You have a problem... or I assume you do based on the fact you're reading this blog.
Somewhere in the last few months, someone in your business said the words "we need to move the website." Maybe it was you. Maybe it was a developer quietly warning that the current platform is held together with plugins and prayer.
Either way, you're now staring down a project with no obvious price tag, and every agency you speak to seems to quote a different number for what sounds like the same job.
So let's cut through it.
Most B2B website migrations cost somewhere between £8,000 and £60,000+, depending on the size of your site, the platform you're moving to, and how much of the "invisible" work - redirects, integrations, content restructuring - actually needs doing.
For a mid-sized B2B site (30-80 pages, a handful of integrations, no bespoke functionality), you're typically looking at £15,000-£35,000.
That's the headline. Now let's talk about why the range is so wide, what you're actually paying for, and how to stop a migration project quietly turning into a full rebuild with a rebuild's price tag.
This is where a lot of budgeting goes wrong, because "migration" gets used to describe two very different projects.
You move your existing content, structure and design from Platform A to Platform B, largely as-is. Same pages, same messaging, same look - just running on new (and hopefully less painful) infrastructure.
You use the platform move as the excuse to also fix the UX, rewrite the content, redesign the templates and rethink the conversion journey.
Almost every migration conversation we have starts as the first one and ends up as the second - because once you're rebuilding templates anyway, it feels wasteful not to improve them. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't budget for a lift-and-shift and then be surprised when the quote reflects a redesign.
We hear a version of this constantly from prospects before they come to us:
"We have a custom coded website and that causes issues."
That one line explains half of migration budgets. The more bespoke and "clever" your current build, the more expensive it is to move, because someone has to figure out what that custom code is actually doing before they can safely leave it behind.
Here's how the money typically splits across a migration project, using a mid-market B2B site as the example:
Cost Area |
What it Covers |
Typical % of Budget |
| Discovery & Audit | Content inventory, SEO audit, technical review, stakeholder input | 5-10% |
| Design | New or refreshed templates, UX for key journeys | 15-25% |
| Build | New or refreshed templates, UX for key journeys | 30-45% |
| Content Migration | New or refreshed templates, UX for key journeys | 10-20% |
| Integrations | CRM, forms, chat, analytics, ad platforms | 5-15% |
| SEO & Redirects | URL mapping, 301s, metadata, structured data | 5-10% |
| Testing & Q&A | Cross-browser, cross-device, broken link checks | 5% |
| Launch & Post-Launch | Go-live support, early optimisation | 5% |
Notice that "build" isn't the whole story. It's rarely even the majority of the story. Content migration and SEO redirects are where most horror stories come from, and they're also where most quotes go wrong - either because they're underestimated by the agency, or ignored entirely by the client's internal budget.
Site Size |
Page Count |
Typical Cost Range |
| Small | Up to 30 Pages | £8,000-15,000 |
| Mid-Sized | 30-80 Pages | £15,000-35,000 |
| Large/Complex | 80-200 Pages | £35,000-70,000 |
| Enterprise/Multi-site | Multiple regional or brand sites | £70,000-150,000 |
If your number sits well outside these ranges, on either side, ask why.
Too cheap, and something is being skipped (usually redirects, testing, or genuine content strategy). Too expensive, and you're probably being quoted for a full rebuild dressed up as a migration - or paying for an agency's inefficiency rather than your project's actual complexity.
Moving from WordPress to another WordPress-adjacent CMS is a different job to moving from WordPress into a platform like HubSpot CMS, where your website starts talking to your CRM natively rather than through a patchwork of plugins.
The build itself might cost more upfront on a platform like HubSpot - but you're not paying separately for hosting, security patching, plugin licences and the developer retainer required to keep a bespoke WordPress build from breaking every time something updates. Total cost of ownership, not the sticker price, is the number that actually matters.
A "keep everything" migration of 150 legacy blog pages is a very different budget line to a "cut the dead weight and rewrite the top 40 pages that actually convert" approach.
We almost always recommend the latter. Every page you carry across is a page someone has to check, redirect and, ideally, improve - carrying over content nobody reads just because it exists is one of the most common ways migration budgets balloon for no commercial benefit.
This is where the phrase "harder than it should be" comes up again and again in conversations with prospective clients.
If your current site talks to your CRM, your booking system, your finance software or a membership platform via a patchwork of custom code or a middleware tool, someone has to rebuild those connections on the new platform.
Native integrations (CRM, forms, chat, ad platforms) are relatively cheap. Bespoke API integrations - the kind we regularly build for clients connecting HubSpot to Salesforce, SAP Business One, Xero or industry-specific systems like Barbour ABI - take longer and cost more, but they're also usually the difference between a website that's a brochure and one that's genuinely part of your operating system.
A template-level refresh costs a fraction of a full brand-led redesign with bespoke modules, animation, and a rebuilt information architecture.
Be honest with yourself early about which one you actually want - it changes the quote by tens of thousands of pounds.
Get redirects and technical SEO wrong during a migration and you can lose the organic visibility that took years to build, sometimes within days of going live.
Agencies who take this seriously will quote properly for URL mapping, 301 redirect plans, structured data and post-launch monitoring. Agencies who don't will quote you a smaller number and a bigger problem three months from now.
We've written before about the total cost of ownership with HubSpot's pricing, and the same principle applies to any migration: the platform fee, or the headline build quote, is never the whole number. Here's what tends to get missed.
If there's no native connector between your old CMS and your new one, you'll need a middleware tool (Zapier, Make, or similar) to move structured content and data across - and that's an added cost most people don't think to ask about until it appears on an invoice.
If you've got booking widgets, calculators, chatbots or review plugins bolted onto the old site, each one needs a decision: replace, rebuild, or replicate. None of those are free.
Migrations eat internal hours - reviewing content, signing off design, testing links, training the team on the new CMS.
That's not a line on an agency invoice, but it's very real, and it's the reason internal stakeholders often underestimate how "big" a migration actually feels once it's underway.
Something always needs tweaking in the first few weeks after go-live. Build this into your budget rather than treating it as scope creep when it inevitably happens.
This one's less obvious, but it's real. We hear this kind of thing from prospects on legacy or overly-customised platforms constantly:
"If we stick with [our current CMS] we're probably going to need someone just to manage it."
A migration has a cost. So does staying put on a platform that needs a dedicated resource just to keep functioning.
There are three broad routes, and the right one depends on how simple your site genuinely is - not how simple you'd like it to be.
Some platforms, including HubSpot, offer a native migration service on their Starter and Pro tiers, which can fast-track genuinely simple sites with minimal integrations or custom functionality. It's a reasonable option if your site is small and largely brochure-style.
Technically possible if you've got in-house development capability and a simple site. Realistically, this is where a lot of the "custom coded website... causes issues" conversations start, because DIY migrations are the ones most likely to skip proper redirect mapping and content audits under time pressure.
For anything with integrations, meaningful content volume, or ambitions beyond "same site, new host," a partner earns their fee by doing the unglamorous parts properly: the audit, the redirect strategy, the integration rebuild, and the testing that stops you losing rankings or leads on launch day.
Here's the high-level process we run migrations through with clients:
Content, SEO value, technical setup and performance, so nothing valuable gets lost in the move.
Every page, template and asset mapped into a structured plan.
The new site built in a staging environment so it can be reviewed, tweaked and signed off before go-live.
Once live, the work doesn't stop; performance, UX and lead generation get iterated on from day one.
This mirrors the same 5-stage approach we use for full HubSpot CRM implementations - because a migration that isn't structured properly tends to fail for the same reasons a CRM rollout does: no clear roadmap, and no one owning the boring-but-critical steps in the middle.
Redway Networks came to us with a 10-year-old website running on WordPress. The brief wasn't just "move it" - it included a complete redesign, improved content and imagery, and a stronger focus on SEO and customer experience.
Their own words afterwards:
"Axon Garside really understood our business from the start and we didn't need to explain the technology which was great. We're really pleased with our new website and we've already seen benefits with increased visitor numbers."
That's a useful reminder that the "cost" question is really two questions: what will it cost to move, and what will it cost you if the move doesn't also fix the things that were quietly holding the old site back.
If you want a rough rule of thumb before you get quotes in:
Simple lift-and-shift, under 30 pages, minimal integrations: budget towards the lower end, £8,000-£15,000.
Mid-sized B2B site with a handful of integrations and some redesign: £15,000-£35,000 is realistic.
Larger, integration-heavy, or genuinely rebuilt from the ground up: £35,000-£70,000+, and don't be surprised if it lands higher once discovery reveals the real state of the current build.
Whatever number you land on, make sure it includes discovery, redirects, integrations and testing - not just "the build."
Those are the parts that don't show up in a demo but absolutely show up in your organic traffic three months after launch if they're skipped.
Broadly, yes - not because the platform charges differently, but because different sectors carry different baggage into a migration.
Engineering and manufacturing businesses tend to have deep, technical product catalogues, legacy PDF spec sheets, and a sales team that lives off the website for tender and enquiry generation.
Migrations here often cost more at the content and structure stage, because someone has to work out how to represent a genuinely complex product range without turning the site into an unusable filing cabinet. It's also usually where the CRM integration piece is most valuable - connecting enquiry forms directly to a sales pipeline rather than a shared inbox.
Membership bodies, charities and training organisations carry a different kind of complexity: renewals, events, CPD points, donations, or course bookings that are often bolted on through two or three separate external systems rather than the CMS itself.
A migration for this kind of organisation frequently becomes an opportunity to pull those separate systems into one platform - which costs more upfront than a simple lift-and-shift, but removes several subscription costs and a lot of manual admin in the process.
Neither of these is a reason to panic about your quote being "too high." It's a reason to make sure your agency has actually worked in your sector before, rather than treating your migration as a generic template job.
Cost isn't the only variable, but it's rarely independent of who you choose either. A cheaper quote from an agency unfamiliar with your platform or sector often ends up costing more once you factor in the rework, the missed redirects, or the integration that "should have worked" but didn't.
A few questions worth asking any agency quoting you for a migration:
Have they migrated sites of a similar size and complexity to yours - not just "a website," but one with your integrations, your content volume, your sector's quirks?
Do they have a documented process for redirects and SEO preservation, or is it an afterthought?
Are they platform-agnostic, or do they specialise? There's no universally right answer here, but a specialist agency will usually know the platform's edge cases far better than a generalist juggling five different CMS platforms across their client base.
We're not neutral on this - we'd obviously like that agency to be us.
But even if it isn't, asking these questions of any partner will save you from the most common and most expensive migration mistakes: lost rankings, broken integrations, and a "finished" site that still needs six months of fixes before it actually works the way it was supposed to.
We're a HubSpot-focused agency, which means we only build websites on HubSpot CMS - so we won't pretend to be platform-neutral. What we will say is that a migration is rarely just a technical exercise for us. It's a chance to connect your website properly to your CRM, your sales process and your reporting, rather than just giving your old content a new coat of paint.
If you're weighing up a migration and want to see what a realistic, tailored number looks like for your specific site, take a look at our pricing guide - it breaks down exactly what's involved, what to expect, and how we approach migrations that are built to grow with the business, not just survive the move.
Download our Pricing Guide to see exactly what's involved, what to expect, and how we price migration projects for businesses like yours.