Pricing and quotation guide
Legacy website rebuild cost
Legacy rebuilds are hard to price without looking inside the old system, because their cost depends on what it secretly does: hidden automations, undocumented integrations and data with no export.
This page explains how legacy rebuilds are estimated in two stages and how the cost compares with continuing to keep the old site alive.
Illustrative diagram
Why an assessment comes first
A legacy site's visible pages are often the easy part. The cost hides in what the system does behind the scenes: a nightly data export to a supplier, a custom calculator, a members area with years of accounts. Each needs rebuilding, replacing or deliberately dropping.
An assessment finds these before anyone commits to a price. Its cost is modest compared with discovering them halfway through a rebuild.
What drives rebuild cost
- Features still in use
- Each important function needs rebuilding or replacing.
- Data recovery
- Extracting content and records without clean exports takes investigation.
- Integrations
- Connections to other systems need reconnecting or replacing.
- Content volume
- More pages and media to migrate and verify.
- Redirects
- Old addresses mapped to new ones.
- Decommissioning
- Archiving data and shutting down the old system safely.
Costs paid to third parties (separate from our fees)
- New hosting and platform subscriptions
- Replacement services for retired custom features
- Old hosting kept during transition
These are paid to their providers and listed where known.
The cost of keeping the old site
| Cost of staying | Why it grows |
|---|---|
| Patching and workarounds | Each change is riskier and slower |
| Specialist developer time | Fewer people can work on old systems |
| Hosting constraints | Old software limits hosting choices |
| Security exposure | Unsupported software gains known weaknesses over time |
Reducing rebuild cost
The largest savings come from dropping features nobody uses and replacing custom tools with established services. A bespoke booking system built years ago may be better replaced by a maintained booking tool than rebuilt from scratch. Similarly, outdated content can be retired rather than migrated.
The assessment highlights these choices with the cost of each option.
What helps the assessment
Access
- Hosting and website admin access
- A database copy, if you can obtain one
- Any documentation, however old
Knowledge
- What staff and customers use the site for
- Known problems and workarounds
- Systems the site exchanges data with
Rebuild or replace custom tools
Old sites often contain custom tools, such as calculators, booking systems or document generators, built when no off-the-shelf option existed. Today, a maintained service may do the same job with less risk and lower long-term cost. The assessment compares rebuilding each tool with replacing it, so you can choose with both costs in view.
Replacing custom tools with maintained services also reduces the chance of creating a new legacy problem.
Spreading the cost
Legacy rebuilds can be phased by risk: first the parts with the greatest security exposure or the most business value, then the rest. Running old and new side by side for a period costs a little more in hosting but spreads the investment and reduces disruption.
An assessment that changed the plan
Illustrative example — not a client case study
Situation: A firm assumed its old site was simple: a few pages and a contact form.
- The assessment found a hidden script emailing daily order summaries to a supplier.
- It also found several years of form submissions containing personal data.
- The rebuild plan added a replacement for the script and a data retention decision.
What this shows: Without the assessment, the supplier emails would have stopped silently at launch. This example is illustrative.
Questions about legacy website rebuild cost
Why can't you quote a rebuild immediately?
Because legacy systems hide features and data that change the scope. The assessment finds them.
Is a rebuild always more expensive than patching?
In the short term, often. Over a few years, patching usually costs more and carries more risk.
Can we drop features to save money?
Yes. Unused features are dropped, and some can be replaced by existing services.
Does data recovery add much?
It depends on how the old system stores data and whether exports exist.
Is decommissioning really necessary?
Yes. A forgotten old system remains a security risk if left online.
Can the rebuild be phased?
Yes, often by feature or user group, with old and new running side by side for a period.
Is the assessment cost deducted from the rebuild?
How the assessment relates to the rebuild quotation is stated when it is agreed.
Is keeping the old site cheaper this year?
Possibly, but the gap usually narrows each year as patches get harder and risk grows.
Can old user accounts be migrated?
Sometimes, depending on how the old system stored them; otherwise users are invited to register again.
Does decommissioning cost much?
It is usually a small task: archive data, take a final backup, remove the old system from hosting and confirm nothing still depends on it.
Do you need access to the old server?
Usually some access, or a full copy, so the assessment can see what the system actually does.
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