Website Redesign Cost: What You Should Budget in 2026

A procurement lead at a mid-market brand recently told us they received three proposals for the same website redesign: $40,000, $185,000, and $430,000. All three agencies claimed to be “full-service.” The spread is not unusual. Website redesign costs vary so wildly because the phrase itself means at least a dozen different things, and most buyers never pin down which one they are actually buying.

Why the price range is so wide

Quoting “website redesign cost” without context is like quoting “car.” A static five-page corporate site on Webflow costs a different order of magnitude from a 2,000-page enterprise platform running headless commerce on Shopify Hydrogen with a custom design system, multi-region localization, and integrations into Salesforce, Marketo, and a proprietary PIM.

The variables that actually move the number fall into four buckets: scope (how many pages, user flows, and integrations), complexity (custom logic, personalization, third-party systems), content (who writes it, who migrates it, who governs it post-launch), and platform (whether you are building on a SaaS CMS, an open-source framework, or something fully bespoke). Each of those buckets can double or halve the total spend.

Typical ranges by project type

These ranges reflect what the market charges for competent, professional-grade work in 2026. Cheap freelancers and template installers sit below these floors. Enterprise system integrators sit above these ceilings. Both can be appropriate for the right context.

• Brochure or corporate site (5 to 20 pages): $15,000 to $75,000. Template-based CMS, limited custom design, standard responsive breakpoints.
• Mid-market marketing site (20 to 100 pages): $75,000 to $250,000. Custom design system, CMS with structured content models, integrations with marketing automation, SEO migration plan.
• Enterprise or platform site (100+ pages, multiple user types): $200,000 to $500,000+. Headless architecture, personalization layers, accessibility compliance to WCAG 2.2 AA, multilingual content, performance budgets enforced in CI/CD.
• E-commerce redesign: $80,000 to $400,000+. Heavily dependent on catalog size, checkout customization, ERP and fulfillment integrations, and whether you are replatforming simultaneously.

If a quote falls dramatically below these ranges and the agency is not cutting scope, something is being skipped. Usually it is discovery, QA, or content migration.

The most expensive website redesign is the one you have to redo in 18 months because discovery was skipped and the wrong architecture was chosen.

What actually drives the cost up

Buyers tend to fixate on visual design as the big cost driver. It rarely is. A skilled designer producing a full design system with component states, responsive behaviors, and motion specs might represent 15 to 25 percent of total project cost. The rest sits in areas most stakeholders underestimate.

Content strategy and migration. If you have 800 pages of legacy content and no one has audited what should survive, someone needs to. Content audits, information architecture, writing, and structured content modeling can consume 20 percent or more of the budget. Agencies that skip this step hand you a beautiful site filled with outdated copy and broken internal links.

Integrations. Every API connection to a CRM, analytics platform, CDP, payment gateway, or authentication service requires engineering time to build, test, and maintain. A site that pulls product data from a PIM, pushes form submissions to HubSpot, authenticates users through Okta, and syncs order status with an ERP is fundamentally a systems integration project with a front end on top. Google’s developer documentation alone illustrates how deep even a single integration like Google Tag Manager or Consent Mode v2 can go.

Performance engineering. Hitting a sub-2.5-second Largest Contentful Paint on a content-heavy site requires image optimization pipelines, code splitting, edge caching, font subsetting, and often a move to a composable or headless architecture. This is engineering work, not a plugin toggle. WebPageTest and Chrome’s Lighthouse provide the measurement tooling, but fixing the problems those tools surface is where the hours go.

Accessibility. Meeting WCAG 2.2 AA is both a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and a significant engineering effort. Automated scanners catch roughly 30 percent of accessibility issues. The rest requires manual testing with screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, and cognitive-load analysis. Budget for it explicitly or accept the legal and reputational risk.

The hidden line items most proposals leave out

A well-structured proposal from a credible agency should include these. If they are absent, ask why.

How to tell if a proposal is realistic

Here is a quick litmus test. If a proposal does not include a discovery phase (sometimes called “Phase 0” or “Definition”), treat that as a red flag. Discovery is where the team defines the real problem, maps stakeholder requirements, audits existing content and analytics, benchmarks competitors, and produces the information architecture and technical spec that the rest of the project builds on. It typically runs $10,000 to $40,000 for a mid-market site. Agencies that skip it are either absorbing the cost elsewhere (possible but unlikely) or guessing at scope.

Look at the team composition. A strong redesign requires strategy, UX design, visual design, front-end engineering, back-end or CMS engineering, QA, and project management. If a proposal names two people for a $200,000 project, the math does not work. Our own process at Moburst moves through Discovery, Brand and Strategy, UX and Wireframes, and UI and Animation as distinct phases, each with defined deliverables. You can see how we structure our service model for more detail on what each phase produces.

Ask any prospective agency to show you three redesign projects with before-and-after performance data: page speed, conversion rate, and organic traffic trajectory. If they cannot, they are selling aesthetics, not outcomes.

Replatforming versus reskinning

These are different projects with different costs, and conflating them is a common source of budget shock.

A reskin keeps your existing CMS, content structure, and integrations intact while applying a new design layer. It is faster, cheaper, and lower risk. Expect 40 to 60 percent of the cost of a full redesign.

A replatform moves you to a new CMS or architecture entirely. Migrating from a monolithic WordPress instance to a headless setup using something like Next.js with a structured CMS like Sanity or Contentful changes every layer of the stack. The front end, the content model, the hosting, the deployment pipeline, and the editorial workflow all need to be rebuilt. This is why replatforms cost more: you are rebuilding the engine, not just repainting the body.

Before committing to either path, audit what you actually have. Sometimes the existing CMS is fine and the real problem is a design system that has drifted, page speed that has degraded, or a content model that no longer matches the business. A case study review of comparable projects can help calibrate expectations. Reviewing Forrester’s research on total cost of ownership for CMS platforms is also worth the time before signing anything.

What to budget beyond the build

The agency fee is the line item that gets board approval. But the total cost of a redesign includes internal time: stakeholder workshops, content review cycles, legal sign-off, brand team approvals, and IT security reviews. For an enterprise project, internal labor can add 20 to 30 percent on top of the agency fee in equivalent cost.

Then there is ongoing cost. A new CMS has licensing fees. A headless architecture may require a CDN, a hosting platform like Vercel or Netlify, and API metering for third-party services. Budget these as annual operational expenses, not one-time project costs. Ignoring them creates a surprise in Q2 when the first renewal invoices land.

Finally, plan for iteration. The best redesigns launch with a clear post-launch roadmap: A/B tests on key conversion flows, content performance reviews, and quarterly design system updates. A redesign that launches and then sits untouched for three years will degrade in performance, relevance, and conversion rate long before those three years are up. You can explore how our team and approach support post-launch optimization as part of the engagement model.

FAQs

How much does a basic website redesign cost?

A basic corporate or brochure website redesign with 5 to 20 pages typically costs between $15,000 and $75,000. This assumes a template-based or lightly customized CMS, standard responsive design, and limited integrations. Custom design systems, content migration, or accessibility compliance push costs higher.

How long does a website redesign take?

A mid-market marketing site redesign usually takes 3 to 6 months from discovery through launch. Enterprise projects with complex integrations, large content libraries, or multiple stakeholder groups can take 6 to 12 months. Reskins on an existing platform are faster, often 6 to 12 weeks.

What is the difference between a website redesign and a replatform?

A redesign applies a new design, content structure, and potentially new features to your existing CMS or platform. A replatform migrates your entire site to a new technology stack, such as moving from WordPress to a headless CMS. Replatforms are more expensive and complex because they change the underlying architecture, content model, and deployment workflow.

Why do website redesign costs vary so much between agencies?

The variation comes from differences in scope definition, team composition, geographic labor costs, and what is included or excluded. Some agencies exclude discovery, content migration, SEO redirect mapping, QA, or post-launch support. Others bundle everything. Always compare proposals on a line-item basis, not just total price.

Should I budget for ongoing costs after a website redesign?

Yes. Post-launch costs include CMS licensing, hosting, CDN fees, API metering for third-party services, and ongoing optimization work like A/B testing and performance monitoring. Expect to allocate 15 to 25 percent of the initial build cost annually for maintenance, updates, and iterative improvements.