# How much does a website redesign cost in 2026?

> What a website redesign costs in 2026: freelancer, studio and agency prices, refresh vs. full redesign, where the money goes and how to keep your rankings.

Canonical: https://primilink.com/website-redesign-cost/
Last updated: 2026-10-30

Most small businesses pay $1,500 to $10,000 to redesign a website with a freelancer or a small studio, and $15,000 or more with an agency. Redoing it yourself on a site builder costs a few hundred dollars a year plus your weekends. If your site mostly works and just looks dated, a refresh can cost a fraction of any of those. Whichever you choose, the most expensive mistake is losing your Google rankings when the new site goes live, and it is avoidable.

By [Elijah Ching](https://primilink.com/about-me/) · Published Oct 30, 2026 · 10 min read · Prices checked October 2026

![An old, cluttered web page on paper beside the same business's clean new website on a laptop and phone, with a price tag on the laptop.](https://primilink.com/assets/img/blog/website-redesign-cost.webp)

The short version, by who does the work:

- **You, on Squarespace or Wix:** $200 to $500 a year, plus 20 to 60 hours of your time.
- **A freelancer:** $1,500 to $5,000.
- **A small studio:** $2,500 to $10,000.
- **An agency:** $15,000 and up.
- **A monthly website plan:** about $99 to $250 a month, with little or nothing upfront, usually covering the redesign, hosting and upkeep.

Redesign price by who does the work

Typical one-time price of a small business redesign: $1,500 to $5,000 with a freelancer, $2,500 to $10,000 with a small studio, and $15,000 to $35,000 or more with an agency. Doing it yourself costs $200 to $500 a year, and monthly plans run about $99 to $250 a month.

Those are close to what a brand-new site of the same size costs, because a redesign is mostly a new build. The extra work is moving what you already have and pointing your old page addresses at the new ones. The rest of this page covers where the money goes, how to tell whether you need a redesign at all, and what to ask before you sign.

## Redesign prices by who does the work

| Who does it | Typical price | Fits when |
|---|---|---|
| You, on a site builder | $200–$500 a year | Your site is small, your budget is tight and you have free weekends. Your time is the real cost. |
| A freelancer | $1,500–$5,000 | You know what you want and can manage the project. Quality varies a lot, so check past work. |
| A small studio | $2,500–$10,000 | You want the design, the words, a plan for getting found on Google and someone to call afterward. |
| An agency | $15,000+ | Many locations, an online store, connections to other software or a full rebrand. |
| A monthly plan | $99–$250 a month | You would rather not write one big check, and you want hosting and changes handled. Read the ownership terms first. |

These ranges match what we see for new builds in [our website cost guide](https://primilink.com/what-a-website-costs/), and they line up with what other studios publish. Cindaro puts small-business redesigns at $1,500 to $4,000 with a freelancer and $5,000 to $15,000 or more with an agency. Classic City, an agency in Georgia, lists its redesigns at $15,000, $25,000 and $35,000 and up.

Budget your own time too. Rooga, a small-business web studio, estimates 10 to 25 hours of the owner's time even when a professional does the work: gathering photos, answering questions and reviewing drafts. Doing it yourself takes 20 to 60 hours.

## Do you need a redesign, or just a refresh?

Not every tired website needs to be rebuilt. In one r/smallbusiness thread, a designer argued that most sites asking for a redesign mostly need someone to delete half of them: buttons fighting each other on the homepage, a slider nobody waits for, a pop-up before the page even loads. Removing clutter is the cheapest redesign there is.

|  | Refresh | Full redesign |
|---|---|---|
| What changes | Photos, colors, fonts, a tighter homepage, removing clutter, fixing speed and phone problems. Page addresses stay the same. | The structure, the pages, the words and often the platform the site runs on. |
| Typical cost | Usually billed by the hour. At the $75 to $200 an hour studios commonly charge for edits, 10 to 20 hours of work is roughly $750 to $4,000. | $1,500 to $10,000 for most small businesses, more with an agency. |
| Risk to your Google rankings | Low, because no addresses change. | Real, unless every old page address is pointed to its new home. More on that below. |

### A refresh is probably enough if

- The site already brings in calls or quote requests.
- You can update prices, hours and photos yourself.
- It works well on a phone and loads quickly.
- The pages still match the services you sell and the towns you serve.

### You probably need a full redesign if

- **It is hard to use on a phone.** Google ranks your site based on its phone version. When we looked up our own pages in Google Search Console, every page Google had visited was crawled as a phone.
- **You cannot edit it,** or the person who built it has disappeared. If that is you, [how to hire a web designer](https://primilink.com/how-to-hire-a-web-designer/) covers getting your logins and web address back.
- **Your business changed.** New services, new towns, a new name or a new owner, and no pages for any of them.
- **The platform boxes you in.** You cannot add online booking or a quote form, or you could not take the site with you if you left.
- **It gets visits but no calls.** People arrive and leave without contacting you. A new look alone will not fix that. The page structure and the words need work too.

## Where the money goes

Quotes differ by thousands because they include different work. These published prices from studios and agencies show what each piece costs on its own. Small studios and freelancers usually roll them into one price, so use this list to check what a quote includes, not to add up a total.

| Line item | Published price | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Moving existing pages over | $175 a page (Connective Web Design) | How many pages you have. Ten pages is $1,750 at that rate. A hundred is $17,500. |
| New words for each page | $100–$500 a page (Cindaro); $250 a page (Connective) | Whether you write it or they do. Keeping decent wording and tightening it costs far less. |
| Photos | $50 for one image to thousands for a full-day shoot (Forbes Advisor) | Stock photos, your own phone photos or a professional shoot. |
| Forms with logic | $1,500–$4,000 (Connective) | Multi-step quote forms, calculators, forms that change based on answers. |
| Connecting other software | $2,000–$8,000 (Connective); $3,000–$10,000 each (Classic City) | Booking systems, CRMs and scheduling tools. Each one is real engineering work. |
| An online store | $5,000–$15,000 extra (Connective) | Number of products, payments, shipping and taxes. |
| Redirects and SEO migration | Often included. Ask. | How many old pages you have and whether the page addresses change. |

The single biggest driver is page count. A redesign of a five-page site and a fifty-page site are different projects, even if both are called "a website redesign."

## What it costs after launch

The redesign quote is usually for the build alone. Hosting, your web address, software updates and later changes are billed separately, every year. For a small WordPress site, that runs about $200 to $700 a year if you handle updates yourself, or $39 to $89 a month for a care plan. [Website maintenance cost](https://primilink.com/website-maintenance-cost/) has the renewal prices.

Compare five-year totals, not first invoices. Cindaro estimates that a "$5,000 website" often costs $9,000 to $12,000 over five years. A rule of thumb Classic City quotes puts upkeep at 15% to 20% of the build price per year. To compare two offers fairly, add the build price to five years of hosting, updates and changes for each.

## How to keep your Google rankings through a redesign

A new design does not hurt your rankings. Changing page addresses without telling Google does. If your old "Water heater repair" page lived at /services/water-heaters and the new one lives at /water-heater-repair/, Google and everyone who linked to the old address hits an error page, and the standing that page earned goes with it.

Here is the checklist we follow, based on Google's own guidance for site moves:

1. **List every page on the current site.** Your sitemap has most of them. In Google Search Console, the Performance report shows which pages actually get visits from Google. Those matter most.
2. **Match each old address to its new home** in a simple spreadsheet. Send each page to its closest match, not everything to the homepage.
3. **Set up permanent (301) redirects** from every old address to its match. A 301 tells browsers and Google the page has moved for good.
4. **Keep the redirects for at least a year.** Google says to keep them "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year," so it can move all of the old page's standing to the new one.
5. **Keep your web address if you can.** If you are changing it, use the Change of Address tool in Search Console after launch.
6. **Update the links you control:** your Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp and any directory listings.
7. **After launch,** submit the new sitemap in Search Console, check your top pages with the URL Inspection tool, send a test message through every form and tap every phone number on a phone.
8. **Expect some movement.** Google says rankings can fluctuate during a move, and for medium-sized sites "it can take a few weeks or more" for the new addresses to replace the old ones.

If your site disappears from Google after launch anyway, [why your website isn't showing up on Google](https://primilink.com/website-not-showing-up-on-google/) walks through how to find the cause.

## How to get an accurate quote

Vague requests get vague quotes. Send every designer the same short brief so you can compare them fairly:

- Your current web address and what is not working, in your own words ("people call to ask our prices," "it looks broken on phones").
- The pages you want to keep, the pages you want to add and the pages you would happily delete.
- Who will write the words and who will provide photos.
- Anything the site has to do: book appointments, take quote requests, show your service area.
- Two or three sites you like, and why.
- Your budget range and any deadline.
- Which logins you have: web address, hosting, the site itself, Google Business Profile.

### Questions to ask before you sign

1. **Are redirects for my old pages included?** If the answer is a blank look, keep looking.
2. **Who writes the words and takes the photos?** If nobody said, assume you are, and assume it adds weeks.
3. **Will the site and the web address be in my name?** Could I take the site with me if I left?
4. **What does it cost per year after launch,** and what does that cover?
5. **How many rounds of changes are included?**
6. **How do payments work?** Half upfront and half at launch is common. Be careful with 100% upfront.

## Can AI redesign my website for less?

AI site builders from Wix, Squarespace and Hostinger can draft a full website in minutes, and the draft is a reasonable starting point. What they cannot do is know your prices, your service area, the jobs you want more of, or which of your old pages Google already sends people to. You still need your own words and photos, and you still need the redirects. AI makes the first draft cheap. The rest of the work is the same.

## What a redesign costs with Primilink

Plans start at $249 a month, priced by how many pages you need, and nothing is due until you see the first draft. If you are on WordPress we can rebuild within your setup. If you are on Wix, Squarespace or something else, we move you over. As part of the move, every old page address is pointed to its new home, so you keep the standing you have already earned with Google. The first draft is usually ready in about three weeks, and the site goes live within five. You own the site, the words, the photos and the logins, and your web address stays in your name.

If a refresh would do the job, we will tell you. Start with [a proposal request](https://primilink.com/request-your-proposal/), or read [how long a website takes](https://primilink.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-website/) to plan your timeline.

## Where these numbers come from

Checked October 30, 2026. Agency prices are each company's own published rates.

- **Redesign price ranges:** [Cindaro](https://www.cindaro.com/resources/website-redesign-cost/) (freelancer, agency and monthly plan ranges, copywriting per page, five-year estimate), [Rooga](https://rooga.ai/website-redesign-cost/) (owner hours, hourly edit rates), [Classic City](https://classiccity.com/website-redesign-cost/) (published tiers, integrations, the 15% to 20% upkeep rule of thumb) and [Forbes Advisor](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/how-much-does-a-website-cost/) (professional design from $1,500, photography).
- **Line-item prices:** [Connective Web Design's pricing page](https://connectivewebdesign.com/pricing/web-design) ($175 a page to migrate, $250 a page to write, forms, integrations and stores).
- **Keeping rankings:** Google Search Central on [site moves with URL changes](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes), [redirects](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects) and [mobile-first indexing](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing).
- **Owners' experiences:** an r/smallbusiness thread arguing [most websites need deleting more than redesigning](https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1xfx5i9/).

## Frequently asked questions

### How much should I pay someone to redesign my website?

For a small business site, $1,500 to $5,000 with a freelancer, $2,500 to $10,000 with a small studio, and $15,000 or more with an agency. Monthly plans run about $99 to $250 a month. The number of pages and who writes the words move the price the most.

### Is it cheaper to redesign or build a new website?

About the same. A redesign is mostly a new build plus moving your content and redirecting your old page addresses. If your structure and words still work, a refresh of the look is much cheaper than either.

### How long does a website redesign take?

About as long as a new site of the same size: four to six weeks with a professional for a typical small business site. Redesigns stall most often while waiting for logins and content, so gather those first.

### Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?

Not if every old page address is permanently redirected to its new home and the redirects stay in place for at least a year. Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google catches up.

### How often should I redesign my website?

When it stops doing its job, not on a schedule. If it brings in calls, works on phones and you can edit it, a refresh every so often is usually enough.

### Can I pay for a redesign monthly?

Yes. Many studios offer monthly plans that include the redesign, hosting and changes. Before you sign, ask whether the site and web address are in your name and what happens if you stop paying.

## Related
- [Home](https://primilink.com/)
- [Blog](https://primilink.com/articles-and-resources/)
- [Elijah Ching](https://primilink.com/about-me/)
- [our website cost guide](https://primilink.com/what-a-website-costs/)
- [how to hire a web designer](https://primilink.com/how-to-hire-a-web-designer/)
- [Website maintenance cost](https://primilink.com/website-maintenance-cost/)
- [why your website isn't showing up on Google](https://primilink.com/website-not-showing-up-on-google/)
- [a proposal request](https://primilink.com/request-your-proposal/)
- [Contact](https://primilink.com/contact/)

Primilink · Kailua-Kona, Hawaii · (213) 776-3217 · elijah@primilink.com