What rebuilding an old website costs

What a website rebuild costs: the short answer

We start with an audit at 200 €. After it we know what is healthy, what can stay and what has to be redone, so the quote rests on findings rather than a guess. Individual work is billed at 40 €/h. If the foundation turns out to be beyond repair, the conversation is already about a new site, and that starts from 1 500 €.

Scope is not set by the number of pages. A ten page site with its own order logic and ten years of search history costs more than a hundred page catalogue where everything is text and photos. The question is always the same: what has to be preserved.

Two different rebuilds and two different prices

In this market one word covers two entirely different jobs. The first is updating WordPress, the theme and the plugins so the site stays safe and working. That is maintenance work on a monthly rhythm from 40 €/month.

The second is rebuilding the site: new design, new structure, new content model. That is a project with a quote. Before comparing any prices it is worth confirming which of the two is meant, because the difference is tenfold.

What costs most in a rebuild

Almost never the design. The most expensive part is moving existing content, features and URLs into a new structure. A design can be drawn in a week, while moving a thousand old posts with their images, categories and internal links so that nothing breaks takes longer.

Other expensive items:

• custom logic once written straight into the theme and documented nowhere
• old forms and integrations with external systems
• product variants and pricing rules in stores
• content nobody has reviewed in ten years, where someone has to decide what moves

Migration cost: URL map, 301 redirects and Search Console

These lines are usually missing from quotes, and their absence is what costs most. When addresses change you need a map tying every old URL to a new one, and 301 redirects so that old links and Google rankings survive. After launch, Search Console shows what slipped through anyway.

For us that is part of the project, not an extra. In one migration we moved 1,606 old URLs and checked every one after launch. If a quote does not mention this, ask directly: who is responsible if traffic drops after the rebuild.

When a rebuild is cheaper and when a new site is

A rebuild is cheaper when the foundation is sound: the theme is maintained, the content is structured, and only some things work badly. Then we change the design and fix specific places while the content stays where it is.

A new site is cheaper when the theme has not been updated in years, there are ten plugins and half are abandoned, and the content was typed straight into pages instead of a structure. Then fixing costs more than rebuilding. When that moment arrives is covered separately in the article on when to rebuild an old WordPress site.

What quotes leave out: hosting, licences, copy, maintenance

Four things often fall outside the estimate and surface after launch:

• hosting and the domain
• licences for paid plugins or the theme, often annual
• copy and photography, if new ones are needed
• maintenance after launch

When asking for a quote, ask for these as separate lines. Also ask whether 301 redirects are included, how long the warranty runs and what happens if something breaks after launch. Our work carries a 24 month warranty. Get in touch.