Website Migration Services: What’s Included and What It Costs in 2026

A website migration looks simple from the outside: copy the content, point the domain, done. In practice, it’s the single riskiest thing most small businesses ever do to their website — because a careless move can wipe out years of search rankings in one weekend, and you usually don’t find out until the phone goes quiet two weeks later. Here’s what a proper migration service actually includes, what it costs, and how to tell a careful one from a copy-paste job.

What “Website Migration” Actually Means

Agencies use the word for four very different jobs — and they’re priced very differently, so it’s worth knowing which one you actually need before comparing quotes.

• Hosting migration. Same site, same platform, new server — for example, moving a WordPress site from cheap shared hosting to managed hosting. The lowest-risk type, as long as nothing about the URLs changes.
• Domain migration. Same site, new address — a rebrand, or moving from a .pl to a .com. Every single URL changes, so redirects and telling Google about the move are non-negotiable.
• Platform migration. Moving from Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Joomla or a custom-built site to WordPress (or WooCommerce). Content, structure and URLs all get rebuilt — this is where most of the ranking losses you hear about happen.
• Redesign + migration. A new design and a new platform at the same time. The most common request, and the most expensive one, because it combines two projects that each carry their own risk.

If you’re not sure which one you’re facing, that’s normal — a good agency should tell you after a short audit, before giving you a final price.

What’s Included in a Professional Migration Service

A real migration is a checklist, not a copy-paste. These are the steps a proper quote should cover — in roughly this order:

1. Pre-migration audit. Every page, URL, image, form and integration on the old site is inventoried. Pages that bring traffic or backlinks are flagged, using Google Search Console and analytics data — not guesswork.
2. Benchmark of current performance. Rankings, traffic, indexed pages and page speed are recorded before anything moves, so there’s something to compare against after launch.
3. URL and redirect map. Every old URL gets matched to its new equivalent. This spreadsheet is the single biggest factor in whether your rankings survive — skip it, and links from three years ago lead to a 404.
4. Private staging build. The new site is built and tested on a hidden copy, invisible to visitors and blocked from Google, so nothing is assembled live.
5. Content and media transfer. Pages, blog posts, images, documents, and — for stores — products, customers and order history.
6. SEO elements carried over. Page titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, structured data and canonical tags. These are the quiet details that disappear in a rushed migration.
7. Forms, tracking and integrations re-tested. Contact forms, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, pixels, booking tools, payment gateways, CRM connections.
8. Scheduled go-live. The domain is switched in a planned, low-traffic window — downtime measured in minutes, not hours.
9. Post-launch checks. Redirects tested, the new sitemap submitted to Search Console, crawl errors monitored, rankings compared to the benchmark.
10. Post-migration support. Usually 14–30 days of fixes included, because some issues only show up once Google re-crawls the site.

At Upsitedev, all ten steps are part of every migration project — the package only changes how much there is to move, not how carefully it’s moved.

How Much Website Migration Costs in 2026

Prices are typical agency ranges in Poland for 2026; Western European and US agencies usually charge 2–3× more for the same scope. Most reputable agencies give a fixed quote only after the audit — anyone quoting a precise number before seeing your site is either padding the price or planning to skip steps.

What Drives the Price Up

• Number of URLs, not number of pages you care about. A site with 15 “main” pages can have 600 URLs once blog posts, tags, category archives and image attachment pages are counted. Every one of them needs a redirect decision.
• The platform you’re leaving. Some platforms export cleanly; others don’t. Wix and Squarespace have no proper full-site export, so content often has to be moved semi-manually. Shopify exports products well but not blog structure or custom pages.
• E-commerce data. Moving products with variants, customer accounts and order history — without breaking SKUs or forcing every customer to reset their password — is a project of its own.
• Custom functionality. Booking systems, member areas, calculators, CRM or ERP connections all need to be rebuilt or re-mapped, not just copied.
• Multilingual sites. Two languages means two sets of URLs, two sets of redirects, and hreflang tags that have to line up exactly.
• Content clean-up. Merging thin pages, fixing old internal links, compressing a decade of oversized images — worth doing during a migration, but it adds hours.
• Deadlines. A migration squeezed into one week costs more than the same work done in four, because testing time gets compressed into overtime.

DIY vs. Freelancer vs. Agency

The honest rule of thumb: if your site brings in fewer than a handful of visitors from Google a month, DIY or a freelancer is perfectly reasonable. If organic search is a meaningful source of leads or sales, the migration fee is small compared to what a month of lost traffic would cost you.

Red Flags in a Migration Quote

• No mention of redirects. If the quote lists “content transfer” and “design” but never says “301 redirects” or “URL mapping”, rankings are not part of the plan.
• A fixed price before anyone has looked at your site. Scope depends on URL count, platform and integrations — a precise number without an audit means steps will be skipped to fit it.
• Building on the live site. A careful migration happens on staging. “We’ll do it over the weekend directly on your domain” is how sites end up half-broken on Monday morning.
• No post-launch period. Problems often surface 1–3 weeks after go-live, when Google re-crawls. A quote that ends at “site is live” leaves you alone for exactly that window.
• “We’ll keep your rankings, guaranteed.” Nobody controls Google. A careful agency can minimise the risk and tell you what normally happens — a short dip that recovers within weeks — but a guarantee is a sales line.

Common Mistakes That Cost Rankings

• Redirecting everything to the homepage. It looks tidy, but Google treats mass homepage redirects like 404s — the ranking value of each old page is lost.
• Leaving the staging “noindex” setting on after launch. One unchecked box in WordPress settings can make a brand-new site invisible to Google.
• Changing URLs, content and design all at once without a benchmark. If traffic drops, there’s no way to tell which change caused it.
• Cancelling the old hosting too early. Keep the old site and its backups for at least 30 days — it’s your safety net if something was missed.
• Forgetting Search Console. The new sitemap should be submitted, and for a domain change, the Change of Address tool used, on launch day.

Ongoing Costs to Budget For After the Move

• Hosting: quality managed WordPress hosting runs roughly 50–300 PLN/month — usually the moment to upgrade from the cheapest plan, since you’re moving anyway. See our managed hosting option.
• Maintenance: updates, backups and monitoring, typically 200–800 PLN/month through an agency — more detail in WordPress Maintenance Agency vs. DIY.
• Premium plugins and licences: forms, SEO, backups or WooCommerce extensions that replace features your old platform bundled in.
• Old platform overlap: one extra month of the old subscription or hosting, kept as a fallback.

The Bottom Line

For most small businesses in 2026, a professional website migration costs 1,500–12,000 PLN (~€350–€2,800), and an online store 8,000–30,000+ PLN. The price difference between a cheap migration and a careful one is almost entirely the invisible part: the URL map, the redirects, the staging build and the weeks of checks after launch.

The right question isn’t “how cheaply can my site be moved” — almost anyone can copy pages to a new platform. It’s “will my site still bring in the same leads a month after the move”. If you want a straight answer for your site, we’ll audit it and send a fixed quote — start a migration project or get in touch.