Website migration for a small-business site commonly costs $1,500 to $4,000 when moving to a new platform while preserving content, URLs, forms, analytics, and search foundations. A hosting-only move may cost $300–$800. A redesign combined with migration may cost $3,000–$8,000. Larger sites with many URLs, integrations, documents, or domain changes can cost $8,000–$20,000 or more.
These planning ranges use Vertinus's published rate of $49.99 per hour. Migration cost depends on what changes and what must remain stable: hosting, domain, URL structure, content, platform, design, forms, data, integrations, email, analytics, and search visibility.
Typical website migration price ranges
Hosting-only migration: 6–16 hours
Estimated Vertinus cost: $299.94–$799.84.
This may fit moving an unchanged small site between hosting providers while preserving the domain, URLs, content, application behavior, SSL, forms, analytics, and email-related DNS records.
Small platform migration: 30–80 hours
Estimated Vertinus cost: $1,499.70–$3,999.20.
This range may fit moving a five- to twenty-page site from one builder or content-management system to another, recreating templates, transferring content, preserving useful URLs, mapping redirects, reconnecting forms, and testing launch.
Redesign and migration: 60–160 hours
Estimated Vertinus cost: $2,999.40–$7,998.40.
This range may include new structure, design, content refinement, development, content migration, URL mapping, forms, analytics, search metadata, accessibility work, and post-launch monitoring.
Large or complex migration: 160–400+ hours
Estimated Vertinus cost: $7,998.40–$19,996 or more.
This range can apply to hundreds of URLs, several languages or locations, large document libraries, account areas, custom databases, commerce, booking, memberships, several domains, complex integrations, or substantial content consolidation.
Four different projects are called a migration
Hosting move
The public domain and URL structure remain the same while the files, application, database, configuration, and supporting services move to new infrastructure.
Platform move
The website is recreated in a new content-management system, builder, framework, or hosted platform. Templates and content must be translated into the new model.
Domain or URL move
The domain, protocol, subdomain, or URL paths change. Old URLs need durable one-to-one mapping to the most relevant new destinations.
Redesign migration
Platform, design, structure, content, and URLs may all change together. This creates the most opportunity and the most migration risk.
A useful estimate names which kind of move is happening rather than pricing the single word “migration.”
The ten biggest cost drivers
1. Number of indexed and used URLs
Count pages, articles, landing pages, documents, media, feeds, parameters, legacy URLs, and externally linked resources—not only navigation items.
2. Content condition
Approved, structured content is quick to transfer. Duplicate, obsolete, thin, inconsistent, or poorly formatted content requires inventory, ownership, editing, consolidation, and redirect decisions.
3. URL changes
Keeping URLs stable reduces mapping work. Changing domains, folders, slugs, languages, or location structure requires redirect planning and verification.
4. Design and template rebuilding
A direct template recreation is simpler than a new information architecture, design system, responsive behavior, component library, and accessibility improvement.
5. Forms and customer actions
Contact, booking, applications, payments, account access, search, file upload, calculators, and custom forms must move with their delivery, validation, security, and analytics.
6. Integrations
Customer relationship management, email, scheduling, payments, maps, reviews, analytics, advertising, consent, chat, and back-office systems need reconnection and testing.
7. Data and account migration
Users, orders, memberships, comments, form history, products, subscriptions, and private documents require identity, field mapping, security, validation, and reconciliation.
8. DNS, email, and ownership
Domain, DNS, SSL, email delivery, verification records, subdomains, and third-party services may share the same zone. A careless DNS replacement can break business email while the website appears successful.
9. Search visibility
Existing titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, structured data, internal links, sitemaps, robots rules, search-console access, backlinks, and high-performing landing pages need inventory and post-launch review.
10. Cutover and rollback
Low-traffic launch windows, content freeze, database synchronization, DNS timing, cache behavior, monitoring, fallback, and support needs depend on how continuously the site operates.
Three example estimates
Example 1: hosting move for a seven-page site
A static or simple managed website will move to new hosting with unchanged domain and URLs. Forms, analytics, SSL, backups, and DNS records must remain dependable.
- Access and dependency inventory: 2–4 hours
- Environment, build, and content transfer: 2–5 hours
- DNS, SSL, forms, and analytics: 2–4 hours
- Testing, cutover, and monitoring: 2–4 hours
Planning total: 8–17 hours, or about $400–$850.
Example 2: thirty-page platform migration
A service business is leaving a proprietary builder. It will preserve most content and URLs, rebuild four page templates, move forms, recreate metadata, map exceptions, and verify search and analytics.
- Inventory, export, and mapping: 8–15 hours
- Template and component development: 18–35 hours
- Content, forms, and metadata migration: 15–30 hours
- Redirects, testing, launch, and monitoring: 10–20 hours
Planning total: 51–100 hours, or about $2,549–$4,999.
Example 3: multi-location redesign migration
A company has 150 indexed URLs, eight locations, repeated content, forms, documents, scheduling, analytics, and meaningful organic traffic. The project will consolidate content, redesign templates, change URL structure, and migrate platforms.
- Content, search, integration, and URL inventory: 25–45 hours
- Information architecture, design, and templates: 45–85 hours
- Content, document, form, and integration migration: 55–110 hours
- Redirects, quality assurance, cutover, and monitoring: 30–65 hours
Planning total: 155–305 hours, or about $7,748–$15,247.
These examples illustrate likely scope. They are not fixed packages or quotes for an unseen site.
Change one major thing at a time when practical
Google's current site-move guidance recommends separating major changes when practical. Moving domains, changing the content-management system, redesigning layouts, and rewriting content simultaneously makes problems harder to diagnose.
Sometimes combining changes is unavoidable or economically sensible. In that case, create a stronger inventory, preserve high-value content and intent, test the new site thoroughly, and monitor both old and new URL behavior after launch.
Build a complete URL map
Export or crawl the existing site, review search-console landing pages and sitemaps, include known backlinks and analytics pages, and map each valuable old URL to its closest relevant new destination.
Use permanent server-side redirects for permanently moved pages. Avoid sending every removed URL to the home page. Pages with no relevant replacement may need a true not-found or gone response.
The guide on migrating a website without losing SEO explains redirects, canonicals, sitemaps, internal links, and monitoring.
Test the new site before changing DNS
Verify representative pages, mobile behavior, navigation, forms, email delivery, account actions, payments, files, metadata, canonical URLs, robots rules, structured data, analytics, performance, accessibility, and error pages.
Test redirects against the actual inventory. Confirm old and new hosts, domain accounts, certificates, and rollback access remain available.
Do not rely on the home page loading as evidence that the migration is complete.
Monitor after launch
Review form delivery, errors, availability, analytics, crawl behavior, indexed URLs, redirects, search landing pages, conversion events, and external services. Search ranking can fluctuate while Google recrawls and reindexes moved URLs.
A migration finishes after important old URLs have been processed, new pages operate correctly, business actions work, and unexpected traffic or search losses have been investigated—not merely when DNS changes.
What a good migration estimate should include
- Current and target hosting, platform, domain, and ownership.
- Page, URL, content, document, form, user, and data inventory.
- Preserved, rewritten, consolidated, redirected, and removed content.
- Templates, functions, integrations, analytics, and search requirements.
- DNS, SSL, email, deployment, backups, content freeze, and rollback.
- Redirect map, testing matrix, launch plan, and monitoring period.
- Training, editing, hosting, maintenance, and support.
- Estimated hours, rate, exclusions, and third-party costs.
Vertinus provides written scope and estimated hours before work. Time is billed at $49.99 per hour up to the approved estimate; new requirements are estimated separately.
What Vertinus needs to estimate a migration
Send the public URL, current and desired platform, reason for moving, approximate page count, domain-change plans, important forms or integrations, and any search or analytics reports available.
Do not send passwords through the inquiry form. Vertinus can arrange access securely after defining the initial review.
Price everything that must survive the move
Small-business website migration commonly costs $1,500–$4,000 for a platform move and $3,000–$8,000 when combined with redesign. A credible estimate protects content, customer actions, ownership, email, analytics, and search—not only page appearance.
Send Vertinus the current website, target platform, and reason for moving. We will inventory the migration boundary and reply with written scope and estimated hours at $49.99 per hour.