Published November 6, 2026 · By Matt McWilliam, MJM Design
If you are reading this, you probably already have a website. Maybe a volunteer built it, maybe you put it together on Squarespace or WordPress a few years ago, or maybe the company that built it is long gone. It still works, technically. But it looks its age, it is awkward on a phone, and it is not doing the one job a website is supposed to do: bring you new patients, customers or donors.
And when a form asks for your budget, you honestly do not know what to type. That is completely normal. Most owners and directors have never bought a website before, and the numbers floating around online range from a few hundred dollars to six figures. Here are the real ones for Greater Cleveland.
Refresh or rebuild: the first question
Every redesign falls somewhere between two ends.
- A refresh keeps your structure and most of your content, and gives it a modern design that works properly on phones, loads quickly, and is easier for you to update. This is the right choice when the bones are fine and the site just looks and feels old.
- A rebuild starts over: new page structure, rewritten content, new photography, and often new features like online booking, donations, or event registration. This is the right choice when the site no longer reflects what you do, or when you are going through a rebrand.
Many redesigns turn out to be rebuilds in disguise. An owner asks for "a new look," but what they really want is for the site to start producing phone calls. That is a bigger, better goal, and it is worth naming up front.
What a redesign typically costs in Cleveland in 2026
These are the same ranges we publish everywhere else on this site, because the honest answer should not change depending on which page you land on:
- Refresh of an existing site (modern design, mobile, faster, easier to update): roughly $3,000 to $6,000
- Simple brochure site, 3 to 6 pages: roughly $1,500 to $4,000
- Small business, practice or nonprofit site, 8 to 20 pages: roughly $4,000 to $9,000
- Online store: roughly $6,000 to $20,000 and up, depending on products and integrations
Most local owners we work with land in the $3,000 to $7,000 range for a site that looks sharp, loads fast, and is built to be found. For a deeper breakdown, see how much a website costs in Cleveland, or our guides written specifically for nonprofits and for medical and dental practices.
What actually moves the price
- Number of pages. A five-page site and a forty-page site are different projects.
- Who writes the content. If you supply finished text, it costs less. If you want it written for you, and written to rank on Google, that is real work.
- Photography. Real photos of your team and your space beat stock photos every time, but they take planning.
- Features. Online booking, donation forms, event calendars, patient or client forms, and online stores each add scope.
- Moving platforms. Redesigning inside your existing WordPress or Squarespace site is usually simpler than moving a large site somewhere new.
The part most redesigns get wrong: your Google rankings
Your current site, however dated, has probably earned something with Google over the years. A careless redesign throws that away. Pages get renamed, old addresses start returning errors, and the visitors who used to find you quietly stop arriving.
A good redesign protects what is already working. That means keeping page addresses where possible, setting up proper redirects from old addresses to new ones, carrying over the content that already ranks, and checking everything before launch. It is the difference between a redesign that grows your traffic and one that sets it back months. It is also why we built our website redesign service around exactly that.
How to settle on a budget when you are not sure
Instead of asking "what does a website cost," ask "what is one new customer worth to us?"
If a new patient is worth a few thousand dollars over the years, or a new monthly donor is worth a few hundred dollars every year, then a site that brings in even a handful of them more each year pays for itself quickly. A good site should serve you for years, so spread the cost over that time, not over the first month.
Then give your designer a rough range, even a wide one. It is not a trap. It lets them recommend the right approach instead of guessing, and it saves you from receiving a proposal that is either too thin or far more than you need.
Questions to ask any designer before you hire them
- How will you protect our current Google rankings during the redesign?
- Will we be able to update the site ourselves afterward?
- Who writes the content, and who supplies the photos?
- Do we own the site, the domain, and the content when it is done?
- Who do we call when something breaks, and how fast do you answer?
We have been building and redesigning websites in Cleveland since 2005, for clients ranging from small local businesses to Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University. If you would like a real number for your project, tell us about it. "Not sure yet" is a perfectly good answer on the budget line.