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What is the difference?
A migration moves an existing site to a new platform. The content, the page structure and usually the design stay recognisable. The work sits in exporting data, mapping URLs, rebuilding templates, moving integrations and setting redirects.
A rebuild designs and builds the site again. The navigation, the page set, the content model and the visual design can all change. A rebuild still needs the same URL and redirect work if the old site had traffic, which is why teams underestimate it.
The two overlap. Most real projects are a migration with design work, or a rebuild that keeps most URLs. The useful question is not “which name” but “how much of the old site survives”: the content, the structure, the design, the URLs and the integrations. Answer that for each of the five, and the route becomes obvious.
How do the two compare?
| Decision criterion | Migration | Rebuild |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Lower. The work is data, templates, redirects and testing. | Higher. Adds research, design, a new content model and new templates. |
| Time to launch | Shorter, if the content is clean and the page count is known. | Longer. Discovery and design come before any build work. |
| Who can edit it | Editors keep a familiar page structure on a new platform. | Editors learn a new content model. Plan training and documentation. |
| Scale limits | You inherit the old structure, including the parts that do not scale. | You design the structure for the next few years. |
| Lock-in | Lower. You leave the old vendor and choose the new one deliberately. | Lower, and you also choose the content model and the templates. |
| SEO risk | Contained. Same pages, same intent, if redirects and content are kept. | Higher. New URLs, new navigation and changed content all move signals. |
| When it is wrong | The structure or the content model is the actual problem. | The site works and only the platform is failing. You pay for a new coat of paint. |
Choose migration when
- The site works for users and the platform is the problem: cost, security, support or hosting.
- Organic search brings real traffic and you want to protect it.
- The content is accurate and the page structure still matches how you sell.
- Your editors are productive and you do not want to retrain them this quarter.
- The vendor is ending support, raising prices, or blocking a feature you need.
- You need a lower-risk step now, with a redesign planned later on the same platform.
Choose rebuild when
- Visitors cannot find what they need. The navigation and the page set are the problem.
- The content model cannot hold what you sell today: new services, markets or languages.
- The brand, the positioning or the audience changed.
- Every new page needs a developer, because the templates are rigid or broken.
- Performance, accessibility or mobile behaviour fail at the template level, not the page level.
- The site cannot support the next two years of the plan, whatever platform it runs on.
What does a safe move look like either way?
Start with an inventory. Export every live URL, with its traffic, its inbound links and its purpose. Decide keep, merge, rewrite or retire for each page. A page with no traffic, no links and no purpose does not need to move. This one step often removes a large share of the work.
Map the redirects before you build. Every kept URL needs a destination. Every retired URL needs the nearest useful page, not the home page. Write the map in a file you can test, and test it on staging with the real list.
Then check everything that is not a page: forms, analytics, tag manager, conversion tracking, structured data, sitemaps, robots rules, email sending, search console verification, hreflang and third-party scripts. A migration fails more often on these than on the content.
After launch, watch crawl errors, redirects, index coverage, page speed and conversion for at least four weeks. Fix the broken redirects first. Konzept runs this work as a service under website migration, and builds new sites under web development.
What should you not do?
Do not change the platform, the design, the content and the URL structure at the same time without a map. If traffic falls, you will not know which change caused it.
Do not redirect everything to the home page. It tells search engines and users that the old page is gone, and it wastes every link the page earned.
Do not skip staging. Test the real content, the real forms and the real redirects on a protected environment. Block that environment from search engines, then confirm the block is removed at launch.
Do not treat launch as the end. Budget time for the four weeks after launch, when the real errors appear.
What does it cost?
The page count is a weak predictor. Content quality, the number of templates, the integrations, the languages and the state of the current data move the cost far more. A 60-page site with five integrations and two languages can cost more than a 300-page brochure site.
Konzept publishes starting project prices on the pricing page. Growth starts from EUR 14,500, Scale from EUR 29,500 and Enterprise from EUR 44,000. Monthly partnership plans start at EUR 1,200 for Support, EUR 2,350 for Core and EUR 3,450 for Accelerate. SEO and AEO support starts from EUR 750 a month, and CRO from EUR 1,500 a month. These are published starting prices, not a quote.
What should you do next?
Export your URL list with traffic and inbound links. Mark each page keep, merge, rewrite or retire. Write down what is failing today and who it fails for. That document decides migration or rebuild in most cases.
For the search side of the work, read the website migration SEO guide and use the content and SEO migration checklist. For budget context, read website cost in Bosnia.
When the list is ready, get a quote. Send the current platform, the page list and the integrations. We will tell you which route is cheaper, which is safer, and what each one protects.
