Two quotes for the same redesign can differ several times over, and both can be honest. The gap rarely comes from the look of the new site. It comes from what has to move across: pages, posts, products, links, forms and integrations, and from whether the work protects the search traffic and enquiries your current site already brings in. This guide explains the website redesign cost question from the buyer's side: refresh vs redesign vs rebuild, what drives the price, the hidden costs, the line items a fair quote should list, and how to check afterwards whether the money came back.
In short:
- Decide first whether you need a refresh, a redesign or a full rebuild. They are different jobs with very different prices.
- The price follows volumes: page templates, content to rewrite, posts and products to migrate, URLs to redirect, languages and integrations.
- The hidden costs sit with you: staff time, new photos, licences, tracking, and traffic lost to missing redirects.
- A fair redesign quote names the audit, the redirect map, migration volumes and a monitoring period after launch. If a line is missing, assume you will pay for it later.
- Record a baseline before launch so you can measure enquiries and search clicks afterwards.
In this guide
Refresh, redesign or rebuild: which one are you paying for?
"Redesign" is used for three different jobs. A lot of the spread between quotes comes from providers pricing different jobs under the same word, so settle this before you ask anyone for a number.
Refresh
The platform, structure and addresses stay. What changes is the surface and some of the words: colours, fonts, photos, a clearer homepage, rewritten service pages. No URL moves, so there is almost no redirect work or search risk.
Redesign
A new design and a revised structure, usually on the same platform. Pages are merged, menus and some URLs change, and thin content is rewritten or removed. Every changed address needs a redirect.
Rebuild
A new platform or code base: for example, moving from an old site builder or a hand-coded site to WordPress, or from WordPress to a custom system. Content, media, forms and integrations all move, and hosting often changes too. It is the most expensive and riskiest option, and sometimes the only sensible one.
| Refresh | Redesign | Rebuild | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What changes | Look, photos, key copy, speed | Design, structure, navigation, content | Platform, code, hosting, everything above |
| URLs | Stay the same | Some change | Many or all may change |
| Redirect work | None or very little | A redirect map for changed pages | A full redirect map for the whole site |
| Content work | Edit what is weak | Audit, merge, rewrite | Audit, export or copy, rewrite, re-format |
| Relative cost | Lowest | Middle | Highest |
| Main risk | Spending on a site whose platform is the real problem | Lost pages and traffic if redirects are missed | Broken forms, tracking and integrations at launch |
| Choose it when | The structure works and you can edit the site, but it looks dated | The content and menus no longer match how you sell | You cannot edit the site, add a language, or keep it secure |
Two mistakes cost the most: paying for a rebuild when a new look was all the business needed, and refreshing a site whose platform is the real obstacle, then paying again later for the postponed rebuild. If you are unsure whether you need a redesign at all, the signs are listed at the start of our website redesign checklist, which also covers the full process from audit to launch.
What drives website redesign cost
Once you know the job, the price mostly follows volumes. Know these before you ask for quotes and you can explain most of the gap between them.
| Cost driver | Why it adds work | How to keep it down |
|---|---|---|
| Unique page templates | Each layout is designed, built and tested once; pages that share a template are cheap | Group pages into a few types: home, service, article, contact |
| Pages to carry over | Every page is checked, re-formatted and placed in the new design | Merge thin pages and drop pages with no visits and no purpose |
| Content rewriting | Writing is slower than designing, and it waits on your approvals | Rewrite the pages that earn enquiries first; carry the rest over and improve later |
| Posts, products and media | Migration scales with the count, and imports still need checking | Count them before asking for quotes; archive what is out of date |
| URL changes | Each changed address needs a mapped, tested redirect | Keep URLs that already work; change only what the new structure needs |
| Integrations | Booking, CRM, payment links and tracking are reconnected or rebuilt and tested | List every one, and drop tools nobody uses |
| A second language | Every page exists twice, and right-to-left and left-to-right layouts are checked separately | Decide the language scope up front; see bilingual website design |
| A new platform | Content may not export cleanly, and every feature is rebuilt | Move only when the current platform blocks you; compare in WordPress or custom code |
The size of a site is not the number of items in its menu. Old posts, project pages, tag archives and forgotten landing pages all have addresses, and some get visits from Google. Count them from your XML sitemap or a crawl first. A provider who prices a "ten-page site" that really has three hundred URLs will either re-price halfway through or skip the redirects.
Hidden costs that rarely appear on the first quote
These costs often sit outside the provider's quote, paid in money, staff time or lost visitors. Put each on your own budget sheet.
Cleaning up migrated content
Imported posts arrive with broken formatting, odd image sizes and links to the old structure. Someone fixes them page by page.
New photos
A modern layout often needs wider, sharper images. That means a photo shoot or stock licences, which few quotes include.
Traffic lost to missing redirects
Google expects some ranking fluctuation during any move. Pages that vanish without a redirect cost more, and for longer.
Licences and overlapping plans
Premium themes and plugins are usually renewed every year. During a rebuild you may also pay for the old platform and the new one at the same time.
Your own staff time
Gathering content, reviewing drafts, testing forms and learning the new dashboard. Often the largest cost nobody writes down.
Tracking and analytics
Analytics tags and conversion events rarely survive a new template. Without them you cannot judge the redesign.
Email and DNS
When hosting changes, DNS records move too. If the mail records are not carried over, business email can stop on launch day.
Keeping an old domain
If the redesign also changes your domain, the old one must stay registered and keep redirecting. Google recommends paying for the old domain for at least a year.
The redirect risk grows quietly. Google's site-move guidance says many old URLs redirected to one irrelevant page, such as the home page, may be treated as a soft 404, and advises keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year. A redirect map protects the clicks your best pages earn today. The method is in the redesign checklist; for budgeting, what matters is that someone is named and paid to do it.
The cheapest redirect is the one you never need: keep the URLs that already work.
What a website redesign quote should itemise
Our web design quote guide gives a twelve-section template for any website project. A redesign quote needs those sections plus the lines below, because it starts from a site that already exists. Each line should state a deliverable or a number you can check.
- Audit of the current site. A list of pages with their visits, clicks and enquiries, and a keep, merge, rewrite or remove decision for each.
- URL inventory and redirect map. How many URLs, who maps each one to its closest new page, and permanent server-side redirects tested before launch.
- Content migration with counts. How many pages, posts, products and images move, by import or by hand, and whether formatting checks are included.
- Content rewriting. Which pages are rewritten, in which languages, and who approves the text.
- Design. How many templates are designed, how the design is shown to you, and how many revision rounds are included.
- Platform and licences. What the new site runs on, which paid themes or plugins it needs, and whose name the licences are in.
- Integrations. Each one named, for example the booking form, the CRM or the WhatsApp button, with "reconnect" or "rebuild" stated next to it.
- Search carry-over. Titles, descriptions, headings and structured data moved or improved, the new sitemap submitted, and staging settings removed at launch.
- Testing. Forms, phone and WhatsApp buttons, both languages, and mobile devices, tested on the live domain.
- Launch. Who switches the domain, when, and confirmation that email records are not touched.
- Monitoring after launch. A defined period in which the provider checks Search Console for new errors and fixes broken links at no extra charge.
- The old site. A full backup handed to you, and a date for cancelling the old hosting or platform.
- Exclusions. What is not included, in writing: photography, new features, extra languages, advertising.
Questions to ask before you accept a redesign quote
- Did you look at my current site, and how many URLs do you think it has?
- If a page loses traffic in the weeks after launch, who investigates, and is that included?
- What happens to my blog posts or products if the import fails or looks wrong?
- What will I be able to edit myself afterwards, and what will each change cost?
- If we stop working together, what do I receive, and in what format?
Answers in writing, with numbers, make a quote comparable. "We will handle it" is a price that will change.
Worked example: two redesign quotes for the same site
This example is illustrative, not a real client. A contracting company in Dammam has a nine-page site on an old site builder, plus sixty blog posts. The owner cannot edit it, and it reads poorly on phones. He wants a bilingual WordPress site, so this is a rebuild, and he sends the same brief to two providers. Quote A has the lower headline price; Quote B is noticeably higher.
| Line item | Quote A (lower price) | Quote B (higher price) |
|---|---|---|
| Audit of the current site | Not mentioned | Included, with a keep or remove list |
| Pages | "Up to 10 pages" | 9 pages named, Arabic and English |
| Blog posts | Not mentioned | 60 posts imported, formatting checked |
| Redirect map | "Redirects as needed" | Every old URL mapped and tested |
| Content rewriting | Client supplies all text | Service pages rewritten in both languages |
| Booking form | "Contact form" | Existing booking form rebuilt and tested |
| Tracking | Not mentioned | Analytics and form events set up again |
| After launch | Bug fixes for 2 weeks | Monitoring for 30 days, broken links fixed |
| Old site | Not mentioned | Full backup handed over |
What Quote A leaves on the owner's desk
- Moving sixty posts by hand, or paying someone by the hour.
- Writing nine pages in two languages.
- A redirect map that "as needed" may never produce, and the search traffic that goes with it.
- A booking form reduced to a contact form, which changes how enquiries arrive.
- No tracking, so no way to know whether the new site performs better.
Quote A is cheaper only if the owner has staff with spare time to migrate and write, and if the blog brings in little traffic. The second point takes minutes to check: in Search Console's Performance report, filter by page and see how many clicks the blog posts received recently. If they bring a meaningful share, Quote A's missing lines are the expensive part of the project. The fair next step is to ask provider A to re-quote with the same line items as B. Only then are the two prices comparable, and the decision rests on six lines about content, links and measurement rather than on the design.
How to set a redesign budget, step by step
Set the budget from the value of the current site, not from a guess about prices. These steps also make a practical task list for the weeks before you sign.
Put a value on what the site does today
Count monthly enquiries from the site (forms, WhatsApp, calls) and note the pages with the most search clicks. This is what the redesign must protect.
Choose the job
Refresh, redesign or rebuild. Write the reason in one sentence; it keeps the scope from growing.
Count the volumes
Templates, pages, posts, products, URLs, languages and integrations. These numbers turn vague quotes into comparable ones.
Send one brief to two or three providers
Use the same written brief for everyone, built from our website brief template, and ask each provider to answer the redesign line items above.
Add the costs you will carry yourself
Staff time, photos, licences, an old domain, and anything a quote excludes. Add a contingency sized to how uncertain the migration is: small for a refresh, larger for a rebuild.
Decide how you will pay
A one-off project paid in milestones, or a subscription that spreads the cost and includes hosting and support. Compare both over at least two to three years, not on the first invoice.
One-off project or subscription?
A one-off redesign is paid in stages and usually ends at handover; hosting, licences, updates and later changes are paid separately, and you normally hold the files. A subscription replaces the large first payment with a monthly fee that keeps someone responsible after launch; ask who owns the site and how you leave. Neither is cheaper in every case. Our guide to website design cost in Saudi Arabia works through a three-year comparison of the two routes, and the web design quote guide explains how to check that every figure states its VAT treatment.
Did the redesign pay for itself? Measuring the return
You can judge a redesign with your own numbers, but only if you record a baseline before launch. Afterwards the old figures are hard to reconstruct.
Before launch: record a baseline
- Search Console Performance report: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for your top pages over the last three months.
- Enquiries per week by channel: form, WhatsApp and phone, counted by hand if nothing tracks them.
- How many enquiries become paying clients, even as a rough share.
After launch: compare like with like
| What to measure | Where | When to look | What a good result looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| New errors and missing pages | Search Console page indexing and your redirect list | Daily in the first week, then weekly | No important old URL returning an error |
| Clicks to top pages | Search Console Performance report, filtered by page | Weekly, judged after a few weeks | Back to the baseline, then above it |
| Enquiries per week | Form records, WhatsApp, call log | Weekly from launch | At or above the baseline from early on |
| Clients won from the site | Your sales records | Quarterly | Enough extra clients to recover the cost |
Be patient with search figures and impatient with enquiries. Google notes that it can take a few weeks or more before new URLs replace old ones in its results, so a dip in week two is not a verdict. A drop in enquiries in week one usually means a broken form or button; check it the same day. Compare the same season too.
A simple payback check
Use this formula with your own figures: payback in months equals the total redesign cost divided by the extra monthly profit the site brings. For example, if the new site brings six more enquiries a month than the baseline, you win one in three, and each new client brings a profit equal to one tenth of what the redesign cost, then two extra clients a month pay the project back in about five months. The numbers are illustrative. If the payback stretches beyond the life you expect from the site, the scope was too large, or the redesign fixed the look but not the reasons visitors did not get in touch. Our article on website mistakes that cost customers covers those reasons.
Redesign pricing at Webnaa
Moving your business from an old site to a new Webnaa website is simply a new subscription, from SAR 39 a month for a one-page site on a Webnaa subdomain. Any other site is priced in our price calculator by type (static or WordPress), number of languages and number of pages; a five-page bilingual WordPress site with a dashboard to edit the site yourself, for example, is SAR 324 a month. Prices are shown per month but paid in advance, every 6 months or yearly with 10% off. The website redesign service page explains how we review your current site before we design the new one.
- We write the website's content for you, on every website.
- We send the design on a preview link within 24 hours of receiving your complete information, before it goes live on your domain.
- Three revision rounds before launch, no setup fee, and you can cancel any time with no cancellation fee.
- Hosting and SSL are included; on every site with your own domain, the domain is registered in your name, and you can buy the website if you want it independent of us.
- If you do not like the design during the design stage, our refund policy gives your money back.
The calculator prices sites of up to 20 pages; if your current site is larger, we will send you a written quote. A major redesign of an existing Webnaa website after launch, and larger work such as an online store, a booking system or integrations with outside systems, are priced separately in writing before any work starts. You can price your new site in our price calculator, and read more about our website design service or about web design at Webnaa in general.
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FAQ
How much does a website redesign cost?
There is no standard price, because "redesign" covers three different jobs. A refresh of the look and key copy costs the least; a rebuild on a new platform, with content migration and a full redirect map, costs the most. Within each job, the price follows the number of templates, pages, posts, URLs, languages and integrations. Ask for an itemised quote with those numbers in it.
Is it cheaper to redesign a website or build a new one?
A redesign on the same platform is usually cheaper, because less has to move. But if the platform is the problem, a cheap redesign only postpones the rebuild and you pay twice.
Will a website redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It does not have to, but some movement is normal. Google says rankings can fluctuate while it recrawls a changed site. Lasting losses usually come from missing redirects, removed content or a leftover staging setting. Nobody can guarantee rankings, so make sure the quote names who builds and tests the redirects.
How long does a website redesign take?
A refresh can take days; a rebuild with a large blog or catalogue takes much longer, and approvals often set the pace. At Webnaa, the design preview is sent within 24 hours of receiving your complete information.
How often should a business website be redesigned?
There is no fixed cycle. Redesign when the site stops matching how you sell, cannot be edited, works poorly on phones or blocks a feature you need. Regular maintenance makes full redesigns less frequent.
Summary
Website redesign cost depends more on what has to move than on how the new site looks. Choose between a refresh, a redesign and a rebuild; count templates, pages, posts, URLs, languages and integrations; and ask for a quote that names the audit, the redirect map, migration volumes and a monitoring period. Add the costs you carry yourself, and record a baseline before launch so you can check whether the redesign brought the enquiries it was meant to.
Sources: Google Search Central: site moves with URL changes, Google Search Central: redirects and Google Search, Search Console Help: Change of Address tool, Search Console Help: Performance report, all read in October 2026. Webnaa pages: pricing and terms and conditions. The worked examples are illustrative.