Web development
Migrations
Off a framework you have outgrown, with every URL, redirect and ranking still where it was.
The engagement
What it costs and how long it runs
Stated up front, because these are the questions everything else depends on. The price is where the work starts, not a quote: scope moves it.
- Starts from
- $18,000
- Typical length
- 6 to 12 weeks
- Downtime
- None; the old site serves until cutover
- Rollback
- A DNS change, at any point
Detail
What the work is
Moving a site off a framework it has outgrown, keeping every URL, redirect and search ranking intact through the change.
Migrations fail in one of two ways. Either the new site never ships, because it is being built to replace everything at once, or it ships and takes the search rankings with it, because a few hundred URLs quietly stopped resolving.
Both are avoidable, and neither is avoided by enthusiasm. The first step is an inventory: every path the old site serves, every redirect already in place, and every URL that has an inbound link worth keeping. That inventory is the specification for the new site.
The cutover is staged. The old site keeps serving until the last step, the redirect map is tested against the inventory rather than against memory, and the switch is a DNS change that can be reversed in minutes.
Scope
What it includes
Everything below is part of the price. Anything not on this list is quoted separately rather than assumed.
- URL inventory and a redirect map covering every existing path
- Content and template translation, page by page
- A staged cutover with the old site still serving until the last step
Process
How it runs
In this order, with each step finishing in something you can look at rather than a status update.
1. Inventory the URLs
Every path, every existing redirect, and every page with inbound links or traffic worth protecting. Nothing moves until this list is complete.
2. Translate the templates
Templates become components and content becomes typed data, page kind by page kind, checked against the old output rather than against a design.
3. Test the redirect map
The full inventory is replayed against the new site, and the migration is not finished while any path in it answers with a 404.
4. Cut over in one reversible step
The old site stays up until the DNS change, and the change can be undone in minutes if anything looks wrong in the first hour.
Outcomes
What is different afterwards
Not what happens during the work, but what you are left holding when it is over.
No lost URLs
Every path the old site served either still resolves or redirects to the page that replaced it, verified against the inventory rather than assumed.
Rankings intact
Canonical links, structured data and sitemaps are generated from the new routes, so a crawler sees a moved site rather than a new one.
A reversible cutover
Nothing is deleted on the day of the switch. The rollback is a DNS change, not a restore from backup.
Services
The other three
They combine: an audit often ends in a build, and a migration usually starts with one.
From $12,000 · Web development
Site builds
A complete site, compiled once into plain HTML. Routes, components and content in TypeScript, deployed to an edge that only has to serve files.
From $4,000 · Performance engineering
Performance audits
A measured account of what your pages actually send and how long it takes to paint, followed by the specific changes that would move the numbers.
From $6,000 · Accessibility consulting
Accessibility reviews
A review against WCAG, done in the markup rather than in a dashboard, with automated checks added to your build so the findings stay fixed.
Sound like the right one?
Describe the site, what you want to be different about it, and roughly when.