07

   Accessibility

   The standard and level, for example WCAG 2.2 AA, and whether an audit and the fixes it finds are included.

8. 08

   Speed

   Core Web Vitals targets for the main templates, measured on mobile, as acceptance criteria.

9. 09

   Platform and licences

   Which content management system, who holds the licences, and what they cost each year.

10. 10

    Languages and regions

    How many, who translates, and how each version is marked for search engines.

11. 11

    Review rounds

    How many rounds of revision are included, and which reviewers on your side they assume.

12. 12

    After launch

    Hosting, security updates, support hours and the period the agency fixes defects at no charge.

Lines four, six and seven are the ones a low quote most often leaves out, because a site can look finished without them. They decide whether the new site keeps the search traffic and the enquiry records the old one earned.

The costs that continue after launch

A redesign quote is a one-time number, and a website is not a one-time cost. Before comparing totals, ask each agency what the site will cost to run in its first year.

• Hosting and the content management system’s licences, which can differ more between platforms than the build does.
• Security updates for the platform and its plugins or packages.
• Support: how fast someone responds when a form stops sending, and what that costs.
• The redirects, which Google advises keeping for at least a year, so the server that holds them has to stay configured.
• Your own team’s time to publish, which a well-built system reduces and a fragile one increases.

When a smaller job is the honest answer

Some of the spread between quotes is a difference of opinion about what job you need. Three jobs get called a redesign, and they cost and risk very different amounts:

• A visual refresh changes the look on the same pages, URLs and platform. It carries the least search risk and the smallest scope.
• A redesign changes structure, content and design, and keeps the platform if it still fits.
• A rebuild changes everything, including the platform, and carries the most migration work.

If the site works and only looks dated, a refresh is the honest answer, and an agency quoting a rebuild for it is pricing a bigger job than you need. Our refresh, redesign or rebuild comparison sets the three side by side. And if few people visit the site at all, a better-looking site will still be empty: search or paid campaigns come first.