How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost in Toronto? (2026)

"We just need a redesign" is how about a third of our Toronto discovery calls begin, and the sentence usually carries an assumption: that a redesign is cheaper than a new website because the website already exists. Sometimes that is true. More often the existing site is the reason the project costs more, because everything it has accumulated — URLs that rank, content people link to, forms wired into a CRM, a decade of images — has to be carried across without breaking.

This guide covers what a redesign actually costs in Toronto in 2026, split into the three very different projects that all get called "a redesign". For the general numbers on new builds by site type, read our Toronto website cost guide; this article is about what changes when there is already a site in the way.

The three kinds of redesign

Before a number means anything, decide which of these you are buying. They overlap in name only.

• Refresh. Same platform, same structure, same URLs. New visual layer: typography, colour, layout, imagery, maybe a new homepage and a tidied navigation. The content and the CMS stay. This is the only kind of redesign that is genuinely cheaper than a new site.
• Rebuild. Same platform or a like-for-like one, but a new information architecture, new page templates, rewritten or re-edited content and a new design system. URLs usually change, which means a migration. This is a new website that happens to inherit content.
• Replatform. The site moves: WordPress to Shopify, Wix or Squarespace to WordPress, a page builder to a custom build, a legacy CMS to a modern one. Everything in a rebuild plus data migration, integration rework and a full URL map. The design is often the smallest line on the invoice.

Most owners ask for a refresh and need a rebuild. The tell is the sitemap: if the navigation no longer matches how the business sells, a new coat of paint on the old structure will look better for six months and convert exactly the same.

2026 Toronto redesign ranges

Agency ranges for Toronto in 2026. Freelancer pricing typically sits 40–55% below the bottom of each range and rarely includes the migration work described further down.

Refresh: $4,000–$12,000

A small business site of five to eight pages on WordPress, Webflow or Shopify, restyled on its existing structure. Includes a design pass on every existing template, replacement imagery direction, a homepage rethink and a QA round. Does not include new copy, new pages, or any URL changes. Landing pages and one-page sites sit at the bottom; sites with many custom templates sit at the top.

Rebuild: $12,000–$30,000

New structure, new templates, new design, content re-edited and re-fitted, on the same or an equivalent platform. Priced almost identically to a new small business or marketing site of the same size, plus the migration line items below. A five-to-eight page rebuild lands $12,000–$20,000; a CMS-heavy rebuild with dozens of structured content items lands $20,000–$30,000 and up.

Replatform: $18,000–$60,000

Moving platforms adds data migration (products, orders, customers, posts, media), integration rework (payments, CRM, booking, email) and the full URL map. A brochure site moving from a page builder to a custom build sits around $18,000–$28,000. A WooCommerce store moving to Shopify with a few thousand SKUs, customer accounts and email flows sits $30,000–$60,000. Headless and enterprise migrations run past that and are priced as software projects.

Costs that only exist on a redesign

These line items do not appear on a new-build quote, and their absence from a redesign quote is the most reliable sign that the agency has not done many.

• Content and analytics audit: $800–$2,500. Crawl the old site, pull twelve months of Search Console and analytics data, and decide page by page what stays, merges, or goes. Skipping this is how ranking pages get deleted "because nobody knew they mattered."
• URL map and redirects: $600–$3,000. A one-to-one map from every old URL to its new home, implemented as 301 redirects and tested. Cost scales with page count; a store with thousands of product URLs is at the top.
• Content migration: $1,000–$8,000. Moving posts, pages, media, products and customers into the new structure, cleaning formatting, and re-linking internally. Almost always underestimated.
• Integration rework: $500–$6,000. Forms into the CRM, booking tools, payment processors, email platforms, analytics and conversion tracking. Each one worked on the old site and has to work on the new one on day one.
• Metadata and schema carry-over: included or $500–$1,500. Titles, descriptions, structured data and image alt text moved or improved, not reset.
• Launch QA against the old site: $800–$2,500. Redirect testing, index coverage, Core Web Vitals, form submissions, tracking, and a post-launch monitoring window.

Add those up and a "redesign" of a mid-sized site carries $4,000–$20,000 of work that has nothing to do with how it looks. That is the part that protects the traffic you already paid for.

What a redesign saves versus a new build

It is not all extra cost. A redesign starts with things a new business does not have, and a good agency prices them in.

• Strategy is shorter. The audience, the offer and the proof points exist. Discovery on a redesign is often half the hours of a greenfield project.
• The content mostly exists. Editing and re-fitting copy costs a fraction of writing it. The exception is content that was never good; a redesign is the moment to admit it.
• The data tells you what to build. Twelve months of analytics show which pages earn their place, which paths convert and where visitors leave. A new site is built on assumptions; a redesign is built on evidence, which is why the pages that come out of one tend to convert better.
• The brand is usually settled. If the identity is under five years old you skip the branding line entirely, which on a new build can be $6,000–$29,000.

Net: a refresh costs a third to a half of a comparable new site. A rebuild costs roughly the same. A replatform costs more, and it should, because it is two projects.

Protecting your rankings, and why it costs money

Redesigns cost most sites 10–25% of their organic traffic in the first month, and full recovery takes two to eight months. That dip is normal and temporary when the migration is handled. It becomes permanent when URLs change without a complete redirect map, when ranking pages are rewritten on instinct, or when the staging site's noindex tag ships to production. We have a full redesign migration checklist that walks through every step; the short version of what has to be in the quote:

1. Export Search Console and analytics data before anyone touches code.
2. Crawl the old site and build the URL map before design starts, not the week before launch.
3. Keep the pages that rank. Redesign their layout; do not rewrite their content on a whim.
4. 301 every changed URL, one hop, to the closest equivalent page. No blanket redirects to the homepage.
5. Carry over titles, descriptions, schema and internal links.
6. Run a launch-day check: redirects, robots and noindex, sitemap submission, Core Web Vitals, forms and tracking.
7. Watch Search Console weekly for two months.

If a proposal does not mention any of this, the agency is quoting a new website and calling it a redesign. Ask where the migration line is before you compare numbers.

How long a redesign takes

• Refresh: two to four weeks.
• Rebuild, small business site: six to ten weeks.
• Rebuild, CMS-heavy site: ten to sixteen weeks.
• Replatform with migration: eight to sixteen weeks, and most of the second half is content and QA rather than design.

The delays on redesigns are more predictable than on new builds: content that "just needs a quick edit" and turns out to need rewriting, and integrations nobody documented the first time. Budget a two-week buffer for each.

When a redesign is not worth it

Some of the best advice we give on discovery calls is "don't." A full redesign is the wrong spend when:

• The site is under two years old and the problem is traffic. A new design does not create demand. A content and SEO and AIEO programme does.
• Two or three pages are the problem. If the homepage and a service page leak leads, a targeted conversion pass on those pages costs $2,000–$6,000 and lands in weeks.
• The message is the problem, not the design. Rewriting the offer and the proof on the existing layout often beats rebuilding the layout around the old offer.
• The budget covers the design but not the migration. A redesign that cannot afford the URL map and QA will cost more in lost rankings than it saves. Wait, or do a refresh.
• You need a landing page, not a site. Paid campaigns and product launches usually want one purpose-built page, not a rebuilt brochure site.

How to budget a redesign

1. Name the kind. Refresh, rebuild or replatform, using the URL and integration test above.
2. Price the visible part from the ranges above, or from the site-type ranges in our cost guide for a rebuild.
3. Add the migration lines explicitly: audit, URL map and redirects, content migration, integration rework, launch QA.
4. Subtract what you already have: shorter strategy, existing content, a settled brand.
5. Add 15–20% contingency. Redesigns discover surprises inside the old site, every time.

Then get three proposals against the same brief and compare where the migration line sits on each. The one that has it is the one that has done this before. If you would like us to scope yours, book a call; the first thing we will tell you is which of the three you actually need.