Is a redesign cheaper than building a new website?

Sometimes, but not always, and people are often surprised by which. A redesign is cheaper when your existing content and photography are good, because writing and sourcing those is a large part of any build. It gets more expensive than a new site when the old one has to be untangled first, or when hundreds of existing URLs have to be mapped and redirected so your search rankings survive. A brand new site with no history has no rankings to protect.

What makes one redesign quote much higher than another?

Five things, in roughly this order: how many pages there are, whether the copy is being rewritten or reused, whether photography is included, whether anything has to integrate such as bookings or a store, and how much of the old site has to be preserved and redirected. A quote that looks cheap has usually excluded one of those five rather than found a cheaper way to do it. Ask which.

Will a redesign lose my Google rankings?

It will if the URLs change and nobody maps them. Your rankings are attached to addresses, not to the design, so a redesign that keeps every address is invisible to Google. When addresses do change, every old URL needs a single-hop 301 redirect to its new home, set up before launch and verified after. This is the single most common way a redesign destroys value, and it is entirely avoidable.

How long does a website redesign take?

Typically a week or two for a one-pager and two to three weeks for a five-page site, with larger custom redesigns scoped individually. The pace is usually set by how quickly content decisions come back rather than by the build itself. Your existing site should stay live the whole time, so there is no window where customers find nothing.

Should I redesign or just fix what I have?

If the site is structurally sound and merely slow or dated in places, targeted fixes are far cheaper than a redesign and often recover most of the benefit. Redesign when the structure itself is the problem: the site cannot be made mobile-friendly, the platform is abandoned, the content architecture no longer matches what you sell, or nobody can safely edit it. Ask for an assessment before a quote, because an honest developer will sometimes tell you not to spend the money.

Website redesign cost in Australia: the real 2026 numbers

Q: How much does a website redesign cost in Australia?

For a small business, roughly $900 to $8,000 plus GST depending on size, with most landing between $2,500 and $7,000. One-page redesigns run about $900 to $1,400 at typical agencies, five-page business sites $2,500 to $7,000, and larger custom redesigns start around $8,000. Those are published Australian agency floors checked in July 2026. Our own rebuilds start at $690 plus GST for a one-pager and $1,490 for a business site.

By Angus Lewington, Alien Web Design · Last reviewed: 15 August 2026

A small business website redesign in Australia costs roughly $900 to $8,000 plus GST depending on size, and most land between $2,500 and $7,000. One-page redesigns run about $900 to $1,400 at typical agencies, five-page business sites $2,500 to $7,000, and larger custom redesigns start around $8,000. Those are floors from published Australian package pages, checked July 2026. Our own rebuilds start at $690 plus GST.

The number matters less than what sits behind it, because redesign quotes vary more wildly than new-build quotes and for a reason nobody explains: a redesign is two jobs stapled together. One is designing and building a website. The other is safely dismantling the one you already have without destroying the search rankings, links and bookmarks attached to it. Agencies that quote only the first job come in cheap and hand back a site that has lost its traffic.

Why a redesign is priced differently from a new build

People assume a redesign is cheaper because "the content already exists". Sometimes it is. Just as often it costs more, and the reason is worth understanding before you compare two quotes.

What makes it cheaper

You already have copy, photography, a logo and a clear idea of which pages you need. On a new build those are a large share of the cost and the main cause of delay. A redesign that reuses good existing content genuinely skips that work, which is why our rebuild floors sit below our new-build prices.

What makes it more expensive

A live site has history. If it has been running for years it may have hundreds of addresses that Google knows, other sites link to, and customers have bookmarked. Every one of those needs to keep working. There may also be a platform nobody can log into, a page builder whose licence lapsed, a host with no backups, and a domain registered in a former developer's name. None of that appears in a new build, and all of it takes time to untangle.

The honest summary: a redesign of a simple, healthy, well-documented site is cheaper than starting fresh. A redesign of a large, neglected or undocumented site is more expensive. Any quote that does not ask which one you have is guessing.

The five things that actually move the price

Almost every difference between a $2,500 quote and a $7,000 quote for the same-looking website comes down to these, in roughly this order of impact:

Page count. The most direct multiplier. A one-pager and a fifteen-page site are different jobs, and the fifteen-page version is not fifteen times the work but it is not the same work either.
Copywriting. Reusing your existing words is close to free. Having them rewritten properly is one of the biggest single line items in any web quote, and it is the one most often quietly excluded.
Photography. Stock images cost nothing and look like stock images. A photographer for a day changes how the finished site feels more than almost any design decision, and it is a real cost.
Integrations. Bookings, payments, a store, a CRM, inventory. Each one connects your site to a system that has its own rules, and each is scoped separately for good reason.
Preserving what you have. URL mapping, redirects, and carrying over titles and structured data. On a large old site this is a substantial piece of work, and it is the one that protects everything the site has already earned.

When two quotes differ by thousands, the difference is nearly always that one of them includes something on this list and the other does not. That is the question to ask, rather than negotiating on the total.

What the Australian market actually charges

We checked published build and rebuild prices across Sydney agencies and national providers in July 2026. Roughly half publish nothing at all, which is not a scandal, custom scope is real, but it does mean the visible market is the half willing to commit to a number. Among those:

One-page redesigns: agency floors around $900 to $1,400.
Five-page business sites: $2,500 to $7,000, the broadest and most common band.
Larger custom redesigns: $8,000 and up.
Online stores: from about $3,500.
Pay-monthly website subscriptions: $50 to $120 a month, which is a different product entirely, covered below.

If your quote sits inside those bands and clearly states what is included, it is a normal quote. If it sits far below them, something on the five-item list above has been left out, and it is fair to ask which.

Four traps worth knowing about

The rebuild that quietly deletes your rankings

The most expensive mistake in this whole subject, and the one that is invisible until about six weeks after launch. Your rankings live at addresses. Change the addresses without mapping them and the rankings go, along with every inbound link pointing at the old pages. The fix is unglamorous and cheap if it is done before launch: a single-hop 301 redirect from every old URL to its new home, then verification afterwards. It becomes expensive only when it is done as damage control. We have written up the full method.

"From $X" that is not a quote

A starting price tells you what the simplest possible version costs, not what yours will. That is legitimate as long as you get a fixed written number for your actual site before committing. It is a trap when the starting price is a hook and the real figure arrives after work has begun. Ask for the fixed quote in writing, and ask what would make it change.

Renting a website instead of owning one

Pay-monthly website deals at $50 to $120 a month look cheaper than a redesign. Over three years they are not: you will have paid more than a rebuild costs, and you own nothing at the end. Stop paying and the site disappears, usually including the content. If you go this route, do it knowingly, and check who the domain is registered to before you start.

The domain you do not control

Worth checking today whether or not you are redesigning anything. Look up your domain's registrant. If it is a former developer, an agency or an IT company rather than your business, that is the one asset that is genuinely difficult to recover in a dispute. Our guide on Australian domains covers how to check and why it matters.

Should you redesign at all?

Often the answer is no, and a good developer will say so. Targeted fixes are dramatically cheaper than a redesign and frequently recover most of the benefit. Consider fixing rather than redesigning when the site is structurally sound and the complaints are speed, dated styling in a few places, or thin content. A speed pass alone often changes the experience more than a new design would.

Redesign when the structure itself is the problem:

It cannot be made to work properly on phones without rebuilding the templates anyway.
The platform or theme is abandoned, or the page builder is no longer licensed.
What you sell has changed and the page structure no longer matches it.
Nobody can safely edit it, so it has frozen.
It is failing security updates, which makes it a liability rather than an asset.

If you are not sure which category you are in, ask for an assessment before you ask for a quote. The assessment should tell you what is wrong, what it would cost to fix versus rebuild, and which one is worth doing.

What we charge, published

We publish our floors rather than making you book a call to hear them. Rebuilds start at $690 plus GST for a one-page build, $1,490 for a business site of up to five pages, $2,490 for a larger custom build and $3,490 for an online store. Every tier includes the URL mapping and 301 redirects that protect your rankings, rather than quoting them as an extra, and you own the code, the domain and the hosting at the end.

Before any work starts you get a fixed written quote for your actual site, and that number does not move afterwards. If your job is bigger than the floor, you find out before you commit rather than on the invoice.

Prices on this page other than our own are floors from published Australian package pages, checked July 2026, and are what those providers advertise rather than what any particular job settled at. Our own prices are the ones we publish and honour; see the rebuild packages page for what each tier includes.

Thinking about a redesign and want to know whether it is worth doing? See the packages and prices, or send us the address and we will tell you honestly what we find, including if the answer is that you should fix rather than rebuild.