Website Redesign Cost in the UK: When to Fix Your Old Site and When to Start Again

A website redesign in the UK typically costs about the same as a new build: roughly £1,500–3,000 from a freelancer and £3,000–5,000 from an agency for a small business site, with copywriting often extra, while a done-for-you rebuild can start from a few hundred pounds plus a monthly fee. Fix the old site if it is fast, works on phones and only needs updated words or photos; start again if it is slow, hard to edit, missing key pages or not bringing enquiries. The checks below help you decide, and protect your Google traffic either way.

Is a redesign really the same price as a new website?

Usually, yes. Most redesigns of small business sites are rebuilds: new layout, new code, often new words. Published UK price guides (2026) put a five-page site at about £1,500–3,000 from a freelancer and £3,000–5,000 from an agency. Copywriting is commonly not included and costs about £50–150 per page. Basic SEO setup adds roughly £300–1,000, hosting £50–300 a year and maintenance £300–1,200 a year.

The only real saving in a redesign is that you already know what customers ask, which pages get visits, and which words they search. Those are worth a lot. Use them before you pay anyone.

What are the signs that your website only needs fixing?

• 1It loads quickly on a phone and passes a basic speed test.
• 2You, or someone you trust, can edit it without help.
• 3It already has a page for each main service and the contact options are easy to find.
• 4It brings a steady flow of enquiries; the main complaint is that it looks dated.
• 5The problems are content: old prices, staff who have left, photos from years ago.

If that describes your site, a refresh is often enough: new photos, rewritten pages, updated prices and a few new service pages. Many freelancers will quote this by the day. Keep the structure that works.

What are the signs that it is time to start again?

• 1It is slow on a phone, and the cause is the platform, theme or plugins rather than one large image.
• 2Nobody can edit it any more: the designer has gone, the login is lost, or every change costs a fee.
• 3It is not mobile-friendly, or the menu and buttons are hard to use on a small screen.
• 4There is one page for all your services, so it cannot match specific searches.
• 5It has no clear way to call, message or enquire from every page.
• 6Security warnings, expired certificates or plugins that have not been updated in years.
• 7It brings almost no enquiries even though you know people search for what you do.

How do fix and rebuild costs compare in the UK?

Freelancer and agency figures are from published UK price guides (2026). The ranges are wide because the work is: a five-page refresh is very different from moving a 40-page site with a shop.

How do you protect your Google traffic when you redesign?

This is the part most redesign quotes skip, and it is where businesses lose the most. If your old site has pages that Google already shows, and the new site changes those addresses without a plan, visitors and Google both hit dead ends. The steps below are worth doing yourself, whoever builds the new site:

• 1Before anything changes, export a list of every page address on your old site. Your sitemap, or Google Search Console under Pages, gives you this.
• 2In Search Console, note which pages get clicks and which searches bring them. These are the pages to keep, or to replace with a clearly matching page.
• 3Keep the same address for important pages where you can.
• 4Where an address must change, ask your developer to set up permanent (301) redirects from each old address to the new one, and get that agreed in writing before work starts.
• 5Keep your domain. Moving to a new domain at the same time as a redesign makes recovery harder.
• 6After launch, watch Search Console for pages that are not found and fix them quickly.

To be clear about our own service: redirect set-up is not a confirmed part of Adyft Sites plans, so if your old site has pages that bring traffic, send us the list before we start and ask how they will be handled. Our guide to switching from a website builder covers this in more detail.

What does an Adyft Sites rebuild include?

Adyft Sites is a done-for-you service. You answer a few questions on WhatsApp and send photos; we write every page, so you do not pay a copywriter separately. We can use what your old site already says as a starting point and tell you what is missing.

Every plan includes keyword research, SEO on every page, Google Search Console set up with the sitemap submitted, schema and llms.txt, a mobile speed score of 90 or more on our Astro build, and tracking for Google Analytics, the Meta pixel, and call and WhatsApp clicks. Hosting, SSL, daily backups, security updates and 24/7 monitoring are in the monthly fee, along with 3, 5 or 10 content changes a month. If the site goes down or breaks, we start fixing it within 2 hours, any day, free.

Compare that with a rebuild quote over the same period. Three years of Starter with blogs on comes to £299 setup + 36 × £19 = £983; three years of Growth comes to £699 setup + 36 × £39 = £2,103, writing and upkeep included. Your domain, about £10–15 a year, stays registered in your name.

How do you avoid needing another redesign in three years?

Most small business sites need redesigning because they were left alone after launch. Prices changed, services were added, photos aged, plugins went unpatched, and the site slowly stopped matching the business. The fix is ongoing care rather than another big project.

• 1Make small changes as soon as the business changes, not once a year.
• 2Add a new page or article every month around what customers ask.
• 3Keep the platform and security up to date, or pay someone who does.
• 4Check speed and enquiries every month, not only when something feels wrong.
• 5Own your domain and your files, so you are never stuck with one supplier.

That is the model Adyft Sites is built on: the monthly fee covers the upkeep and the new articles, and you can leave any time with your domain, the ready-to-run files, the source project and every blog post, with no exit fee and 30 days of help moving.