Website Redesign Pricing: Flat Fee, Hourly, Retainer or Subscription?
Website redesign pricing explained: flat fees, hourly rates, retainers and subscriptions, who carries the risk in each, and how to read the quote.
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Website redesign pricing comes in four forms: a flat fee, an hourly rate, a monthly retainer or a subscription. Two quotes for the same website can differ because of the pricing model alone, so it helps to know what each one leaves you paying for.
This guide covers how the price gets structured. For the dollar ranges themselves, see how much a website redesign costs.
The four website redesign pricing models
Flat fee
One price for a defined scope. You know the total before work starts, and the designer absorbs the overrun if it takes longer. Changes outside the scope cost extra.
Hourly
You pay for the time used. It’s fair when the size of the job is unknown, and hard to budget, since the final bill depends on how the project goes.
Monthly retainer
A set number of hours or tasks each month. Useful for a large site that keeps changing, and a poor fit for a small site that needs one rebuild and then very little.
Subscription
Little or nothing up front, then a monthly fee that covers the site. Easy to start, but it can cost more over a few years, and the contract may keep the design with the provider.
Over twelve months
How your payments look under each pricing model
Flat fee
The designer carries overruns
One or two payments, then the project is paid for.
Hourly
You carry overruns
The bill follows the hours, so it changes month to month.
Retainer
You carry unused hours
The same amount every month, whether or not you use it.
Subscription
You carry the long-run cost
Small payments that continue for as long as you keep the site.
Which pricing model should you choose?
Choose a flat fee if you can write down what you want: the pages, who supplies the words, and what the site has to do. Most small business redesigns fit this description, and a fixed total is easier to plan around than an estimate.
Choose hourly for repairs and for work on code nobody has looked at in years. A designer can’t honestly quote a flat fee for an unknown problem, and if they do, the price will include padding for the worst case.
A retainer makes sense when someone at your company sends the web team a steady list of changes. If you can’t name what next month’s hours would go to, you’d be paying for time you don’t use.
Subscriptions fit a business that can’t cover the up-front cost and wants someone else to own the problem. Do the multi-year math first, and ask what happens to the site if you cancel.
How to read a redesign quote
A quote that gives only a total can’t be compared with any other quote. Ask each provider to answer these in writing:
- 01Which pages are included, by name or by count?
- 02Who writes the copy and who supplies the photos?
- 03How many rounds of revisions are included, and what does another round cost?
- 04Who sets up redirects from the old URLs?
- 05Who owns the design and the code once it’s paid for?
- 06What do hosting and maintenance cost after launch?
Ownership is worth pressing on. Some subscription contracts and site builders don’t let you take the design with you, which means leaving costs a second redesign.
Red flags in redesign pricing
Be careful with a price that has no written scope behind it, since any disagreement later will be settled at your expense. The same goes for a big discount that expires this week, and for a low first-year price with a much higher renewal. A quote that doesn’t mention your existing URLs is also a warning if your site gets search traffic today, because a careless redesign can lose it.
A low price alone isn’t a red flag. It usually means less scope, so the useful question is what got left out. Our guide to an affordable website redesign goes through what’s reasonable to cut.
How PageSimple prices a redesign
We use a flat fee for one defined thing. A PageSimple redesign is a single landing page for $1,000, usually live in 5 to 7 days, with hosting, updates and support at $5 a month afterward. Three years comes to $1,180. Multi-page sites and web apps get a fixed quote once we know the scope.
Frequently asked questions
- Is flat-fee or hourly pricing better for a website redesign?
- Flat fee suits a project you can describe in writing, because the designer carries the risk of it taking longer. Hourly suits work whose size nobody can predict, such as repairing an unfamiliar site, but you carry that risk.
- What deposit is normal for a website redesign?
- Terms vary by designer, and some split the fee between the start of work and launch. Whatever the split, get the payment schedule in writing, along with what you receive at each stage.
- Do monthly website subscriptions save money?
- They cost less on day one and more over time. Multiply the monthly price by the years you expect to keep the site, add any setup fee, and check whether you keep the site if you stop paying.
Work with PageSimple
A clearer website, live in about a week.
We rebuild small-business sites into clean, focused landing pages. A flat $1,000 redesign, then $5/month for hosting and care.